IN the latest edition of Caught The Eye, we cast our scope to generation next with a look at the Vic Metro Under 16 Futures carnival, which featured some great talent including Next Generation Academy (NGA) and father-son prospects to monitor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In wet conditions which slowly eased at RAMS Arena in Craigieburn, all six Metro regions took to the field across a bumper day of action, starting with Northern Knights and Eastern Ranges. The Sandringham Dragons then took on rivals, Oakleigh Chargers, before the Calder Cannons and Western Jets locked horns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First to the field on Monday, Northern hit the ground running to have the better of Eastern through the midfield. The likes of Ty Kitchell<\/strong> and Zak Johnson<\/strong> made the most of the great ruck work from Roman Black<\/strong> and Samuel El Ali<\/strong>, who would both hit the scoreboard in the second half to showcase their versatility. 2023 prospect and small forward Zane Souleiman <\/strong>made forward pocket his own with two classy goals on the boundary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eastern fought hard in the last quarter but couldn\u2019t get the reward on the scoreboard. The Ranges’ better players included midfielders Jak Ryan<\/strong> and Cody Anderson<\/strong>, with strong forward Josh Smillie<\/strong> showing some promising signs as a De Goey\/Stringer type of powerful hybrid forward-midfield. A few other impressive players included classy wingman Blake Muir<\/strong> and 15-year-old prospect Oliver Greeves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sandringham came out hard against Oakleigh, with the Dragons’ forward group showing plenty of class lead by medium forward Angus Phillips<\/strong>, who kicked two majors in the first quarter. Midfielders Levi Ashcroft<\/strong>, Riley Collins<\/strong> and Zach Travers<\/strong> where a lethal combination through the middle, with Josh Docking<\/strong> showing plenty of class on the wing. Other Dragons to impress were half-back Sam Linder<\/strong> and utility Luke Trainor<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oakleigh looked down and out after the first quarter, but fought back to force a draw via a kick from Noah Yze<\/strong> on the siren. Jagga Smith<\/strong> was the standout through the midfield, with his speed, class and work rate placing him as a very early contender for a top pick in 2024. He also kicked two majors. Others to impress were midfielders Tom Gross <\/strong>and Finn O\u2019Sullivan<\/strong>, defender Doug Kerr<\/strong>, and electric small forward Waylon Davey-Motlop<\/strong>, with the 15-year-old very lively inside 50 and looking dangerous whenever he was near it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Western Jets got off to a good start with lively forwards Michael Cilmi<\/strong>, Oliver Murray<\/strong> and Keighton Matofai-Forbes<\/strong> dangerous in attack. Calder also had its fair share of excitement up forward in the form of Isaac Kako<\/strong>, Jayden Nguyen<\/strong> and Khalil Kaakour<\/strong>. All speedy players at ground level, Kako and Nguyen also showed their wares through the midfield. Others to impress were athletic key defender Harry O\u2019Farrell<\/strong> and Lucca Grego<\/strong>, a small\/medium forward who oozed confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second set of Metro fixtures is due to take place with a triple-header at Trevor Barker Beach Oval on Thursday, to help solidify Vic Metro\u2019s squad for July’s Under 16 National Championships. Country regions are also going head-to-head over the school holiday period, with eyes also on this year’s carnival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IN the latest edition of Caught The Eye, we cast our scope to generation next with a look at the Vic Metro Under 16 Futures carnival, which featured some great talent including Next Generation Academy (NGA) and father-son prospects to monitor. In wet conditions which slowly eased at RAMS Arena in Craigieburn, all six Metro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":103567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18050,18238,7949,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afl-draft","category-afl-draft-analysis","category-nab-league","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103565"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103569,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103565\/revisions\/103569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}