Ross Lyon handed out simply 4 AFL debuts in season-opening video games throughout his first 13 years of teaching – however has revealed he’s set to blood two youngsters for Sunday’s spherical one conflict towards Fremantle.
Mattaes Phillipou and Anthony Caminiti are in line to debut for injury-hit St Kilda after they host the Dockers at Marvel Stadium.
Midfielder-forward Phillipou comes with large expectations after being taken with Pick 10 in final yr’s draft, whereas Caminiti was solely added within the pre-season supplemental choice interval.
“No rabbits in the hat. Caminiti has come from the clouds, hasn’t he?” Lyon mentioned on Wednesday morning.
“It’s likely that we’ll have those two as debutants, Phillipou and Caminiti.”
After lacking out within the nationwide draft, 19-year-old Caminiti was coaching with Carlton’s VFL facet when Blues participant Jack Silvagni talked about him to his dad, Saints recruiter Steve Silvagni.
The Saints invited Caminiti to coach with them final month and shortly signed him after he made a right away impression.
The pair will be part of Jarryn Geary (2008), Andrew Brayshaw (2018), Bailey Banfield (2018) and Lachie Schultz (2019) as gamers to have made round-one debuts underneath Lyon since he started teaching in 2007.
The Saints have 14 gamers out of motion forward of spherical one, together with final yr’s prime two main goalkickers in Max King and Tim Membrey.
But regardless of the heavy pre-season damage toll, Lyon mentioned he doesn’t detect an issue with their coaching regime.
“There’s no soft-tissue crisis – as a coach, you think ’soft tissues’,” he mentioned.
“Clearly the ones we’d love to have are our key power forwards.
“Other than that… the 23 we pick will all have had full summers and be fit.
“I’m not overly stressed.”
– with AAP
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
