Hurley is the find of the season

UNLESS a major shock is in store, the NAB AFL Rising Star will today be officially awarded to Brisbane Lion Daniel Rich. It would surprise if he did not get top votes from every judge.

Rich has joined Cyril Rioli (2008) and Joel Selwood (2007) as players whose debut years have been so outstanding they have become integral and irreplaceable parts of their teams after only a handful of games.

The fact that Rich was draft choice No.7, Rioli 12 and Selwood 7 is further proof that rating teenagers as senior prospects is very hit and miss, and that selections are made according to varying degrees of short, medium and long-term needs.

First-year draftees that become very good straight away are invariably small and medium-sized players. High-performing teenage talls is almost a contradiction in terms.

When clubs draft height, a short-term benefit is rarely expected – it is a pick for the longer-term future.

The other fact is that a player can be a man at 18 or a boy well into his 20s. They are all different and will develop at varying speeds. Jonathan Brown was a man at 18 but he is the exception, not the rule. Very few young talls have the physical maturity to match it with their older and stronger opponents.

Which is why the brilliant early form of young Bomber Michael Hurley is quite amazing.

No first-year player of any size or shape should ever have his papers stamped because all we get initially are glimpses of what the mature, experienced product might become.

Yet whenever I look at a young player I am either impressed, pessimistic or it is simply too early to tell.

Take 2008 No. 1 pick Jack Watts. Although he is 196cm tall, he is still a boy against the men. At the beginning of the season he was only 83kg, light as a cork against the bigger bodies and he was never going to give Melbourne an early return on their investment. Watts was always a selection for the future not the present.

Last year's No.2 pick Nic Naitanui was by comparison 96kg. While still on learner plates in footy smarts, he had the size to cope well with the physical requirements of senior footy and the bouncy athleticism to make him an exciting and very watchable prospect.

At pick No.5, Hurley was 193cm but already a strong 91kg. Not fully mature but much more than a skinny kid.

During the last few of the nine games he has played to this point, Hurley has done a few things that proven champs such as Nick Riewoldt, Adam Goodes or Matthew Scarlett would be proud of.

In the frantic last quarter of Essendon's narrow round 20 win over the previously unbeaten St Kilda, a long high ball lobbed into the Saints' forward 50.

Matched on Riewoldt at the time, the Essendon youngster established strong body contact, had the strength and balance to prevent the Saints captain from getting at the footy and took the final step back to mark the ball himself. This piece of play was a fantastic example of composure under extreme pressure: confidence and skill which only the best power defenders could match.

Then in last week's finals position-decider against Hawthorn, again in a stirring final quarter with the game in the balance, Hurley won possession a little outside his team's attacking 50. With no better option available he turned inboard onto his non-dominant side, calmly spun the footy in his hands to get it lace out and slotted the long-range left-foot goal.

Inexperienced teenagers, particularly those 190cm-plus, just do not normally have the wherewithal to do such things. When one does it creates a raise the eyebrows moment of "how good is this kid?".

Rich has helped lift the Lions into the finals, has played every game and quickly become an elite ball-getter with a devastating ability to pass the ball accurately, low and flat anything up to 60 metres.

When he has the footy, the Lions are at their most dangerous and he is clearly the best performed of last year's draftees. He is built like a man and plays like one.

Yet in only half a season Hurley has produced such high quality glimpses that in my view, he is the most outstanding prospect of all the 2009 newcomers.

From what we have seen to date, Rich looks like becoming a great midfielder; Hurley possibly a great versatile medium tall.

The latter type of player is much rarer and harder to find, which makes the talented Essendon youngster the current gem of those unearthed this season.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.