THERE are some circumstances in the AFL when an injury can be the making of a young player, provided they take the opportunity to accelerate their development and come back bigger and better. 

A lot has gone in to making Kuwarna's Riley Thilthorpe one of the stars of the 2025 season so far, but it is becoming clear that the cruel knee injury that sidelined him for most of last year has played a big role in his outstanding season.  

Thilthorpe has booted 23 goals in 10 games and become an aerial powerhouse this season, with his emergence as a hulking, bearded goalkicker taking the competition by surprise to an extent given his lack of football last year. 

It's a breakout season the Crows saw coming leading into 2024 after four years of hard work and one of the best pre-seasons that his coaches had seen, but a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee in a preseason game against West Coast wiped out the next four months.

Former skipper Rory Sloane, who was battling his own eye injury at the time, had a front row seat to how Thilthorpe approached the setback and made sure it was a period that helped make him a better player when he eventually returned.

"When most people probably looked at him as unlucky, he flipped the script on it all, which I absolutely loved," Sloane told AFL.com.au. 

"He said, 'How can I use this time to better myself and come out of this more prepared and more ready to attack senior AFL footy?' 

"Because he was a boy when he first came to our footy club. He was a big boy, but he's turned into a man pretty quickly, and that's through just attacking his rehab.

"When most could have probably gone the other way and felt sorry for themselves, he did it with a smile on his face. The way he prepared, I think this was always destined to happen."

Sloane believes the time spent on the sidelines last season gave Thilthorpe the opportunity to "bulletproof his body" as a 22-year-old, giving him size and strength that would have taken years more to develop during a weekly cycle of playing and training. 

An obsessive trainer who needs to be pulled back on the track rather than pushed, Thilthorpe took that approach into the rehab gym and is now reaping the rewards as an immovable power forward who sits top five in the AFL for marks inside 50 (2.9 a game) and contested marks (1.9).

"He just started to just transform himself into this huge beast, which is just the opportunity that rehab provides," Sloane said.  

"When young players go through these types of injuries, you can actually get a leg up on the rest of the competition and get a 25 to 28-year-old's body when you're 21, because you get the time to be able to put into your body. 

"If you're in the grind of a season, you focus more on recovering and getting ready for games, so you don't quite get to do that. It was just a great opportunity for him and he handled it so well."

Kuwarna forwards coach Scott Burns remembers the pre-season from Thilthorpe leading into 2024 as one of the best he has seen during his time in football.  

The young forward was already one of the best runners at the club, but he took up boxing externally and started to emerge as a bigger presence on and off the field that summer.  

A junior cricketer who also followed in his Dad's footsteps and played ice hockey as a youngster, he joined the Crows' social T20 team and came out of his shell around the club, finding his place in a forward line full of extroverts as his football improved. 

The timing of his knee injury at the end of that pre-season was cruel, but the silver lining was that Thilthorpe had at least seen what was possible during two pre-season games, giving him belief as he licked his wounds and then doubled down on his strength program. 

"He knew where he could get to and he had confidence that he could get back to that level," Burns told AFL.com.au.  

"That was the fortunate thing with the timing of the injury, because he'd got to a point where he was training at a level that was probably above our other key forwards and key defenders.

Then he got those trial games in against Port Adelaide and West Coast, so he'd had a couple of games where there was the belief. 

"If he hadn't had that and the injury was in round 21 the year previously when he hadn't had that pre-season and built that confidence, then it could have taken him longer [to get where he is now]." 

Burns can see similarities between Thilthorpe and Waalitj Marawar champion Josh Kennedy, who the experienced assistant worked with at the Eagles between 2009-2013. 

Beards aside, the trajectory has been similar, with Kennedy making a big step to become the Eagles' leading goalkicker for the first time in his sixth season in 2011.

"It was probably his fifth or sixth year that he really came out, and Josh would say he was a completely different athlete five or six years in, because the body is catching up sometimes," Burns said.

"The speed and power that he had in his mid-20s compared to what he had at 17-18 is completely different, and we've seen evidence of that now with Riley compared to when he was 18 with his speed, power and acceleration. 

"One of the things that is unique to Riley though is his ability to fly aggressively at an aerial ball but still land on his feet and be cat-like at ground level, which is unusual for someone of his size."

Kennedy won the first of his two Coleman medals in 2015 when he was 28, highlighting to Burns that Thilthorpe still has a lot of improvement left in him if he follows a similar path from here. 

A student of the game who can be his harshest critic, he is far from the finished product but has clearly shown he is not afraid to do the hard work required to eventually get there. 

"Around that 25 to 28-year-old mark is where you play some pretty good football, and he's five years off being 28, so there's still a fair bit of growth to happen," Burns said. 

"It doesn't mean that he's going to be doing things better, but it's probably more so his consistency from the first bounce to the end of the game and to be able to back up week to week, which is hard over 23 rounds. 

"That's where the older players are better than the younger versions of themselves. It's the consistency of performance throughout a game and from week to week. 

"But he just loves his footy, he's a competitor, he's got a huge smile on his face, and he celebrates and enjoys his teammates' success. 

"He's just a player that I think the Adelaide footy club are lucky to have."