The Essendon ruck division was always going to be a major talking point among Bomber supporters when the senior list was basically finalised for 2003 at last Sunday’s National Draft. With Paul Salmon retiring and Steven Alessio de-listed, it was undoubtedly an area where the club was a little light on. David Hille is promising, as is Simon O’Keefe, but they needed some back up and Essendon did it well at the draft. It picked up two of the most talented talls available and redrafted Alessio to give the club some experience.

Essendon selected Jason Laycock from the Tassie Mariners with selection 10 on Sunday and with selection 28 it added North Ballarat’s Tristan Cartledge. Both are well over 190cm TALL and still growing. But they are anything but lumbering ruckman – they are agile and both are proven goalkickers.

“Both of them still have a bit of growing and filling out to do but Jason Laycock is definitely a great chance of playing senior football next season,” Essendon recruiting manager Adrian Dodoro said. “I suppose the beauty of picking up two young talls is that we can have a close look at them both during the pre-season and make a decision about who is most forward in their development and capable of stepping up. It might be both of them, it might be one of them and we obviously have Steven Alessio back now if we want to give both of them a season to find their feet. We don’t need to push them but I am very excited about both players.”

Regional Manager for the Tassie Mariners, Wayne Povey, described Laycock as a very good athlete. “He has really come on in leaps and bounds over the past three years after initially playing basketball,” Povey said. “He is a very good learner who really wants to make it – he has a passion for the game.He’ll obviously need to work harder at the top level because he often got by simply on ability at under 18 level but I’m sure he will do that.”

“He split his ground time 50 / 50 between the ruck and the forward line. He could play both centre half forward and full forward depending on the size of the ground. His ruck work was very solid – he could run and use his leap or back in and use his body,” Povey said.

Regional Manager at North Ballarat, Tony Frawley, said Tristan Cartledge was one of the youngest, if not the youngest player, to be picked up at the draft. “He only scraped in by 20 days otherwise he would have had to wait until next year’s draft. He played every game for the North Ballarat Rebels this season and finished second in the best and fairest,” Frawley said. “He was an All Australian Under 15, a member of Vic. Country’s Under 16 side that won the National Championships and he played every game for Vic. Country in the 2002 National Under 18 carnival. He held down the number one ruck position in a couple of those games and did very well. He is a developing player who is good athlete who can run and jump and he can also play up forward. He is a terrific kid from a terrific family and I’m sure he will handle himself well at Essendon.”