One shining light for the Bombers over the past month has been young midfielder Brent Stanton who has averaged 18 disposals in the last four matches. As part of the often-criticised midfield group, his early foray into the world of AFL football has been anything but smooth. But he is reaping the rewards of some hard work on the training track and Bomber fans can rest assured, the best is yet to come.

After playing 15 games for the Bombers last year and earning himself a NAB Rising Star nomination, Stanton has played eight more matches this year to bring his tally up to 23 AFL games and more importantly grown his experience at the highest level.

""It has been good this year, I have had a bit more opportunity and a bit more ground time also which helps. And if I can keep getting the games under my belt I will hopefully keep on improving,"" Stanton exclusively told Bomber.tv.

""Once you build up a bit of confidence and you feel like you fit in a bit more with the team, things tend to work better. You have the confidence to do the things you were doing in the VFL in the AFL.""

In his second season at the club, Stanton believes having the experiences of 2004 under his belt has helped in his form this year.

""Once you’ve had one year around the club it is a lot easier to know the guys and in your second pre-season you really aim to be one of the top players because you know how to go about it,"" Stanton said.

""The club is looking to fast track a lot of the younger guys at the moment because a few of the senior guys were pulling a fair bit of the slack, so the club needs us younger guys to stand up and perform.

""I went to the coaches and asked them what they needed me to do and I have really worked on the areas that I wasn’t going to well in and it seems to be working at the moment.""

Despite the miserable performance against the Adelaide Crows on Saturday night, Stanton is remaining positive about where the club is at and particularly the much-maligned form of the midfield.

""We still have a little bit of work to do, but the stats show that we aren’t that bad. In the last quarters we can’t seem to get the ball out of the middle as much as we would like to, but in the games we have won we have dominated the clearances out of the centre bounce. We just need to do that more consistently,"" he said.

""We now just have to work hard on the track and really stick together as a team, we have addressed our problems and hopefully we can fix them out on the track and take it onto the field. We need to take a lot of risks and hopefully they come off.

""If you take out the last quarter of last weekend, In previous weeks we have proven that we can play some good footy, so I can’t see why we can’t go to West Coast and knock off the top side.""