Robin Nahas says he has a lot to improve on next year
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A GOOD first year, but plenty of improvement to come.
That was the basic summation by Robbie Nahas of his first year at the Tigers, which was capped off with him claiming the "best first-year player" award at the Richmond best-and-fairest presentation.
Nahas went to the Tigers with their first pick in the 2008 NAB AFL Rookie Draft as a mature-age recruit, but played 19 of a possible 22 games after impressing in the pre-season and NAB Cup.
The quicksilver small forward kicked 21.21 for the season, third on the Tigers' list of goalkickers and had 147 scoring contributions, behind only Jack Riewoldt (219) and runaway winner Mitch Morton (272).
But Nahas didn't seem all that thrilled by his output in his first year.
"I missed a lot of opportunities this year, which I'm not too happy with," he told richmondfc.com.au.
"I kicked a fair few behinds, which I've really got to work on in the pre-season, but the chasing and tackling aspects, I think I got to the areas I wanted to.
"Obviously you can always be better and can always improve, and hopefully with a good pre-season under my belt I can lay a couple of extra tackles, and chase a couple of extra players out of the forward 50."
Nahas kicked in excess of 50 goals for Port Melbourne in the VFL in 2008, but said the extra scrutiny this year came from within, not without.
"It's just added pressure on myself in front of the big sticks – I thought 'I've got to kick these' and with that bit of pressure on yourself, you start missing a few.
"When you miss a few it just gets bigger and bigger.
"But I think I've just got to get the routine right, and it should be fine."
With that in mind, the 21-year-old said he was looking forward to his second pre-season.
"(New coach Damien) Hardwick looks fantastic – he's obviously going to change a few things, it's going to be pretty hard on the boys, but we're looking forward.
"We can't wait for 2010 to start."
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