Player Bio
Junior Clubs: North Shore
Debut: 2003
Recruited from: NSW/ACT U18
Brownlow Votes: 4
Roberts-Thomson was one of the long line of Swans to fall victim to injury in 2013.
Appearing in the opening four games, mostly reverting to a defensive role, the popular Swan suffered a knee injury that kept him out of the side for the remainder of the year.
He made it back on to the field for Sydney’s NEAFL team at season’s end and was an emergency for the Swans’ preliminary final loss to Fremantle.
He will be aiming for better luck in 2014.
Draft history: 2001 National AFL Draft 2nd round zone selection (Sydney) No. 29 overall.
His 2013 season was injury-riddled. He played the first four rounds and then went down with injury and didn’t come back.
His pre-season has been a little bit slow as he still recovers from injury. He did manage to play reserves at the end of the year but then had a few things to fix up post-season, so he hasn’t done the full pre-season so far but he’s been running almost the whole time. It’s just about getting him up to a level where he can jump into skills with the rest of the boys. In terms of conditioning, his fitness won’t take long because he’s a naturally fit guy, so he’s not too far away.
We hope in 2014 that he can get back to his 2012 form where he showed that at either end of the ground he was a really important player. At his best he’s hard, he’s versatile, he’s disciplined and he’s played a lot of footy, so he’s a really important player.