When I first decided to write about one Richmond player's season as I saw it I had to think long and hard about who it would be. My initial choice would have been Matthew 'Knighta' Knights, it would have been his final season and he would have cracked the magical 300 game mark, however Knighta decided to pull the pin late in the 2002 season and so that put paid to that idea. Forced to go back to the drawing board I had to rethink my criteria. Knighta was gone and so was Benny Gale. I've never really had the Richo fixation that most other Richmond supporters have and while Cambo is the captain, he just doesn't inspire me, Bowdo is too soft and Dutch is coming back from a knee reconstruction. Gas is good, but really he's just a spoiler and Otto is yet to live up to his potential. I decided to look at a young player. I really like Marc Dragicevic, but with him coming back from a second knee reconstruction there's no guarantee he'll even get on the park. I don't know enough about our young draftees so I settled on David 'D-Rod' Rodan.

The D-Rod was a sensation before he ever came to Punt Road and that's despite the fact that he is only a second year player. Three things guaranteed that David would attract plenty of media attention. First was his undoubted ability. He won two Morrish consecutive medals (best and fairest in the under 18 competition) when playing under 18's. Other players have won two Morrish's and most went on to become very good senior players, but no one had ever won two consecutive Morrish's before.

Secondly was his physical stature. David was the shortest in the 2001 draft and that also got him media attention. They always focus on physical oddities; tallest, shortest, etc… His height or lack thereof was also why Richmond was still able to pick him up with number 33 overall.

Lastly and probably the reason he did tend to be a media darling was the fact that he was born in Fiji of Fijian parents and did not move to Australia until he was four years of age. The media love an ethnic minority. It has no real bearing on how he plays football, but they love to say that he's the only Fijian to ever play AFL football at the senior level.

He quickly became a cult figure at Punt Road. One of the things I liked that I heard was that he picked up the nickname Vacuum because of his ability to pick the ball up off the ground. While The Tigers had a great 2001 season one thing we lacked was a bloke who pick the ball up off the deck. If young Rodan could do that more power to him. He showed that he could in fact get the ball from the ground, he could run while bouncing it and he didn't mind a goal or two either and that was all in his first pre season Wizard Cup game. He played all of those, including the losing Wizard Cup Grand Final side, in fact his finals record of never having played in a losing Grand Final side we hoped might bring us luck, alas it was not to be.

David's great pre season form and luck followed him into the regular season and he played all 22 home and away games, kicked 18 goals, at least one goal of the week, was nominated as a Rising Star and got plenty of articles written about him for a first year player. He also became a cult figure at Tigerland.

I love the little bloke and if his 2002 season is anything to go on, then strap in because we're in for an interesting ride.