Great article about Shai in The Rage
At Optus Stadium on Saturday night was an event bigger than the game itself, and one that has gained a solid foothold in the imagination of the football-following public. It was the whole event, not just the contest, that drew people to the game.
www.theage.com.au
Growing before our eyes
This was not a breakout game for Shai Bolton any more than last week’s was, or the ones early in the season. They were all breakout games.
Shai Bolton is growing weekly from good second-string midfielder to an elite midfielder in the space of a season.
Shai Bolton takes a shot on goal as a seemingly helpless Zach Merrett watches on.Credit:Getty Images
He is one of the rarest of midfielders. He is both an inside and outside player. He is a goalkicker, and yet he is built unlike any of the other players who have this rare combination of gifts.
The other top-end multi-tasking footballers are freakishly put together: Dustin Martin, Nat Fyfe, Christian Petracca, ‘Danger’ and ‘The Bont’. They are all tall, strong, solid, powerful and fast. They are elite talents but also have a physical edge over other players.
Bolton is not tall – just 175 centimetres. He is not solid – he weighs barely more than a schoolboy at 77 kilograms. He is strong, but not powerful.
His game is not reliant on any of those typical physical traits. He doesn’t have that type of Alpha exceptionalism.
He is fast. And he does have a leap. It means he is a good overhead mark for his height (until Jack Riewoldt ignored common sense and jumped into traffic, Bolton was clearly the leader for mark of the year), and he has leg speed that only Dangerfield of the aforementioned group could beat.
Like every one of this group of elite midfielders, he has the singular inability to be tackled. He doesn’t fend off like Dusty. He doesn’t slow time like Bontempelli. He doesn’t stand up in tackles like Petracca and Fyfe. The closest equivalent is Dangerfield, who also has tacklers melt off him as he accelerates.
To be clear, I am not saying he is in this bracket of midfielders yet, for he has not done it often enough for long enough at the elite level. But he is trending that way. He may not reach that level but he does have rare attributes and, at the moment, we are seeing him improve weekly.
Critically, he also seizes the occasion in big moments. His goals in the last quarter all had an element of chance that simultaneously also had nothing to do with luck. He was in positions where the ball fell fortunately for him, but he then had the pace, vision and lightness on his feet to capitalise on that good fortune.
Forward of the ball he looks like a natural, intuitive forward. In the middle he looks a natural midfielder.
