Prior to the start of 2016, Seb Ross had never accumulated 30 touches in a game. By season’s end, the emerging midfielder had reached and exceeded the territorial mark on eight occasions, stopping the clock at 37 after a particularly destructive performance against Essendon in Round 9.

After completing all of the pre-season last year and nearing the starting line in career-best shape, Ross’ 2015 was brought to a standstill when he suffered a severe hamstring injury in a NAB Challenge game.

A year later, the 23-year-old burst out of the blocks against Port Adelaide in Round 1, setting a new personal best of 31 touches. Ross followed it up with another 31 a fortnight later in the win over Collingwood, laying the foundations for a career-best season, which would eventually culminate with a sixth place finish in the Trevor Barker Award.

Across 22 games in 2016, the North Ballarat product averaged 26.5 disposals (No. 3 at St Kilda) and 18.9 uncontested possessions (No. 2), with his ability to find the ball and use it effectively the most impressive facet of his rise this year, according to midfield coach Adam Kingsley.

“He feels comfortable at the level now, and that’s been noticeable. Towards the back end of last year you could see that he’d turned a bit of a corner in that regard. He had a really strong pre-season and that laid the foundation for the year that he had,” Kingsley told saints.com.au.

“He’s been able to find a lot more of the ball this year, he had it over 30 times on eight occasions this year, but his biggest improvement has come from the way he finds the ball and uses it. He’s been able to progress from a very good VFL player to a very good AFL player.”

With Ross equally capable on the inside at the coal face and on the spread, Saints Coach Alan Richardson used the onballer at times to quell the influence of some key players this season. He nullified Patrick Dangerfield, Nathan Jones and Dustin Martin, limiting their destructiveness with ball in hand whilst also finding plenty of leather himself.

“The thing with ‘Sebby’ is he is got a good mix of inside and outside ability, so we can put him on players to control the inside but then he’s generally a bit better than them on the outside,” Kingsley said.

“He’s done some really good jobs for us across the year; Dangerfield was probably one of his best, where he was able to really curb his influence on the inside and then really look to attack on the outside.”

After a false start last season due to injury, Kingsley attributed Ross’ stellar rise in 2016 to the emerging leader’s professional approach to his preparation.

“He prepares extremely well, he gets his routine done every week. So that’s certainly the reason for his consistency,” Kingsley said.

“He’s got a really good plan that he sticks to each week irrespective of who we’re playing. We’ve given him some pretty big jobs over the course of the year and he’s prepared no differently for them than what he has for everyone else.”

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