St Kilda rebounding defender Jimmy Webster experienced a frustrating season in 2016, with injuries marring the second half of the year after the Tasmanian made a bright start to the season.

The 23-year-old played 11 of the first 13 games, where he continued his development inside St Kilda’s back six, before a series of soft tissue injuries prevented him from staying on the park in the back end of the season.

Webster suffered a quad strain early in the year before straining his hamstring in the Saints’ upset win over Geelong in Round 14, which also marked his 50^th appearance at the highest level.

That game would end up being his final senior outing of the year, after the club elected to put the Glenorchy product on ice for the season in August following a recurrence in his right hamstring.

On the back of a breakout season in 2015, Webster began the season strongly against Port Adelaide in Round 1, before producing the finest effort of his year in the win over Collingwood, where he helped himself to 24 touches at 91.7 per cent efficiency.

In the last game before he suffered the initial hamstring setback, Webster played an important role against the Blues in Round 12, gathering 23 possessions, four inside 50s and three rebound 50s.

Alan Richardson’s Views:

“Jimmy had a strong start to the year. His ability to beat his direct opponent, play team defence and give us some drive out of defence was positive. He’s a really good user of the ball; he’s got great leg speed; he’s a tough kid, he likes smacking in, he likes making body contact and we certainly like that in the team, let alone down back. It was a really positive year in terms of lifting his possession rate, which was a focus going into the year. We wanted a bit more drive, we like Jimmy with the ball in his hands, he makes good decisions and executes well.

“So that was heading the right way until he ran into the injuries he suffered, which is frustrating, getting injuries is always frustrating for him and for us. It gave us the opportunity to look at [Daniel] McKenzie down back and [Brandon] White there late in the year.

“I would know expect Jimmy to understand that on the back of a really strong pre-season he was able to go to another level with his footy and that’s my expectation again this year, that he trains really hard, he’ll nail whatever it is from a focus point of view that we put at him and that won’t be too dissimilar to last year really. We will look for him to play a bit more through the midfield during the pre-season, he’ll do a bit of work on the wing, a little bit of work on the inside, but fundamentally it will be in defence. We do need Jimmy’s run and offensive weapons through the midfield at times so that will be a target he works towards.”

The Numbers:

11 games
14.7 possessions
3.1 marks
2.8 tackles
2.7 rebound 50s