Kane Cornes believes Richmond’s Sydney Stack needs to get off social media and focus on the shortcomings in his game.
In a recent interview with the Herald Sun, the cub’s elite performance manager Peter Burge provided some insight into a number of Tigers and how they are tracking in the early stages of pre-season.
Burge said of Stack: “Stacky is still learning the caper. He has got some work to do with consistency of preparation.
“I am not going to mince my words there, he has still got a bit of work to do. He is a young player learning about his preparation, he has fantastic traits in his explosiveness and he’s highly skilled, but he needs to work really hard on his conditioning.”
There is no denying that the 21-year-old us a sublimely talented footballer, but over the course of his three-year, 33-game AFL career there have been several off-field mishaps that have held him back.
Stack is a keen user of social media, particularly TikTok and Instagram, but if he continues to spend time on those platforms rather than working on his fitness and preparation, he may struggle to fulfil his potential.
That is the opinion of Port Adelaide champion Cornes who has urged the 2019 pre-season supplementary selection period acquisition to put his footy first.
“How Richmond go this year is going to be dependent on how a lot of their younger players come through,” he said on SEN Breakfast.
“One of those is Sydney Stack. I know he wasn’t taken in the top 10 (of the 2019 draft) with Connor Rozee, Sam Walsh and Bailey Smith, but he’s in that situation of his career.
“He is equally as talented as any of those. Some of the footy that he’s played across half-back, I was so impressed with his first year.
“He’s lost his way a little bit for reasons that we know of.”
After reading the article about Stack’s preparation and conditioning, Cornes had a look at the West Australian’s posts and came to a conclusion.
“Then I went to Sydney Stack’s social media,” he added.
“For the youngsters out there, TikTok is the big thing and he is a massive player in TikTok. He’s quite creative and he’s heavily involved.
“There’s a bit of old school in me about this. Whether someone at Richmond has done it or not, or whether the new era is to just let individuals be individuals and embrace social media.
“But there’s something in me that says, ‘Sydney, put your social media away, put your ridiculous TikTok videos away - if you’ve watched them, they’re cringeworthy, they’re embarrassing - until you get a kick’.
“He’s achieved nothing, but he has the capabilities to be a very, very good 200-game player.
“For those Richmond fans who have seen his social media videos, am I too old school to think that I could sit him down, shake him, ban him from TikTok until he gets a kick and has some success? Or is that not the way it goes now?
“That’s what they are saying publicly, that he’s got a lot of work to do. Imagine what they’re saying privately about his preparation and his endurance and his skin folds.
“What I’m worried about is he is wasting it. He’s as talented as Rozee, Walsh and Smith, but I reckon he’s wasting it.”
Stack starred for the Tigers in 17 games in 2019, before battling form and injury in 2020 prior to copping a 10-game suspension for breaching COVID protocols with a late-night altercation on the Gold Coast.
He played his first game of 2021 in Round 17, remaining in the senior side for the rest of the season and recapturing some of his best form as a rebounding defender.
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