In this week's Game Plan, Swans football development manager, Stuart Maxfield, talks about the young Swans and how they have been tracking over the pre-season and the early stages of the 2012 season...

With a year of football under their belts, it’s been great to see just how much some of our young players have developed over the last 12 months.

Although we’ve only played one round of footy, a number of our developing players put in a solid preseason and look set to improve on their 2011 form.

One of the stand-out players in terms of development this year would have to be Luke Parker. When we drafted him to the club at the end of 2010, we weren’t actually looking for another inside midfielder, but at the pick we took him at, he was just too good of a player to pass up.

As soon as he turned up, in terms of his physical development he was a lot more advanced than a lot of other young kids that come in, this combined with his strong work ethic, is why he gained senior selection in his first year.

Parker is a guy who learns fast. He is one of those guys who naturally goes after the ball, but like a lot of young kids accountability wasn’t a strong point. He quickly made this a game day focus and now has a balanced game of attack and defence.

The role he played last year was more of a half forward coming into the midfield, whereas this year he had a fantastic preseason and got himself fit and got PBs, so he’s got more midfield time this pre-season. A lot of your small forwards are generally midfielders anyway, but Parker is actually playing a lot more in the square this year and has had a huge impact throughout the preseason.

Luke has earned the trust of his team mates and works extremely hard to maintain his reputation.

Another player who made his debut last year and has cemented his place by playing 20 senior games was Alex Johnson. AJ, without taking anything from him, probably exceeded expectations last year because not many guys play that many games in their first year.

One of the biggest challenges for young players in the off-season is that they don’t necessarily look after themselves. But both AJ and Luke came back and almost ran PBs on their first day back, so they worked really hard in their off-season break and kept to their programs.

This year, we’re looking for Johnson to again to be that real lockdown defender and to be someone who can be relied upon to play on a variety of opponents. He’s got the agility and the speed to play on talls and mediums, so we’re looking for that reliability and trust in him this year.

At only 20 years of age, another player who has really stood up as a player of the future is Sam Reid. Since last year, from a physical point of view he has put on size and has become a focal point in the forward line.

He is only in his third year, but what we want from him now is to be the general of the forward line and have the confidence to get our forward structures in place throughout the course of a match. At different phases of the game we want to see him out there steering his team mates around. That’s the next step in his development in his on-field leadership.

We did have one debutant in last round’s clash with GWS and that was Harry Cunningham.

Harry probably jumped the queue ahead of a few other blokes because he had fantastic leg speed. He was a bit of a surprise packet, but because of his size and his speed he’s had a few more chances to find a spot than some other players.

He can play forward, midfield and back, and while he hasn’t played a lot as a defender, we’re working on different parts of his game. His versatility and his speed are probably the two things that gave him an opportunity, whereas some other guys are a bit restricted to where they play.