Tyson Garnham is one of Australia’s best gridiron players. 87131_16 Picture: MATHEW LYNN
By ADEM SARICAOGLU
WILLIAMSTOWN resident Tyson Garnham’s star continues to rise in Australia’s gridiron scene.
The 23-year-old was named the overall MVP of this year’s Gridiron Victoria Division One competition, after helping lead the Western Crusaders to an impressive 9-3 season.
Crusaders offensive assistant Brendon Bowe says Garnham is a special talent.
“He was really the backbone of the offence,” Bowe said.
“He’s a hard worker, and he’s a student of the game too, he thinks about ways of what things we can do on offence to try and exploit the defence as well.
“He really stepped up when our starting quarterback Brent Weeks was injured for much of the season.
“That put a bit more onus on the other skilled position guys, and Tyson was the main man, really.”
In what has been a whirlwind 12 months for Garnham, last year he represented Australia at the gridiron world cup in Austria as a wide receiver, which he says was the greatest achievement of his career to date.
“Playing for the Australian team was probably the best thing I’ve ever done, it’s a big, big difference going overseas,” Garnham said.
“Over here, there’s not as many supporters that watch the game, whereas when we played overseas we were in a stadium, (there were) fireworks, 10,000 people watching, so it’s a big step up from local club gridiron.”
Since properly taking up the sport six years ago, Garnham’s dedication to training and preparation has been first class.
When asked about his efforts this season, Garnham credited the experience he gained with the national team as the biggest factor in producing the year he had with the Crusaders.
“I guess coming off the world cup last year, I was in pretty good form and (I) then trained really hard in the offseason,” Garnham said.
“I started up athletics as part of my training, so I was probably in better shape this year than I had been in any of my other seasons, so putting that together, that’s why I was always pretty confident I was going to do well this year.”
Crusaders team-mate and defensive lineman Jnala Saluni came second in the overall award and joined Garnham in the Division One All Victorian team.
Their coach, Kriss Guidotti, was also named the All Victorian coach for 2012.
