Ryan Garthwaite-The Daily Ledger

Ryan Garthwaite (born 30 June 1998) is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He won a VFL premiership while playing with the club's reserves side in 2019.

Early life and junior football

Garthwaite grew up in Corowa, a country town in New South Wales' Riverina region.

Ryan Garthwaite

He first played junior football with the Yarrawonga Football Club in the junior ranks of the Ovens & Murray Football League. In 2013 Garthwaite played with a combined Rivernia-Murray area team at the 2013 under 15 New South Wales schools championships. That same year he switched local clubs, playing instead with Lavington. There he was a key player in the club's junior premiership in 2014, kicking five goals in Lavington's victory in division one of the Ovens and Murray under 16 league.

Ryan Garthwaite

Another club switch followed in 2015, with Garthwaite moving to play with the Corowa-Rutherglen Football Club. There he earned a senior debut at age 16 that year. He also begun representing his region in state-league junior football in 2015, playing with the Murray Bushrangers in the TAC Cup. Up to this point he played exclusively as a forward, before making a switch into defence with the Bushrangers. He placed second in the club's best and fairest award that year despite being an underager, finishing behind only future-first-round AFL draft pick Clayton Oliver.

Ryan Garthwaite

After undergoing knee-surgery in the off-season, he rejoined the Bushrangers in 2016, a consistent performer in defence across the season. After a best-on-ground performance in the club's preliminary final he was again named in Murray's best the next week, this time in their TAC Cup grand final loss. Garthwaite repeated his effort set the year previous, again placing second in the club's best and fairest count. He was named by Fox Sports as the junior league's best one-on-one key defender that season, with Champion Data statistics also revealing he lost just two such contests, less than 7% of his one-on-ones in 2016. Garthwaite was also noted by AFL Draft Central as one of the best intercept marks in that competition, having averaged 6.5 marks per game across the season. During the year he also played intermittent senior football with the Corowa-Rutherglen in the Ovens & Murray Football League. He played a total of three senior matches across his two years with the club.

Garthwaite missed out on played with the NSW/ACT Rams in division two of the 2016 AFL Under 18 Championships due to a broken scapula, but recovered in time to earn selection to the multi-state Allies team to play in division one later in the tournament. He was rated as the Allies best player in round 3 of the tournament, gathering 12 disposals and keeping his Western Australian opponent Luke Strnadica to a single disposal.

AFL recruitment

In July 2016 Garthwaite was officially invited to the forthcoming national draft combine in Melbourne. There he placed equal-first in the clean hands test (handballing) as well as equal-second in the goal-kicking test with a score of 25 out of 30.

As a member of the academy he was officially nominated for priority access by the club in late October of that year. Despite this, he was not expected to be selected by the Giants given the number of other academy prospects available to them in that draft.

Garthwaite was noted pre-draft for his skills in one-on-one contests, his strength in marking and spoiling and his ability to play on both small and tall forwards. He attracted criticism though for a highly unorthodox two-handed kicking style, despite being largely reliable in his disposal by foot.

Two weeks prior to the draft Garthwaite was ranked by AFL Draft Central as the 43rd best prospect available that year. A week later he was projected to be selected by with the 40th overall pick by ESPN draft expert Christopher Doerre. This was revised on draft-day, with ESPN predicting Garthwaite to be taken 62nd overall by .