{"id":303856,"date":"2025-11-23T16:58:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T16:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303856\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T16:58:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T16:58:21","slug":"afl-draft-pick-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303856\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL Draft | Pick 30"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                Draft\n            <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__summary\">\n                Melbourne has added another small forward to its stocks.\n            <\/p>\n<p>MELBOURNE has added to its forward line mosquito fleet, selecting the Gippsland Power\u2019s Thomas Matthews with pick No. 30 in the 2025 Telstra AFL National Draft.<\/p>\n<p>The Demons could have found value in the Gippsland captain, after a knee injury left the 171cm forward sidelined for much of 2025 and put a ceiling on his draft prospects.<\/p>\n<p>In 2024 the powerful tackling machine thrived on pressure and powerful athleticism, bringing plenty of x-factor to kick 18 goals in 13 matches.<\/p>\n<p>A dynamic pre-season this year, including four goals in a trial match for Vic Country, had Matthews poised to make a name for himself before injury hit.<\/p>\n<p>Despite his height, Matthews is a pocket rocket in every sense of the word, regularly flying high to pull down soaring grabs.<\/p>\n<p>Matthews joins fellow small forward Latrelle Pickett who was taken at pick No. 12 in last night\u2019s first round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Draft Melbourne has added another small forward to its stocks. MELBOURNE has added to its forward line mosquito&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-303856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}