Richmond coach Adem Yze is really excited about what defender Josh Gibcus could produce in 2026.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old has endured a horrid injury run since his impressive first year in the AFL in 2022, missing all of 2023 due to a recurring hamstring injury before tearing his ACL in 2024.<\/p>\n
That injury ruled him out for most of 2025, until he finally made his return at the top level against Geelong in Round 24.<\/p>\n
Having played just one game since March in 2024, Gibcus will feel like a new recruit for the Tigers in 2026, and Yze expects him to flourish with some luck this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going really well,\u201d Yze told SEN Fireball.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe obviously played a handful of games late last year. I was really eager to get him into the AFL team, especially for that last game, just to have a sense of what it was, get the feeling and the speed of the game again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to make sure he knew that he was an AFL player. He\u2019d be out of the system and out of the game for two years. I wanted him to get that feeling to go away over pre-season as an AFL player.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has come back really fit; he did some off-season running, he has got some belief in his body, so he\u2019s starting to really see the benefits of that, and so are we.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so excited for him, I keep touching wood every time I talk about him, but he just needs some luck. He is a highly talented kid, really driven, and he really deserves that luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see him in the next few weeks when we start playing against opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibcus will hope to line up for Richmond when they face Carlton in Round 1 at the MCG on Thursday, March 12.<\/p>\n
Listen to Yze\u2019s full chat with Kane Cornes and David King here.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richmond coach Adem Yze is really excited about what defender Josh Gibcus could produce in 2026. The 22-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-467377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467377","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=467377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}