Ready to shine: Gold Coast Suns defender Karmichael Hunt at pre-season training. Picture: Tim Marsden. Source: The Courier-Mail
KARMICHAEL Hunt will be unleashed on the competition's best clearance players as he enters his third season in the AFL with the challenge to kill or be killed.
Suns coach Guy McKenna has a two-year plan to transform Hunt from a bodyguard to an elite ball-winning AFL midfielder that will begin with the 26-year-old assuming the mantle of chief tagger a tactic the Suns have only occasionally employed over their two season in the AFL.
It is a make or break season for the code-hopper who must discover a way to continue to earn a game in a midfield that includes superstar Gary Ablett and three of the brightest young players in the game Harley Bennell, David Swallow and Jaeger O'Meara.
Hunt's transition from NRL superstar to bona fide AFL player has been a success to date but in 2013 the bar has been lifted.
He has impressed with his ability to win clearances and the bullocking work he does around stoppages but his possession average of a little over 14 a game is no longer enough.
Hunt's biggest possession count was 22 against Fremantle in Rd 6 while twice, against the Kangaroos and Lions, he gathered 21 touches.
Until he can regularly deliver those numbers, he must start delivering some big name scalps.
In a tough opening month Hunt could take on Saint veteran Lenny Hayes, Sydney ball magnet Josh Kennedy and Brisbane's evergreen Brownlow medallist Simon Black.
Hold his own against that esteemed trio and by the time Rd 4 arrives, Port Adelaide might tag him.
"Playing on them and squeezing the life out of them and then learning to work off them, the good taggers end up doing that," McKenna said.
"Eventually, the best way to stop them is to beat them to the ball but that tends to happen over years.
"'It is the evolution."
While McKenna's plan is ultimately all about increasing Hunt's possession count, he will not be judged on his touches during the early days of the new role when his primary focus will be in negating.
"We will look at what his opponent does," he said. "Lenny Hayes averages 27 or 28 possessions and gets seven or eight clearances.
"If we can reduce that by a chunk and make sure the touches he gets are under extreme physical pressure and `K' is responsible we'll be thrilled."
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