TRUE BLUEY AFL with Guy McKenna | Courtesy of Gold Coast Bulletin

MATURE-age recruits are certainly the talk of the AFL this year after the success of Geelong's James Podsiadly and Fremantle's Michael Barlow.

From the Gold Coast Football Club's perspective, if there are mature-age players out there who can play down back or up forward, you are in our sights.

But having said that, let's first sit back and look at Podsiadly.

He is playing in arguably one of the best teams of all time.

So to be planted at full forward, I think it's fair to say it would be a fairly easy gig. I am not saying playing at full forward is easy.

I am saying that for a team like Geelong, and Barlow with the season Fremantle are having, you must be wary of getting too caught up in their success.

You have to ask yourself would Podsiadly and Barlow be performing as well if they were playing for sides down the bottom of the ladder.

That is the unknown but it is certainly a good story and shows that mature-age AFL rookies can work in the right environment.

As I mentioned earlier, we are potentially a club that will look at picking up mature-age players in the draft at the end of the year.

But if we do, our targets would probably be more in the Podsiadly shape rather than Barlow.

That is because this year when we have looked to targets up forward, you can argue that is where we have come up short.

Our recruiting manager Scott Clayton looks at the draft and the majority of the players picked are elite runners and midfield types.

A mature player who can play both forward or back is the type we will look at. In our situation, from the oldest we have Daniel Harris (28) and Michael Coad (26) and after that it goes down to Karmichael Hunt (23), Danny Stanley (22) and Sam Iles (22).

Our youngsters such as Jack Hutchins, Charlie Dixon and the others have not been in the system for long at all.

They will definitely need some older bodies to help them develop and that's where the mature-age recruits can come in handy.