THE PERFORMANCE of Tom McDonald in defence this year has earned praise from his backline coach Jade Rawlings.

Rawlings said McDonald had performed strongly regardless of the team’s effort this year.

“Tom has been a consistent performer, irrespective of how the game’s panned out – he’s still continued to perform at a really high level,” he told Dee TV.

“He has improved and I still think he’s got a fair bit of improvement left in him and I’ve really admired how his leadership has really increased this year.

“Equally, I’ve been happy with Colin Garland’s season so far. I think he’s been really consistent, and [Christian] Salem, up until hurting himself the other day, has been a good performer. Dunny (Lynden Dunn) has also been pretty solid.

“We’ve got some reasonable output from the backs, but I still think there is a fair bit of improvement left in the group throughout the remainder of the season.”