YOUNG-gun midfielder Dom Tyson says he exceeded his expectations in his first season at Melbourne.

Tyson, who averaged almost 24 disposals per match and accumulated 522 touches for the season, became one of the club’s most important players in 2014. It was a fine return after he played 13 matches with Greater Western Sydney in his first two seasons in 2012-13.

“If you’d have said to me at the start of the year that I’d play a full 22 games and still have a dip in form, but finish the season off well, I certainly would have taken that,” he told Dee TV. 

“I always had confidence in my ability – I hadn’t lost that – but it’s more about confidence in your body. I’ve got to pay credit to my teammates and coaches for that. They had their belief in me.

“There were times where I wasn’t doing everything right on the weekend and my teammates let me know and made me get better. We’ve got a good balance of those older blokes, who will let you know if they want you to tick off a few more things.

“They don’t ever put you down or anything but it ensures that you’re not satisfied in a way. It helps that we have older players driving the standards and keeping the younger guys honest.”

Tyson said comparisons between him and Josh Kelly, who was selected by the Giants at selection No.2 last year, were always going to happen early on, but he said he didn’t take much notice of it. 

“I didn’t really feel like it was affecting me at all and as you say, I think it’s going to go down as a win-win trade,” he said.

“Hopefully Christian (Salem) and I can keep performing and I think Josh will be a pretty good ten to twelve year player for the Giants as well.

“Hopefully people will look back on it and say it was a win-win.”

Having joined Melbourne last October via the 2013 trade period, Tyson said his first 12 months at the club had been “pretty big”.

“I turned 21 as well, which is a big milestone so I got to celebrate that one. It’s gone pretty quick to be honest. Looking back if you’d said 12 months ago that I’d be playing for the Demons, I wouldn’t have had a second thought about it,” he said.

“It only seems like yesterday that I was traded and I couldn’t be happier with how it all panned out. I’ve got to look back and thank the coaching staff and the recruiting staff for having the faith to get me over here. It’s been a really good 12 months to settle in.

“As a team we had some solid form but couldn’t continue it for a full year, which was disappointing but it felt like we were setting a little foundation for what we can put into practice in the coming two years at least.”

Given his excellent first season at Melbourne – he finished runner-up to Nathan Jones in the Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott Memorial Trophy – Tyson said he was determined to step up again in 2015. 

“It’s something that I’ll look to add to my position in the club and try to build on a bit of leadership. It felt like this year was the first year of my footy career after two years where things didn’t really go my way up at the Giants. I enjoyed my time there but I couldn’t really get my body going and couldn’t really get my footy going,” he said.

“If you’ve got a solid base, it makes it a lot easier to play a solid game on a weekend because you feel like you’ve got that behind you. I was happy to play a full year and have a bit more faith in my injuries and body for the first time in two or three years so that was a good result.”