Adams' strong West Perth form has him on AFL radarThursday, August 6, 2015 - 9:21 PM - by Chris Pike

MARCUS Adams' stunning form this season in the back-line for West Perth has the 22-year-old being talked about as a potential first round AFL draft pick later this year, but his focus remains on achieving success with the Falcons before worrying about that.

Adams was always a promising youngster coming through the ranks at Swan Districts and impressed on debut as an 18-year-old in 2011, but with his older brother Luke's battle back to full health and other things in life, football took a backseat and he left the WAFL system for two years.

West Perth was then able to lure him back into the fold ahead of the 2014 season and the result was a terrific year for the strong, quick and talented powerhouse.

He spent the majority of the season as a good contributor at centre half-forward, but then went into the defence over the last month and that's where he really looked to be a natural.

With a great ability to read the play to take intercept marks or to spoil strongly, while having the rare combination of strength and speed on top of being a good kick and having an understanding of the game, Adams has now gone to another level in 2015.

He has spent most of the 2015 season now in defence and been outstanding and it was only a hand injury that likely kept him out of playing in the Western Australian State game win over South Australia, and now the AFL clubs have taken notice of his combination athletic tools and football smarts.

"It's obviously something that while you're still young you want to do it and I'd love to get that opportunity," Adams said.

"But at the moment I'm just focused on what we are doing at West Perth and seeing how far we can go as a team this season. My main focus is obviously on our team but I'd love to get that opportunity in the AFL at some stage."

Adams gives a lot of credit for his form that he's displayed this year to the faith placed him by West Perth's longest serving coach ever coach Bill Monaghan, and for backing him in to help fill the void in the Falcons' defence left by the retirement last year of premiership centre half-back Dan Hunt.

"Bill gave me a bit of a different challenge towards the back end of last year throwing me back after I was forward for most of the year," he said.

"That exposed me to the other end of the ground once we couldn’t make finals and it worked pretty well towards the back end of last year, so we've stuck with it this year and the results have been pretty good so far. Hopefully I can stay down there and continue to do my job each week and I've been really enjoying it."

While Adams has enjoyed his first two years at West Perth and would love to have an opportunity in the AFL in 2016, his focus is firmly on trying to achieve success with the Falcons this year.

West Perth has put in a tremendous season so far to still sit in second position on the ladder despite losing to East Perth last Sunday and now do need to beat East Fremantle on Saturday at ATOM Stadium to remain there.

"We've obviously had a few moments against some teams where we might think we should win but then don’t, but then against the tougher teams we've been able to battle it out and grind out some good wins over the last few weeks. That's been really good in terms of our group positivity and we are all feeling pretty confident that we can match it with the top teams," Adams said.

"It's especially important to keep winning with the ladder how it is at the moment. We are in second at the moment but we're only a game clear of falling outside of the five so each win is important, and we know that each team can win on their day. We just have to make sure we come out and play close to our best footy each week."