The Adelaide Football Club congratulates Daniel Talia on being crowned the 2012 NAB Rising Star.

Talia is the first Crows player to win the prestigious award in the Club’s 21-year history.

Selected with pick No.13 in the 2009 AFL Draft, Talia made his debut in Round 15 last year. The 20-year-old defender has played every game this season - his third at West Lakes - routinely standing and beating the best forwards in the competition. He ranked equal-fifth in the AFL for spoils in the minor round, and conceded an average of only one goal per game.

Talia polled 43 of a possible 45 votes to win the award ahead of GWS forward Jeremy Cameron (35 votes) and young Bulldog Mitch Wallis (19 votes).

Crows CEO Steven Trigg said Talia was a very worthy winner of the Rising Star award.

“Daniel’s had an outstanding season,” Trigg said.

“Our Club is very proud of what he’s been able to achieve in a really short space of time. The Rising Star award is, we think, richly deserved and wonderful recognition of his performances to date.”

Remarkably, Talia is the third Rising Star winner coach Brenton Sanderson has been associated with. Sanderson was at Port Adelaide when Danyle Pearce won the award in 2006 and Joel Selwood was crowned the Rising Star in Sanderson’s first year as an assistant coach at Geelong (2007).

Sanderson said Talia would continue to play a pivotal role during Adelaide’s finals campaign.

“Daniel is only 20, but we’ve kept giving him the big jobs in defence and he’s kept delivering against some of the game’s best forwards,” Sanderson said.

“It hasn’t just been a week here and a week there. He has been doing it all season. Clearly he will be very important to us in the finals. All the other teams in the eight have influential tall forwards so he is going to be really excited by those challenges.”