SOME time during June, the Fremantle coaching staff wondered: How much longer could Rhys Palmer — the team's youngest, hardest running and most heavily tagged midfield player — last before he became completely worn down?

It had taken Palmer only three or four AFL games to make opposition sides understand that his relentless running and ball-winning ability was something they had best pay some attention to, and so the 19-year-old became one of few first-year players to deal with a heavy tag for most weeks of his debut season.

A while back, Chris Scott would have been one of those older, bigger opponents trying to rough the young gun up. Yesterday, after Palmer polled 44 votes to win the Rising Star Award from Hawthorn's Cyril Rioli and Richmond's Trent Cotchin, Dockers' assistant coach Scott said he had been staggered by Palmer's insistence on picking himself up and dusting himself off.

"For me as a coach, I've seen firsthand how he's really physically harassed by the opposition and Rhys just keeps on bouncing up," Scott said.

Palmer, considered by former Fremantle recruiting chief Phil Smart as the best player in the 2007 draft and picked up at No. 7, polled 44 votes to win from Rioli on 37 and Cotchin on 21. He was the first Fremantle winner since Paul Hasleby in 2000.

"He keeps working and keeps running despite all that physical pressure and we were really amazed. Even mid-year we were wondering out loud how long Rhys could keep going the way he was, but his resilience is remarkable, and I hope that's a quality he never loses," Scott said.

"I think he's quite unique as a player, but I did make the comment to a few people that I haven't seen a young player come into the competition and be tagged almost from their third or fourth game. Chris Judd, maybe."

Any club could have drafted Palmer in 2006, but he was stricken with osteitis pubis, restricted to a back pocket in the West Australian under-18 team and frustrated that his body would not let him show the recruiters what he could do.

"I couldn't run and get the ball and it was really frustrating," he said. "OP wasn't such a big thing back then, so no one really knew what it was. It's good that I could get over it and I really used that as a stepping stone in my career."

Last year, he dominated the under-18s and played senior football for East Fremantle alongside Chris Masten, his best mate chosen by West Coast at No. 3 last year. This season, he has averaged 23 possessions — the Dockers' highest — and has played with courage, although the gash he received to his head in round three, when he won his Rising Star nomination playing against the Eagles, did not quite require the 22 reported staples.

"I only had 10 but 22 sounds better," Palmer said. "It's left a nice scar on my head, but it was a great day."

Palmer knows he has more work to do — on his kicking, particularly — but has plans to improve the things he has already proved he is good at, too.

He wants to make those opposition players work harder still to unsettle him.

"Before this season it wasn't about how many games I was going to play, I just wanted to really learn and develop my game and if I could play five games, I would have been really happy. It was mainly about developing my game," he said.

"Now I really want to get bigger and faster and stronger."