West Coast's successful youth policy will take another step forward on Saturday, with the debut of Claremont youngster Mitch Morton. His father Noel played 171 WAFL matches with Claremont, and captained the club in 1984-85, thus giving his son the opportunity to go to West Coast automatically. The younger Morton has always been considered a top AFL prospect, and was widely thought of as a top draft pick had not West Coast selected him under the father-son rule in last year's NAB AFL National Draft. He was selected in the 2004 All-Australian U-18 team, and won the Ron Barassi Medal (best player) on the U17 tour of Ireland. He has been racking up possessions and goals for Claremont in the WAFL and the only surprise about his selection is that it wasn't earlier in the year. "He had a couple of injuries earlier in the year, and suppose he's just got settled now," assistant coach Peter Sumich said as the team flew out to play the Western Bulldogs at the MCG. "He's played some terrific footy over the last half a dozen weeks. "Mitch is a quality player - we've had Matty Rosa playing, and all these kids are quality players." Morton is the sixth debutant for West Coast this year, but Sumich said those players were being picked on merit. "They've deserved their chance - we haven't just thrown them in because they're rookies and they're good draft picks. "They had to earn their spots, and Matty (Rosa) did, and now Mitch has. "He's been terrific - he's been kicking four or five each game, so he's done a terrific job. "Andrew Embley will hopefully be back in the next two or three weeks, but if Andrew has a setback, it'd be great for one of these kids to stand up. "If they don't, of course we've always got Rowan Jones, Kasey Green, Josh Wooden, these types who we know can play at the level, and we know what we get out of them, whereas these kids we don't, so it's best to try them."