The 19-year-old former number one draft pick played 19 games in an outstanding debut season and looks to be continuing his good form into his second year in the AFL.
"He's had a really, really good pre-season, especially his last six weeks," GIANTS coach Leon Cameron said after last week’s NAB Challenge game against the Swans at StarTrack Oval, Canberra.
"The second year is always tough because you burst onto the scene in your first year but the second year is tough because oppositions start knowing who you are.
"But we were rapt with Lachie's performance tonight along with some of our other players.
"He's a good kid and he's working hard to become that player we expect him to be."
After 25 touches and three goals in just 67 per cent game time in his first game of 2014, the classy midfielder said he had taken a lot out of a grueling pre-season.
“Pre-season is always tough and I don’t think it will get much easier as we get on but you learn things along the way and different bits and pieces which help you with aspects of it,” he said.
“I’m a bit wiser but it was a hard pre-season.”
The scoreboard may have read a 40-point loss but Whitfield said there was plenty of upside to the GIANTS’ first outing of 2014.
“We drove our new game style and all the different things we want to do this year so a lot of them came off and some of them didn’t,” he said.
“So a lot of positives but a lot of things we can work on.”
The GIANTS will have another chance to put their plan into action when they take on St Kilda at Robertson Oval in Wagga Wagga on Saturday afternoon.
“I played there last year and it was pretty exciting,” he said.
“It reminds me a bit of where I’m from down on the Mornington Peninsula as well, just that atmosphere out in the bush.”
The naturally gifted footballer shares a house with fellow 2012-draftees Kristian Jaksch and Zac Williams in the inner west and said there’s plenty of action in their household.
“They're both chappy characters and really good boys to live with and there’s a lot of laughs in our house.”
