No. 19 Matthew Egan

[CatmanForever]

http://gfc.com.au/portals/0/images/players/cats/Matt_Egan_small.jpg

Matthew Egan


Fast Facts

Jumper No: 19
Height: 196 cm
Weight: 101 kg
DOB: 10 July 1983
Recruited From: Geelong VFL

[chapmanmagic35]

Matty just keeps getting better and better. His overhead skills are phenomenal for someone who has been playing the game for only a few years (and that is including underage football).

I can see him playing many years in the Blue and White.

[Mooney_d'King]

Most improved player in the AFL, 2007. Solid and dependable.

[Selwood07]

Fantastically reassuring backman - you always know he is going to give it 150%. Love watching him play against a taller opponent.

[thehoff]

The guy is a star.... I have no doubt he'll achieve All Australian honours within 5 years.

[Metallica_Man]

A whole new ball game
4:30 PM Thu 7 June, 2007 | Back
By Peter Ryan
Exclusive to AFL BigPond Network

THROW some people a sport and they will catch it one-handed and master it in a quarter. Such people are succeeding at AFL level, arriving at the game late but reaching elite level faster than a Ferrari.
Geelong’s Matthew Egan was one of Victoria’s best junior tennis players as a teenager. He did not play football until six years ago. Last week, aged 23, he stuck with and contained elite St Kilda centre half-forward Nick Riewoldt.
“It’s a bit scary sometimes, but you take it as a good challenge. Nick is such a good player, you just do your best,” he said.
Collingwood’s Scott Pendlebury stopped playing football at under-12s to concentrate on basketball. In 2005, he returned to play football at under-18 level. Two years later, he is an emerging midfielder showing signs of class.
Essendon’s David Hille converted from volleyball to football near the end of his
school years. Now, he is the club’s No.1 ruckman.
Clubs are more confident with their capacity to teach players the game from a standing start. In fact, the fewer bad habits players arrive with, the better.
Selected with pick No.62 in the 2004 NAB AFL Draft, Egan has played 45 consecutive games to take his total to 47. In 2007, he has broken even with or beaten Riewoldt, Fremantle’s Matthew Pavlich, West Coast’s Ashley Hansen and Port Adelaide’s Warren Tredrea.
If he was still a tennis player, his ranking would have moved into the top 100. His presence allows Matthew Scarlett to stay at full-back, and free up teammates to play more attacking roles out of defence.
Last week, facing football’s version of a player with good court coverage, he broke down his efforts quarter-by-quarter, and kept persisting. He was able to keep up with Riewoldt, something he admits he wasn’t able to do last season.
“He’s going to get away from you, he’s like a midfielder he runs that much,” Egan said.
The learning curve is steep, but Egan is a player from nowhere going somewhere quick: “You just play on these guys every year, and every year you learn a little bit more.”


....

[Metallica_Man]

AFL Round 11 v Adelaide
With Harley playing better today, Egan wasn't needed so much. Was up forward for a lot of the today mostly rotating on and off the bench with N Ablett, but couldn't leave an impact

[Cheshire Cat]

I'm sposed to be Egan watch-guy so better post something. :D

R12 v Brisbane Lions

Stats: 18 disposals, 9 kicks, 9 handballs, 4 marks, 3 tackles

Egan was terrific on the weekend as usual, stood the standout CHF in the game in Brown, kept him to two goals (one freakish and the other a soccer off the ground). I put MEgan in the votes I did. My favourite MEgan moment was when he spoils the ball away and followed up with a smother and got it going our way.

MEgan is playing his 50th game next week. :thumbsu:Hoorah:thumbsu:

Seek and destroy MEgan!!

[Jim Boy]

Good article on him today

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/cat-and-mouse/2007/08/11/1186530681572.html

Cat and mouse

Martin Blake | August 12, 2007

MATTHEW Egan sneaked up on Geelong, which is just as he would have liked it. In modern football, the recruiting path is well-worn. From the under 18s to national junior titles to draft camps and hi-tech performance analysis, it is highly sophisticated. But Egan, picked at No. 62 in the national draft after two seasons kicking around in the VFL, came in through the back door.

Growing up in Sunbury, Egan had a poster of Essendon's Gavin Wanganeen on his wall, a great admiration for the hardness of Damien Hardwick, and an abiding love for the Bombers. But he was a tennis player first, a basketballer second, and no one's idea of a footballer. After a season of under 12s, he stopped playing for more than five years.

Then out of the blue at 18, he started playing again, this time for Oak Park in the Essendon District League, where he was a premiership player in 2002 and 2003, rekindling his love for the game. He had been a brilliant tennis player, reaching satellite level, but it was the social part of team sport that grabbed him. "I've got about three mates I kept from tennis; I've got probably 50 already from footy."

As it happened, his best mate was James Kelly, the classy Geelong midfielder. They had grown up in Sunbury as neighbours; walked to Salesian College together every day from years seven to 12. As Ron Watt, Geelong's Vflcoach of the time recounts it, this is what happened at the end of 2002. "James Kelly said to me: 'Can my mate have a run?' I said: 'No worries'."

Thus a beautiful partnership began. As Geelong prepares for the final two months of a potentially drought-breaking year, 24-year-old Egan is ensconced as centre halfback in what is, statistically at least, the best defence in the competition. He has played on Jonathan Brown, Nick Riewoldt, Matthew Pavlich and others with calmness, resolution and uncommon courage. Arguably he is among the most improved players in the competition.

Yet if you know his history it should not be a surprise that he could surge so quickly. Egan just did not have the football background. As recently as 2003 he could not command a regular game with Geelong's Vflteam, going back to Oak Park when he was not picked, and then to St Joseph's in the Geelong league. Egan had athletic ability and size (he is 196 centimetres and 101 kilograms), but no clue how to play.

"I was raw," he recalls. "I had no idea. Ron Watt just spent hours and hours with me. My kicking was shocking. I had to learn a lot of little things. I didn't even know what a stoppage was."

Watt says Egan was so willing to learn, and such a pleasant character, that everyone at Geelong wanted to help him. "I reckon I just about kicked my leg off kicking with him. He had two years where it was dark, and all the AFL-listed players had gone home, and he'd be out there training. He knew nothing. He just knew to look at the ball, chase it and hopefully get a kick. It was real country or suburban stuff."

If there was a graph to chart his performance, it would have been rising quickly by then. Initially, he had driven several times a week from Sunbury for training and the games. But in his second year, he gave up his apprenticeship as an electrician, moved in with Tom Harley at Torquay, mowed lawns for cash, and worked at the Rip Curl factory. Once again, Kelly proved to be significant to all this.

"He (Kelly) just said: 'Why don't you give it a real crack?' So I decided that I would," recalls Egan.

By the end of 2004, his second season, he had made the Vflteam of the year, and it became apparent that he might make it to a higher level. Stephen Wells, Geelong's recruiter, used a low draft pick to snare him at the end of that year. "His tennis background meant that for his size, he had really good agility and recovering from marking contests and he's got a fantastic endurance base," says Wells. "Put all that together with his courageous marking and good reading of the play, it meant he'd earned his chance."

Egan made his senior debut at the start of the 2005 season. In his first game, against Richmond, he went back with the flight of the ball and was crushed by an oncoming Matthew Richardson. A reputation was being built. "That made an impression," said Watt. "Just that he was prepared to do that."

Egan has not forgotten the moment either. "I always seem to get crunched by 'Richo'," he says. "You don't think about it. You just do it. In our team, in the back line, if you don't do it, you don't play. I love the feeling of it. It gets me in the game sometimes. You go back and make a spoil and 'Scarlo' (Matthew Scarlett) or someone else will come up, and they're rapt that I did it."

He showed himself to be a sponge for information, drawing on Harley in particular. He noted that Harley, now Geelong's captain, eschewed the drinking culture prevalent in 1980s football. "Nowadays you can't really go out, especially in Geelong," he says. "You have a quiet beer sometimes but the days of going out and getting pissed during the season have gone."

Egan says improved fitness has been a key to his improvement, for he still winces at the memory of a game against St Kilda at Telstra Dome last year when Riewoldt drifted out to the wing and ran him around. "I think he had 11 touches on me in the first 11 minutes. I was just knackered. This year, I feel I can keep up with the good running players."

Geelong is flying, to the point where the gangling Mark Blake last week brought the crowd to its feet with his first two career goals. At times, it seems like the Cats are taking the mickey from their hapless opposition. Egan, kicker of one career goal against Western Bulldogs last year, did not miss this, either. "He's gone from one behind to one in front," he says. "I'll have to slip down to the forward line if I can. Usually I just get yelled at if I go down there."

Whether the Cats can keep the metaphorical lid on remains to be seen, but Egan is one who seems well grounded. Recently he started a carpentry apprenticeship because "I like things where you're hands-on". He does not read too many papers, and when he arrived at the Cats' social club this week for his interview with The Sunday Age, he slipped into the building virtually unnoticed.

"Really it doesn't change weekin, week-out," he says. "It's the same feeling. We haven't achieved anything. You can tell around town everyone's excited, but I don't think there's anything wrong with being excited. You don't know how long footy's going to last, so you've got to enjoy it. To keep the lid on? I don't know, we haven't achieved anything so I don't see how we can get too excited. We're in a good position, but until we actually achieve something . . ."

[FoxC]

Matthew Egan in doubt for Cats' NAB Cup campaign
Brad Green

25Dec07

GEELONG has conceded that All-Australian defender Matthew Egan is in a race against time to be right for the first round of the 2008 season.

The Cats' first round match against Port Adelaide - the grand final rematch - might be 86 days away, but Egan has only just started his pre-season campaign after his recovery from a broken foot took longer than expected.

Egan reportedly suffered complications with the healing of the fracture, while the moon boot he had worn on his right foot since suffering the season-ending injury in early September was only just removed late last month.

Geelong football manager Neil Balme said that Egan had only just started doing some light jogging in the lead-up to the team's Christmas-New Year break.

``He's not doing full bore running like the other boys, but he's progressing well,'' Balme said.

``Obviously he'd like to be a bit more advanced, so he's not running around kicking the footy yet, but we're pretty happy with where he is. He knows that with the foot injury he's had, you've got to take your time to make sure it's not a problem down the track.

``So he'll probably miss the NAB Cup, but perhaps he'll be ready to go first up.

``It's not the end of the world one or the other, as long as we get him right.''

Egan broke the navicular bone in his right foot during Geelong's final home-and-away game against Brisbane at the Gabba and he missed the Cats' entire finals campaign.

It was a bitter blow for the 24-year-old, who had a stellar season playing every game for the Cats and was rewarded for his form by being named at centre half-back in the AFL All-Australian team.

Egan is the only injury worry the Cats will have when their pre-season resumes in early January. Balme said the coaching staff was pleased with how the first block of the campaign had progressed.

``Pre-Christmas time we've done more footy work than people would probably expect and the players are looking forward to really having another crack in 2008,'' Balme said.

``They've all come back pretty well. They've done a reasonable amount of work and are in pretty good shape, so they now deserve a couple of weeks' break.

``They all understand nowadays they do need a bit of a breather for their body, but they don't let themselves down too much, otherwise it's too hard to get back into that genuine shape they need.''

From the Geelong Advertiser