Let me get this straight, I'm not here to bad mouth Murph and I'm not one of those imbeciles who says "trade him" or "he's no good" or "Drop him". I'm here to give an honest assessment of his performance in some games.
It might be unfair to pick out Murph, because he did receive a foot injury early in the game last night and there were many poor contributors on the night, but I can't help but be furstrated with Murph's output when it comes to running both ways. I watched him closely last night and it was hard not to notice his lack of desire to apply pressure.
I looked at the stats from last night game and noticed he had 0 tackles, 0 score assists and 0 one-percenters.
Granted, he had an injury and got a heavy tag, but that's just not good enough from the skipper. He was still able to run out the game and while he might have been hampered by the injury, I just think his defensive side of his game has lacked too often in games. He got lambasted after the Cats game when he let Hunt hurt him going forward, and I can understand why. His workrate just isn't good enough when he doesn't have the ball.
Even if he's struggling with a tag, it's not the end of the world if he struggles to break it, but he can still contribute by actually working hard and placing some defensive pressure on the opposition.
Clearly, we badly miss Carrots cos he's the master at blocking for the likes of Judd and Murph. Nobody does it better. When Murph gets a hard tag, I just feel in his body language that he doesn't feel confident enough to try and break it or he doesn't want to get physical and let them know he won't take that shit. Some of his teammates clearly need to help him out and crash and bump into his tagger to let him know that he won't get away with some of the tactics he uses. I still don't understand to this day why we don't help guys like Judd and Murph out when they are copping hard tags.
Am I over reacting or do you think it is a genuine concern? Because as skipper and under the guidance of Mick, I thought he would be leading the way with regards to applying some defensive pressure.
It might be unfair to pick out Murph, because he did receive a foot injury early in the game last night and there were many poor contributors on the night, but I can't help but be furstrated with Murph's output when it comes to running both ways. I watched him closely last night and it was hard not to notice his lack of desire to apply pressure.
I looked at the stats from last night game and noticed he had 0 tackles, 0 score assists and 0 one-percenters.
Granted, he had an injury and got a heavy tag, but that's just not good enough from the skipper. He was still able to run out the game and while he might have been hampered by the injury, I just think his defensive side of his game has lacked too often in games. He got lambasted after the Cats game when he let Hunt hurt him going forward, and I can understand why. His workrate just isn't good enough when he doesn't have the ball.
Even if he's struggling with a tag, it's not the end of the world if he struggles to break it, but he can still contribute by actually working hard and placing some defensive pressure on the opposition.
Clearly, we badly miss Carrots cos he's the master at blocking for the likes of Judd and Murph. Nobody does it better. When Murph gets a hard tag, I just feel in his body language that he doesn't feel confident enough to try and break it or he doesn't want to get physical and let them know he won't take that shit. Some of his teammates clearly need to help him out and crash and bump into his tagger to let him know that he won't get away with some of the tactics he uses. I still don't understand to this day why we don't help guys like Judd and Murph out when they are copping hard tags.
Am I over reacting or do you think it is a genuine concern? Because as skipper and under the guidance of Mick, I thought he would be leading the way with regards to applying some defensive pressure.
