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- #51
I hope he's mentally recovered from the passing of his father. Always sad to hear when these things happen.You can still watch it. Murtagh took some great marks.
When we lost Witts the club said that Murtagh is up to it but was away from the club due to passing his farther and will need to be built up. So that could be the reason why he spends extra weeks in VFL. I am not going to re-watch VFL game but he did seem to fade out in the last quarter.
Murtagh was very good as a forward, marked a lot of balls and should have at least 4 goals.
As for ruck, Hofert spent more time there and despite still being skinny it looked to me to like he was doing a decent job, probably better than Murtagh. That being said Burgess and Graham were dominated and I feel like Greewood actually was the best choice there against Sweet.
Murtagh in for me unless he does not have a tank yet.
Just watched the fourth quarter back. A play-by-play of Murtagh's visible actions in the fourth quarter:
- Murtagh started the quarter in the ruck. He won the tap which lead to a clearance for Brodie and an inside 50 kick.
- Laid a nice shepherd on the wing which gave Sharp more space to dispose of the ball.
- Provided a nice tap down off a touched high ball in the forward 50 to the crumbing forward Ace who handballed to another player who should have had a shot for goal but fumbled.
- Followed up the tap with a tackle of a small defender inside the forward 50 which nearly resulted in a turnover.
- Outbodied on the wing for a mark from a kick down the line out of our defensive 50. First indication of fatigue about midway through the fourth quarter.
- Got involved in a bit of physical stuff/pushing in the defensive 50 to back up a teammate after a 50 metre penalty was paid to us.
- Took a nice mark on the run in the defensive 50 from a Bulldogs' inside 50 entry and didn't allow the Dogs' forward to get anywhere near it.
- Followed the mark up with a decent kick out wide to start a switch on the fat side.
Tom Hickey injured his PCL yesterday so the Swans will either have to play 195cm forward Sam Reid in the ruck or call up 200cm Callum Sinclair from their reserves. Apparently Sinclair was soundly beaten in the VFL game yesterday so this would be a position of concern for the Swans. Probably the perfect opportunity to give 196cm Murtagh a go.Keeping in mind that the bulldogs vfl ruckman is not actually a ruckman either but a tall defender.
murtagh was effectively tucking against a Caleb Graham type yesterday.
None of their 3 ruckman English, Martin, sweet obviously played vfl