Then it is up to Watson, Hepple and Parish to step up and run the blues mids ragged.
It was a joke relating to many of us wanting the SA big ruckman. Emphasis on BIG
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The time has come to compare Zerrett with his Great Uncle Thorold ! It will annoy many Collingwood supporters but I think he is better, much better !
Yeah,… well that much is true just by virtue of the jumper he’s wearing … 
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And Mott.
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I don’t like comparing players from different eras, particularly when they’re 60 years apart, but from what I heard, Thorold was a gun. Absolute gentleman too, from the sporting club dealings I had with him at Merrett Hassett. Still umpiring cricket out in the eastern suburbs from what I heard a year or so back.
I didn’t realise he was one of the founders of Rebel Sports.
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You heard the story about when Thorold’s coach took him down to trial at Collingwood? The (Cwood) coach asked the bloke spruiking him what makes him such a good player since I think he was a bit of a jockey. His old coach said “well, he can kick that ball up a duck’s ■■■■■■■ from 20 yards away without disrupting the feathers!”
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168cm and 59kg
Mad Richmond fan, but rejected by Jack Dyer because he was so small.
Bruce McMaster-Smith, who played for ■■■■ Carlton, ■■■■ Fitzroy and ■■■■ St Kilda in the 60s, was smaller.
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We need ducks at training
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I’m not on the Bont bandwagon. Good player, but no Zerrett. Significantly better user of the ball.
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AFLCA LEADERBOARD
18 Zach Merrett (Ess)
18 Ollie Wines (PA)
17 Clayton Oliver (Melb)
15 Elliot Yeo (WC)
13 Dayne Beams (BL)
13 Shaun Higgins (NM)
13 Dustin Martin (Rich)
12 Orazio Fantasia (Ess)
12 Joel Selwood (Geel)
11 Trent Cotchin (Rich)
11 Patrick Dangerfield (Geel)
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Imagine if he bothered to turn up in the last half/quarter.
Think the tag moved off Watson onto him, then Watson proceeded to get heavily involved… in particular in last quarter.
Saved the game IMO, the way he took off around the boundary, bounced, hit the chest then collected handball on way through then hit chest again, awesome. Crucial moment, I thought, momentum evened out then.
Teams will start working collectively to stop him, like with Martin and Danger.
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Shows promise, worth persevering with.
*will be our next Brownlow medallist.
*will be this years Brownlow medallist
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*will be this years norm smith medallist
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The latest book in the "How to " series of publications
How to become an elite AFL footballer in 3 seasons, by Zachary Merret
Darce and Andy; its prescribed reading. guys.
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A wonderful footballer and one of the few scrupulously fair ones in a team full of hard men/thugs. Very quick and a superb stab pass.
How Hawthorn missed out on Essendon star Zach MerrettJON RALPH, Herald Sun
28 minutes ago
Subscriber onlyAS the 2013 national draft ticked into the second round, Hawthorn and Essendon lay waiting with midfields in need of replenishment.
The Hawks took speed and endurance over old-fashioned footy nous — running man Billy Hartung was snapped up at pick 24.
Two selections later Essendon eagerly took Zach Merrett, a short-ish left-footed midfielder rated the best decision-maker in the draft crop.
In Round 1 this year the wildly divergent paths of those two players came into sharp relief.
Merrett cut Hawthorn to ribbons with his audacious field kicking, slicing left-foot lasers through the corridor in a command performance.
Hartung, supposedly the modern prototype of the new athletic game, didn’t survive the selection axe for Round 2.
Players like Merrett were supposed to have gone out of fashion in a game where everyone wants the next Anthony Koutoufides.
Yet two rounds into the season Merrett might have six Brownlow votes and is atop the AFL Coaches Award with 18 of a possible 20 votes.
He is Essendon’s phoenix rising out of the ashes, a player picked with the selection garnered when Stewart Crameri escaped the ASADA mess.
And he more than any other player benefited from the ASADA bans of his teammates, turning from a half forward into a fully formed elite midfield talent.
The Bombers are roaring up the charts, and while Orazio Fantasia and Andrew McGrath are thrilling, it is Merrett the fans truly love.
Essendon midfield coach Guy McKenna says he is more than an elite kick, constantly pushing him to explode from stoppages and hit up targets on the run.
But he sees what everyone else does, bestowing upon McKenna the ultimate accolade given his own rich football experience.
“His ability to use the footy is like I have never seen before,” said McKenna, an Eagles premiership player, assistant coach then senior coach at Gold Coast.
“He is right up there. The best I had worked with is Gary Ablett, for touch kicking and the ability to hit a player with the ball.
“Gaz has done it over a period of time and the test for “Junior” will be over a period of time, but his vision and depth and touch kicking is fairly elite.”
Every club has a Hartung-Merrett story they have hit or missed on, with Hawthorn rewarded this week when No.19 pick Ryan Burton became a Rising Star nominee.
Yet slot Merrett into the Hawks midfield this year and we would be telling a very different story about their capacity to quickly rebuild.
Merrett doesn’t have some wild back story — the Sandringham Dragon was just born to play football and leaves no stone unturned to maximise that talent.
Case in point: instead of spending his off-season blowing cash in Vegas he and a trio of teammates self-funded a fact-finding mission of American sport programs.
“He’s 21 but he carries himself as a 31-year-old,’’ McKenna said yesterday.
“He is very meticulous in his preparation. He is one of those ones where he trains hard and plays easy.
“He’s very coachable and wants to learn and he has gone from a half forward role two years ago to what he is now.
“Last year was him finding out what he could and couldn’t do. We encourage him to (take risks) with his kicks but even last week he turned a few over in the second quarter when Brisbane scored goals.
“We are pushing him to take those (dangerous) kicks, and he hits eight out of 10 of them. If it was only two out of 10 we would be backing him off.”
The romance of Jobe Watson winning back a Brownlow Medal to replace the one he had to hand over remains.
And yet right now Merrett is the one stealing Brownlow votes as the Bombers’ midfield rapidly takes shape.
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