Former Hawthorn premiership player Jonathan Simpkin has agreed to join Essendon as a top-up player.
Simpkin, 28, was a member of Hawthorn’s 2013 premiership team and narrowly missed selection in the 2014 team. Essendon will be his fourth club, the midfielder having played for Geelong. He was also on Sydney’s rookie list.
Simpkin, who played 33 games for the Hawks from 2013-2015 during their flag treble, was an obvious short-term pick up for Essendon. He was arguably unlucky not to be picked up as a delisted player in either the national or rookie drafts.
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Essendon can sign 10 top-up players, and are allowed to upgrade all five of their rookie-list players to the senior list, due to the suspensions of their 12 listed players.
Essendon, clearly, is addressing the midfield hole that has been left by the suspensions, which deprived them of front-line midfielders Dyson Heppell, Jobe Watson, Brent Stanton, Travis Colyer and David Myers.
The Dons will still have David Zaharakis and younger midfielders, including the talented Zac Merrett, but have lost most of their stronger-bodied on-ballers due to the year-long bans by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which suspended the 34 current and former players for the duration of the 2016 season.
Former Hawthorn premiership player Jonathan Simpkin agrees to join Essendon as top-up player http://bit.ly/1UcORq8
Simpkin, 28, was a member of Hawthorn’s 2013 premiership team and narrowly missed selection in the 2014 team. Essendon will be his fourth club, the midfielder having played for Geelong, and been a rookie-list player in Sydney, where he never played a senior game.
Simpkin’s recruitment, set to be announced by the club soon, follows the signing of ex-Docker tagger Ryan Crowley and decorated former premiership Cat James Kelly.
Simpkin, who played 33 games for the Hawks from 2013-2015 during their flag treble, was an obvious short-term pick up for Essendon. He was arguably unlucky not to be picked up as a delisted player in either the national or rookie drafts.
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Essendon can sign 10 top-up players, and are allowed to upgrade all five of their rookie-list players to the senior list, due to the suspensions of their 12 listed players.
Essendon, clearly, is addressing the midfield hole that has been left by the suspensions, which deprived them of front-line midfielders Dyson Heppell, Jobe Watson, Brent Stanton, Travis Colyer and David Myers.
The Dons will still have David Zaharakis and younger midfielders, including the talented Zac Merrett, but have lost most of their stronger-bodied on-ballers due to the year-long bans by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which suspended the 34 current and former players for the duration of the 2016 season.
I'm hopeful, although it's worrying that he didn't get a single game with Sydney. I hope he works his bum off and knocks them dead.
Shouldn’t worry too much about Sydney. They lost the grand final by 1 point while he was a rookie and went in to the finals the other year too, so there was no doubt competition for spots that a rookie drafted player probably will struggle to get.
Plus, it was about 10 years ago.