With the 2024 football season about to get underway, who better to look take a look in depth at who’s in, who’s out, and who’s the team to beat than the 3SH Central Murray Live commentary team.
Shane Fleming – Ok guys, another season is almost upon us. We might as well start with an easy question – who’s going to win the Jack Betts this year?
Glenn Stewart – What about Cohuna’s new coach Jack Geary, he goes all right, from what I have heard.
Noel Watson – The interesting part when it comes to winning medals, the new players into the league tend to pick up a stack of votes, just because they’re new as opposed to just being as good, so I can see where you’re coming from with the Cohuna coach. But I think he might have players taking votes off him, so I went the other way and I went with Swan Hill’s new coach Michael Herlihy, in a middle of the range ladder position team picking up plenty of three votes.
GS – Often a Jack Betts Medallist will come from a fifth or sixth position team, because they win enough games, they get enough three and two votes to get over the line. The Mallee Eagles will be around that range, so maybe Harry Allen, he’s a former winner and often polls well. At United, I rate Joel Walsh, he’s a really good footballer and he’d be in my top four or five players in the league.
NW – He’s a centre half back though, not too many centre half backs poll votes.
Matt Curran – He might move onto a half back flank this year.
NW – He could nearly play as an onballer.
GS – I agree with you Noel, he’d make a great old fashioned ruck rover, he just controls the game. If they are to go anywhere this year, they need him playing well.
NW – Can he run all day, though?
SF – He’d be a really good burst player in the midfield, I reckon.
MC – Agree.
NW – OK, Shane, who’d you go for?
SF – I think Jydon Neagle. Umpires love him, he gets plenty of the ball, they’ll win enough games and he’s always a standout, even with a team full of stars, he’s still their standout player.
GS – (Ethan) Gant was great last year, but he’s gone now as well so he won’t be pinching votes off him. Who do you think will win it, Matt?
MC – I think Jayden Magro for Tyntynder will, Stewy. He’s from Darwin, he’s a star forward, will kick a heap of goals. He’s going to have lots of defenders nervous this year.
SF – And Eagle is back again for Tyntynder, too.
NW – There’s going to be a lot of dominant key forwards in the competition this year, isn’t there? Nyah have recruited Grenfell, Tyntynder have Magro, the Eagles have Hourigan, even Josh Williams at the Saints is a gun. What about Fuller, is he still playing?
SF – Yeah, I believe he is.
NW – Well there’s four or five really hard forwards to match up on. Defenders around the league are in trouble. A good key defender could win you the game this year.
SF – What impact does Wade and Moloney leaving Swan Hill have, Noel? It’s going to be a totally different-looking Swan Hill, that’s for sure.
NW – It will be, and the young blokes are going to need to step up a bit because Wade was the one that got them going. Moloney was a bit different because he’d been playing across half back the last couple of years and making the play, but Wade was the engine room. So that’s where some of these younger blokes have to step up. That’s why I think they’ll finish about fifth or sixth, because they’ll win enough games against the bottom sides to finish somewhere in the midfield. The big slider for me will be Lake Boga .
MC – Unfortunately, they’ve lost nearly an entire team of senior players across their seniors and reserves.
SF – They have lost 19 guys who played in their seniors last year.
MC – All their recruits, both coaches, all their experienced players have gone, too.
SF – And a lot of local guys as well, so that means a lot of their one-point players have left.
GS – I think they’ll miss the finals but I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom for Boga either, they’ll still be pretty competitive because they’ve picked up a couple of handy players as well. They could surprise, and apparently they’ve been getting good numbers to training and (Dean) Helmers seems to have the ears of the players as well so there’s certainly plenty of positives.
NW – What about the Eagles? There hasn’t been much said about them.
MC – Yeah they’ve recruited a few, they’ve recruited some pretty handy ones, I believe, so it’ll be interesting to see how they go.
GS – I think key position players down back might be a bit of a problem for them and just having those bigger bodies around the ball, I think.
NW – The key for United is going to be their full forward, because we saw him out at Lalbert in that one game last year.
MC – Yeah, he played well that day and was a handful.
SF – He’s kicked a couple of bags of 100-plus goals the past two seasons, so he knows where the goals are as well.
MC – The thing about United is they’ve now had a year where everyone has seen how they play, are they going to be any different or have other teams worked them out now?
NW – Their coach (Corey Daniels) will be a loss because he was a good player, although he didn’t play a lot last year because of injury.
GS – They were one of the fastest teams last year and when they got it on the outside, they looked so dangerous.
SF – The biggest challenge I see is do they play that same way with Jason Murphy taking over as joint coach with Nick O’Neill, especially coming from Woorinen, where they play a bit more structured and going over to a team that was very much run-and-gun and chaos footy. I’m not sure how that changes things if it does. I mean it could even make them better, who knows.
NW – They’ll be doing well to beat either of Balranald or Kerang.
SF – So do we think that Balranald or Kerang are the team to beat?
MC – Balranald will be determined to win after last year.
GS – Yeah, agreed. That was almost one that got away last year, even though Kerang were probably the best team for most of the season.
NW – The Cohuna Kangas are a watch and see for me, because their coach is very good and they’ve picked up a lot of good players.
MC – And a lot of local guys have come back, too.
NW – Kerang just look a bit light on for big guys, they don’t have much size about them, especially without Troy Davis.
SF – They’ve lost Dalrymple as well and they threw him forward last year almost as a last resort and now they’ve lost him, too.
MC – They’ve lost Ash Davis, too, who had a bit of size about him, so there’s another one as well.
SF – I think we’ll know a lot more about both Balranald and Kerang after next week. Grand final rematch, round 1, how good is that!
MC – Yeah that should be cracking game, up at Greenham Park, too.
NW – Can’t wait guys, should be another fantastic year of footy!
You can hear the call of the Central Murray Live match of the round from 2pm every Saturday afternoon throughout the season on 1332 3SH.
