Former Essendon captain Tim Watson raised a discussion on SEN Breakfast on Thursday morning regarding how the discourse surrounding Matt Rowell has evolved in the last few years.
The Gold Coast midfielder polled nine Brownlow votes in his first three games in the AFL, bursting onto the scene like almost no player ever has, before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury.
After an injury-interrupted 2021, Rowell has found a role for himself as a grunt, inside midfielder for the Suns this season, ranking seventh in the competition for contested possessions and equal seventh for center clearances.
The contested beast is not necessarily the dominant midfielder that was teased initially, but remains a vital cog for Gold Coast.
“The greatest disappearing act in AFL football in the last 50 years, is it the hype around Matt Rowell?” Watson posed on SEN Breakfast.
“Think back to his first three games of AFL football and then now think about the last time you heard anyone raving about Matt Rowell’s football.”
Garry Lyon: “Your point is well made, but I also think Matt Rowell has been playing some really good footy.”
Watson: “Oh. I’m not saying that he hasn’t.”
Lyon: “But yeah at the time three best on grounds in the first three weeks is going to cause some hype.”
Watson: “Everybody is talking about Touk Miller now as their most important midfielder and Noah Anderson has maybe gone passed him in people’s minds as to how important he might be.”
Lyon: “Rowell does a lot of that really hard, hard inside grunt work.”
Watson: “That’s what I was going to say, in those three weeks we got the snapshot of him and it was brilliant, but that’s not a long enough period of time to reveal everything.”
Lyon: “What we now have seen and what he has revealed is that his football is more blue collar than three best on grounds in three weeks suggests. We’ve just got to make the adjustment, he’s still a beauty, Matt Rowell.”
Watson: “I’m not saying he isn’t, but the change around the conversation regarding him and his football, it’s remarkable the way that it has changed.”
Lyon: “And understandable given he ripped the whole competition to shreds in three games of footy.”
Watson: “We’ve acknowledged the fact that he’s had a serious injury, but he’s probably exactly what Stuart Dew wants, that bloke that just turns up every week and he knows he’s going to give him 100 per cent effort and be a beast inside midfielder.”
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