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Opinion
For the third week in a row we have said goodbye to a valuable contributor to the game of AFL football.
Previously it was Leon Cameron and Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti. Now Western Bulldogs and Collingwood player Jordan Roughead has decided to end his career at the Magpies.
Due to turn 32 in November, but restricted to one senior game in the first half of the 2022 season, Roughead has timed his retirement to enable Collingwood to take on a second draftee in the mid-season draft.
Originally recruited from Lake Wendoree via the North Ballarat Rebels under-18 team, Roughead was selected as the Bulldogs’ second pick at number 31 in the 2008 AFL draft and made his debut in Round 5, 2010 against Adelaide at Docklands Stadium.
In that year, he won the Bulldogs’ best first-year player (the Chris Grant Award) and after being moved to defence by then-Bulldogs coach Brendan McCartney in 2012, he settled in at full back and in 2016 won the Tony Liberatore Award for the most improved player.
Roughead gave the Bulldogs many fine games in his 138 games at the club, including the 2016 premiership in which he was in doubt of playing because of an eye injury leading up to the grand final.
In a last minute deal in the draft at the end of the 2018 season, he was swapped for draft choice number 75 and Roughead found himself at Collingwood in 2019 and he continued to give good service for another 63 games in the black and white.
(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Roughead wore the number 23 jumper for every one of his 201 games, keeping the same number at Collingwood. It hadn’t been used in a senior game since Lachlan Keefe’s departure in 2014.
His 138 games at the Bulldogs is the most by any player in that number at the club.
It also places him in outright 73rd position on the Western Bulldogs’ top 100 game players list, one game behind George McLaren (1944-51), Neil Cordy (1979-86) and Matthew Robbins (1998-2007).
And it is one game ahead of former coach Don McKenzie, who played from 1962 to 1970, Geoff Jennings (1974-83), Nathan Brown (1997-2003) and Simon Garlick (1998-2004).
During his career, in ten games against Carlton, he only played in one losing team and scored 21 of his 35 goals (60 per cent) at Docklands Stadium while playing 90 games there (45 per cent).
Well done, Jordan Roughead. My only concern is that Western Bulldogs will probably have first call on the ‘Roughy’ on the way!
As one career ends, two new ones start with both Sydney and Geelong introducing a new player to the big time for the first time.
Matt Roberts was drafted in the 2021 draft as Sydney’s second round pick (number 34).
Roberts – from the wine district of Langhorne Creek in South Australia – doesn’t turn 19 until July but has already built a big reputation in the SANFL as a midfielder who can play forward and knows where the goals are.
Geelong’s Shannon Neale was drafted number 33 in the 2020 draft.
One year and six days older than Matt Roberts, he stands 203 centimetres tall and is a ruckman who also goes forward.
Originally from Jandakot via South Fremantle in the WAFL, he has an impressive highlights reel.
So, there are two new players, both with the surname of a former Brownlow Medallist. They have been introduced mid-season by two likely final teams that were members of the original VFL in 1897.
How big can the challenge be?
Good luck to both kids, and to Port Adelaide’s Charlie Dixon, who played his first AFL game for the 2022 season.
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