We’ve been talking about Robert Murphy (or is that Bob these days?) for a couple of weeks on our weekly video, as we anticipated his price drop. His season so far has been slowed by injury. He had a limited pre-season after some knee surgery and when he came back into the Bulldogs line up he was eased in slowly. This made for a couple of low scores to drive his price down (47 and 58).

His third game was the return to his point scoring form, with a 107 against Adelaide. His previous two scores meant that he plummeted over $30K anyway. The next week he was set for a monster score when he succumbed to a hamstring injury on 36 points before quarter time. There goes another $30K off his price.

Murphy First game back from injury and he was eased into a defensive role against Port in a game where the ball barely saw the Doggies back line, meaning he didn’t see too much of the ball himself – another $25K off his price. With two low scores already in his rolling average, the 100 he scored last week against North marked a return to form and still saw him leak a further $20K off his price, making him under $300K.

In total he has dropped $101,800 off his starting price and for the first time this season he actually has an achievable break even score, meaning he’s likely to start going up in price again.

Murphy has been a solid DT forward for a number of years now. 2005 was when he really burst onto the scene, averaging 82.5 for the year. He was looking in good touch in 2006 until a knee injury ended his season in Round 9. 2007 was also injury interrupted – generally the first year after a knee can be a bit slow for players, but 2008 provided his best output, averaging 89.2.

If all is alright with his body, then there’s no reason not expect something around the 90 mark in the run home. However, there is always an associated risk with players who have had limited pre-seasons, even by this stage of the year. Most of the time they’re pushing uphill all year. I take solace in the fact that the Bulldogs have a fantastic injury record this year and that they really know what they’re doing to get their players right (with that said, you might be looking to trade Gia out to get someone like Murphy this week).

A couple of very popular forwards went down on the weekend. As mentioned above Gia copped an injury on the weekend and he’ll be out for six, while Pav has the much more awkward time frame of 2-3. Pav is a line call whether to trade or not, but with Gia out for so long it’s a bit easier to move him on. If you’re trading out one of these two price tags, then you’ll save a lot of money by getting Murphy and he is a good chance to provide the same output as that injured pair. That money can be used elsewhere for another upgrade (because I’m sure everyone has HEAPS of trades left by now…right?)