Morton wins Roach Medalrichmondfc.com.au
By Tony Greenberg | Mon 31 August, 2009
Mitch Morton has become just the third player, apart from Matthew Richardson, to win Richmond’s leading goalkicker award in the past 16 years.
The ex-Eagle kicked one goal against his old side, in last Friday night’s Round 22 encounter at Subiaco Oval, to take his season’s tally to 41. Jack Riewoldt finished second on the Tigers’ goakicking list with 32 goals, and Robin Nahas was third with 21 goals.
Richardson, who missed the last 16 games of the ’09 season with a severe hamstring injury, had won the Michael Roach Medal (as Richmond’s leading goalkicker) a staggering 13 times in the previous 15 seasons.
Before this year, you had to go all the way back to 2000 to find another winner of the Roach Medal. That was when ‘Richo’ suffered a serious foot injury in the Round 3 clash with Fremantle, which sidelined him for the rest of the season. In Richo’s absence, Matthew Rogers stepped up, kicking 37 goals, to win the leading goalkicker award.
Five years earlier (1995), it was Nick Daffy, who topped the Tigers’ goalkicking table, with 45, after Richo ruptured the ACL in his left knee when he crashed into the fence during the Round 9 match against the Sydney Swans at the SCG.
Morton, who was recruited by Richmond from West Coast in exchange for draft pick 35 in the 2007 trading period, has kicked 76 goals in 38 games for the Tigers.
This season, he scored multiple goals 13 times, with a best return of five against the Eagles at Etihad Stadium in Round 12.
He failed to register a goal on only one occasion in ’09 – against the Swans at the SCG in Round 6.
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