Following Johns’ operation six weeks ago to remove floating cartilage in his hip, the medical opinion is that it will be eight weeks before he will be in a position to play. The hip injury has been an ongoing battle for Johns’ to overcome since coming to the club last season.
""Courtney has been absolutely terrific and was very keen to provide one of his teammates with an opportunity given his unfortunate circumstances.
""Given the longer than expected recovery with Courtney, it was important for the club to ensure it had 38 players available for selection. You just can’t afford to play short,"" football manager Dominic Cato said.
With the disappointment that comes for one player there is the opportunity for another. That player is Nathan Lovett-Murray. The former Bendigo Bombers’ player has come along way from this time last season where he was lining up for his home team Heywood.
Bombers’ assistant coach Mark Harvey said that Lovett-Murray’s speed is one of his greatest assets and he showed the best form of the six rookies in the pre-season competition. ""The strength of Nathan is that he can play forward and back, so I suppose team balance does come into it because we need a flexible player,"" Harvey said.
""With guys like Cupido out, we need to find extra goals and Nathan has that ability. He has put on six or seven kilograms over the pre-season and now has a man’s body. At 21-years of age we think he is right to go and we are hoping he will be in the best form of his football career.
""It is a terrific story once again of a guy that has had knock-backs in his earlier teen years of AFL football. He was at Williamstown and did it pretty tough. Then he was at Bendigo last season on the Michael Long scholarship. There is a great story line there and hopefully he can develop a long sustaining career that he is going to develop on top of those hard years that he has been through.""
Click here to read the full Lovett-Murray story.
Essendon’s Round 1 squad:
B: Welsh, McPhee, Bolton
HB: Rioli, Bradley, Ramanauskas
C: Peverill, Misiti, Hird
HF: Richards, Lucas, Murphy
F: Allan, Lloyd, Winderlich
R: Hille, J.Johnson, Bullen
Inter: Watson, Reynolds, Alvey, Solomon, Lovett-Murray, Stanton, Henneman
