Nominating Bob

Over 10 years ago, I compiled Baw Baw Shire’s Sporting Walk of Fame booklet.

I had the enviable task of interviewing our champion sports men and women such as Tim Forsyth, Peter Knights, Barry Round, Kathy Watt, Gary Ayres, Alan Noonan, Michael Scandolero, Peter Bartels, Jason Bright, Les Griggs, Paul Maisey, Mark Ridgeway, Harley Watts, Marissa Yeaman and Jodi Quinlan. Other inductees include Lionel Rose and Gary Ablett.

The booklet complemented the Sporting Walk of Fame plaques in Civic Park. These recognise outstanding achievement in sport for local people.

To qualify for the honour, our sporting champions must have achieved success at national or international levels. There hasn’t been another sportsperson to meet this strict criteria until Jason Warn won gold in Wheelchair Rugby at Rio 2016 Paralympic Games and was recently inducted into the Walk of Fame.

Although I’m not a Bulldogs fan, I’d like to nominate Robert (Bob) Murphy to be honoured.

He grew up in Warragul and played football for the Warragul Football Club and Gippsland Power before being drafted to the Western Bulldogs.

His leadership qualities, combined with his great skills, resulted in Bob becoming team captain in 2015. He was voted captain of the year in the AFLPA awards during his first year as captain and was twice named in the All Australian team and was captain of this team in 2015.

He now has the distinction of being the oldest active AFL player. Bob writes a weekly column in the sport section of The Age newspaper and was formerly a regular panelist on AFL 360 television talk show on Fox Footy.

Bob is much admired in the football community as was evidenced in the 2016 grand final when Bob sustained a serious knee injury and had to watch his beloved Bulldogs win the premiership from the sidelines.

We all shared his joy when he played his 300th game this year. Maybe we should wait in anticipation of the Bulldogs winning another premiership flag in 2017.

Maree Wallace, Drouin