Blue boys upbeat on Eddie’s return to fold

CARLTON players will welcome back Eddie Betts with “open arms” when the former star returns to Princes Park in a bargain trade this month.

Adelaide will pay a chunk of Betts’s salary to line up for the Blues next season and the mercurial goalsneak needs to play just 16 more games to notch 200 for the club that drafted him back in 2004.

“I loved playing with Eddie,” former captain Marc Murphy said. “He’s one of those guys you love playing with, because he’s really unselfish and a good team man. If he wants to come to us we’d welcome him with open arms.”

While Betts was dropped to the SANFL in 2019, he won three All-Australian selections and booted 310 goals across six stunning seasons at the Crows.

Six different Blues forwards won the club’s goalkicking award when Betts was gone, combining for just 176 majors.

Murphy dined with Jack Martin in Flinders Lane last month, helping the talented Gold Coast player settle on the Blues as his preferred destination for 2020.

With Sydney small forward Tom Papley also hoping to get to Carlton, and, after a promising resurgence under new coach David Teague in the second half of 2019, the Blues are dreaming of a sharp rise up the ladder.

“The last half of the year we won six games in the 11 weeks he [David Teague] took over as senior coach,” Murphy said. “We showed that improvement towards the back half of the year. We’ve got pretty strong intentions on next year and I certainly believe in our list pretty strongly. I think we can go pretty well, but we’re like every list that believes they can improve pretty dramatically at this time of year.”

The Blues have not played finals since 2013, when they finished ninth but replaced Essendon when it was kicked out over the drugs scandal.

Murphy, Betts and Teague combined for six games as teammates in 2006.