EFL: Mitcham recruit Jesse Uren earns Round 9 Young Gun nomination
MITCHAM’S resurgence in recent weeks has been sweetened after Tigers recruit Jesse Uren received the Round 9 nomination for the EFL Young Gun Award.
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JESSE Uren was a wanted man.
Mitcham had been trying to get the Ferntree Gully junior to Walker Park for a few years through a connection with vice-president Dane Wilson.
“I think he’d been having a crack at him for a while and for whatever reason it was a good time for Jess to move across,” Mitcham coach Neil Winterton.
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The move is now paying dividends, with Uren named the Division 1 and 2 Eastern Football League Young Gun nominee for Round 9.
The halfback joined fellow former Eagles teammates Jessie Smyth and Zac Elms in crossing to Mitcham over the summer, with Winterton hoping the trio will help form Mitcham’s resurgence.
“All indications are when we were trying to recruit him was that he was looking for a club he could call home for multiple years and given his age, we certainly want to keep him for as long as possible,” Winterton said.
“That is the direction we have gone to recruit guys we can hold onto for four, five, six, seven years and build together.”
The weekend’s upset win over premiership favourite Doncaster East gave the Tigers their second win of the season after going winless through the first six rounds of the season.
“We feel now we’ve sort of figured each other out and everyone has learnt their roles and adapted to the way myself and the others wanted to play,” Winterton said.
“Division 2 is one of those competitions where every week you’ve got to turn up and if we start getting ahead of ourselves and think that if we just can turn up and win, we’ll start taking some backward steps.”
Uren is joined by Division 3 and 4 nominee Mitch Brown of The Basin.
Brown collected 20 disposals and kicked two goals in the 46-point win over Waverley Blues in one of his best games of the season.
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