Watts the big deal? Melbourne coach Paul Roos puzzled by focus on No.1 draft pick

MELBOURNE coach Paul Roos won’t banish the battling Jack Watts to the VFL and says he can’t understand the public’s fascination with the No. 1 pick.

MELBOURNE coach Paul Roos won’t banish the battling Jack Watts to the VFL and says he can’t understand the public’s fascination with the No. 1 pick.

And Roos revealed boom forward Jesse Hogan’s heavily-anticipated AFL debut was at least two months away after another delay to his back injury.

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Watts’ underwhelming career has taken another nosedive the past fortnight, but Roos said the Dees weren’t in a position to play 22 form players every week and repeatedly stated he was puzzled by the attention Watts received.

“There’s a big fixation on Jack Watts. We don’t have the same fixation that everyone else does,” Roos said.

“I just get a little bit surprised that everything goes back to Jack Watts. There are a lot more problems at this club, and Wattsy’s form in the last two weeks hasn’t been as good as it was in the first four weeks.

“It’s certainly strange. He’s just one of the 22 that played on the weekend.”

Four of Watts’ five kicks were ineffective on Saturday night and his workrate and desire were questioned by Melbourne great David Schwarz, while triple-premiership Lion Chris Johnson said on 3AW he needed 10 weeks in the VFL.

But Roos said he would be “surprised” if Watts was sent to Casey and downplayed the energetic discussion he had with the utility and Jeremy Howe at three quarter-time against the Swans.

“I get surprised you’re not allowed to coach AFL players,” he said of the chat.

“If you can’t coach players I think it’s a pretty sad indictment on all of us … if you can’t grab a couple of players and talk to them.”

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On Watts, Schwarz said on SEN: “You see someone that needs to get to more contests, that doesn’t work hard enough, that’s not strong enough in the contest, that just mopes around (and) that is just passing his time in AFL land without any impact.”

Roos said Hogan had rested for the past week and was unlikely to run for another fortnight, while defender Colin Garland would need a full VFL match before entering AFL calculations.

“He (Hogan) is going to be a lot longer than we initially thought,” Roos said.

“It was just one of those injuries where we needed to see how it reacted to activity and it hasn’t reacted that well, so now we’ll take a much more conservative approach with him.

“He probably won’t run for 2-3 weeks, which probably puts him out another 5-6 after that.”

Garland copped a knock to his knee in the VFL and didn’t finish the second half, but Roos said the defender had escaped serious damage.