Caleb Serong feels he’s taken a lot of pointers from the run-with role he played on star Essendon midfielder Zach Merrett during Fremantle’s clash with Essendon at Marvel Stadium on Sunday.
Serong held Merrett to 22 disposals and zero clearances, which The West Australian reported was Merrett’s lowest disposal tally of the season and the first time he’d gone without a clearance since 2014.
As well as his five tackles, Serong had 19 disposals, 10 contested possessions and two clearances.
The 20-year-old Serong said the more mature Merrett was elite with the way he moved through the contest.
“He just keeps moving. That’s something I took out of it. Keep moving, because he’s one of the best at it in the comp,” Serong told The West Australian.
“He’s really good at turning one possession into two. Once he gets the ball, he just goes and is really crafty with his feet. His footwork is great, he cuts angles really tight and he’s tough to keep up with around stoppages.
“With Zach, he likes to patrol the outside, then go inside when he needs to. He’s most damaging when he’s getting it on the outside and using his foot skills.”
Serong said he was happy to play a team role as a tagger.
“All I want to do is win games of footy and help our team to do that. If that’s me tagging or me going and hunting the footy, that’s what I’m happy to do,” Serong said.
Senior coach Justin Longmuir said he felt Serong played the role well.
"I thought he did a pretty good job, I thought it was pretty even. Merrett still had plenty of the ball, I didn’t see his real creative ball use that he can have at his best, so I thought he did a pretty good job," Longmuir said.
"Clearly, (Merrett) is one of the better mids in the comp and we didn’t want to let him roll around with no pressure on him. He can slice teams and we wanted to shut him out of the game.
"I thought (Serong) had his moments with the ball, he probably could have been a bit better with the ball in hand at times.
"I thought he hunted the loose ball pretty well at the right times."
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