The heat has been placed on Essendon’s Darcy Parish ahead of his club’s crunch clash with the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium on Friday night.
While Parish is a consistent performer in terms of the volume of disposals he accumulates, averaging more than 30 in each of the last three seasons, he lacks impact forward of centre in the eyes of Kane Cornes.
Parish returned from a minor hamstring injury in Round 3 against St Kilda to pick up 26 touches in a narrow win before dropping away to 21 in last week’s disappointing defeat to Port Adelaide.
The 26-year-old has had no trouble finding the ball over the course of his 152-game career but Cornes has urged him to add more strings to his bow and find a cutting edge in attack.
“I’m just looking at Darcy Parish and I’m watching him just run around collecting touches but not inflicting damage,” Cornes said on SEN Breakfast.
“So I thought I'll look up Darcy and see what his goal count is.
“The best midfielders are the ones that are actually doing the damage, either leading to scores or putting that on the scoreboard themselves.
“In 2022 he kicked three goals. Last year he kicked three goals. This year he hasn't kicked a goal.
“So can he get forward and start inflicting some damage rather than running around getting six kicks and 15 handballs like he did against Port Adelaide last week?
“He looks like he's plodding to me.
“I don't know why he's got his socks up, but it's made him look slower and I’m just not seeing any of the six-year contract that he's been rewarded with on big money.”
Cornes has called on Parish to get to work in a meaningful way in the Friday night meeting with the Bulldogs where he and his skipper Zach Merrett will come up against Marcus Bontempelli and Tom Liberatore in particular.
“So Darcy Parish, your captain is leading the way, Zach Merrett's been extraordinary,” Cornes continued.
“I think the responsibility is on you tonight to go up against ‘Libba’ and ‘Bont’ and the work that they're doing and go, ‘ok, I'm actually going to have a meaningful influence on this game’.
“So he is in the gun.”
Parish, who has kicked 53 goals in his 152 games, has more rebound 50s (4) than inside 50s (3) so far in 2024.
Across eight games against the Dogs he has averaged 25 touches as well 3.5 inside 50s and 5 clearances.
