Melbourne Storm winger Steve Turner is the perfect replacement for retiring Bulldog great Hazem El Masri.
After six years with Melbourne, Turner will join the Bulldogs next season, meaning that last night's preliminary NRL final at Etihad Stadium could have been his last game with the Storm.
Turner's no goalkicking wizard but he knows how to find the tryline and, like El Masri, he's one of the game's Mr Nice Guys and is a club favourite with team-mates, coaches and fans alike.
Turner has played 103 NRL games with Melbourne and had wanted to continue in the purple but was squeezed out by the salary cap. Hopeful that he will have two more games with Melbourne, and finish his fourth successive grand final with an NRL premiership, the 24-year-old said he had only just started to think about his departure.
"The reality is that the [the end of the year] is coming and the closure to my career at the Storm is coming," Turner said. "It's going to be a sad day when it does happen but let's hope it doesn't happen this week [against the Dragons].
"I've really enjoyed my time here and made some wonderful friends and I have some wonderful memories."
He said he had been impressed by what the Bulldogs had achieved in the past 12 months, rising from wooden-spooners to top two on the NRL table.
"They've achieved a lot on the field and off the field to the credit of [coach] Kevin Moore and the staff he's got there, they've done a wonderful job. It's going to be a new challenge for me to go to the Bulldogs but I'll worry about that once the season finishes.
"All I can do is focus on what I can do with the Storm."
Turner said his departure, and that of other players such as centre Will Chambers, wouldn't be used as any kind of motivation.
"It's not going to be 'do it for Steve Turner'; we've got to do it for each other and do it as a team because we all go out there to achieve the one goal, and hopefully we can do that together in October."
Meanwhile Eels boom rookie Daniel Mortimer has a 75 per cent chance of overcoming a hip pointer injury in time to play in Friday night's NRL preliminary final against the Bulldogs.
Mortimer lasted just 12 minutes of the Eels' 27-2 semifinal win over Gold Coast on Friday night, which set up a tantalising western Sydney derby which could fill 80,000-seat ANZ Stadium.
The 20-year-old was a victim of what Eels coach Daniel Anderson described as a "missile" attack from Titans backrower Sam Tagataese after Mortimer had launched a clearing kick downfield.
nderson seemed resigned to being without his young pivot after the game, but the medical team said Mortimer had responded well to initial treatment, rating him a "75-25" chance ahead of MRI scans this weekend.
Mortimer was given two needles after being taken to the sheds, but had no chance of returning to the game. His absence was negated by a brilliant performance by fill-in Feleti Mateo, who played his best game since returning from a long stint on the sidelines with a pectoral injury just over a month ago.
With the Eels-Bulldogs preliminary final set to smash the all-time record for a finals match in Sydney - 57,973 set in 1963 for a game between the Eels and St George at the SCG - Parramatta veteran Nathan Hindmarsh dismissed claims his young side could be overcome by the occasion.
"We've been playing pressure football for a long time, so I don't think a bigger crowd's going to make too much difference," Hindmarsh said. "We've been trying to make the semis for the last eight weeks playing sudden death football - we're used to pressure footy."
- AAP
NRL: Mr Nice Guy Turner goes down a Storm
Steve Turner will play for the Bulldogs next season. Photo / Getty Images
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