EXCLUSIVE: Touching scenes as Tissot Australia present Bob Murphy, injured captain of new AFL Premiers the Western Bulldogs, with a Premiership Watch

Last night, at a closed function for family, friends and Western Bulldogs football club staff, Tissot Australia brand manager Scott Jungwirth followed the lead of Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge by presenting injured skipper Bob Murphy with a Tissot Premiership Watch to celebrate the team’s first premiership in 62 years. Not only did the Bulldogs break the longest drought in AFL history, they also made history as the first team to win the flag from way down in seventh place.

The watch has only ever been given to the coach and 22 players selected to play in the winning team on Grand Final day, but Jungwirth decided that he, like Beveridge he would make an exception and include Murphy, who is regarded the ‘spiritual leader’ of the club, among the recipients. Hours earlier, Beveridge had done something on “the spur of the moment” never seen before by calling Murphy onto the podium at the award ceremony and placing his own medallion around Murphy’s neck, saying “This is yours mate. You deserve it more than anyone.”

“It’s unprecedented that we’d present a Premiership watch to someone that didn’t play on the day,” Jungwirth said. “But ‘Murph’ is such an integral part of the team, he’s been with them every step of the way – at training, in the rooms, in the huddle, in the box – he’s been every bit the captain he always was, it’s just impossible to leave him out of the ceremonies. It will always be heartbreaking for him to have missed out on playing in a winning premiership, but hopefully the medallion and the watch will ease that.”

It was an act of generosity and camaraderie that typifies the Bulldogs, who have banded together in a year when the team was crueled by injury, to silence all naysayers with a stunning victory in the Grand Final, an event watched lived by 99,981 people and on television by four million Australians. In a personal twist, Jungwirth from Tissot played football with Bob Murphy at Warragul and Gippsland Power in junior football. “We played in two losing grand finals together in 1997 for Warragul and 1999 for Gippsland Power. Unfortunately I had the perfect combination of being too short and too slow to get drafted and kick on with a career, but I did give Murph a run for his money for a while there.”