Morris was elevated from the rookie list in 2005 and quickly became the Bulldogs’ main man in defence, culminating in All-Australian selection last year.
But he says he can and will improve on his impressive season.
“The day I don’t improve or can’t improve is the day that I’ll call it quits because there’s no point continuing playing,” he said.
“The game’s always changing and no one can ever get comfortable. With that in mind you’ve got to adapt and change things and learn new skills every year.”
Morris has earned a reputation as one of the AFL’s most reliable and versatile defenders and says there is plenty about his game he can address.
But he admits it can be tricky to identify which aspect of his game to work on when his role varies from week to week.
“It’s tough because if we’ve got a taller guy down there then I can look more at playing on a mid-small sized player. If we don’t have a big guy down there then I’ll have to adapt my game and change it to playing on taller blokes like last year. It’s going to be a week by week thing.” he said.
“There’s always something I need to work on. You can always work on skills and with the game changing, with teams adopting the Geelong and Hawthorn rolling zone, you really have to keep improving on your decision making because it’s getting harder to pierce the opposition.”
The 190cm Morris has often played on forwards much bigger than him but after the Bulldogs invested heavily in height over the past couple of drafts, he says he is looking to play on more mid-sized forwards.
“With a few bigger boys around it allows myself and [Ryan] Hargrave to play on the players that suit us best and Gilbs (Lindsay Gilbee) as well. We want those guys in the team not just to help us out but to help the team out.” he said.
