MELBOURNE forward Liam Jurrah can excite the crowd in a similar way to Hawthorn superstar Lance 'Buddy' Franklin, according to Demon veteran Cameron Bruce.
On the back of his four-goal performance against Port Adelaide at the MCG on Sunday, Bruce said Jurrah's effort was a thrilling day for the club.
"'The Cougar' or 'The Jurrahcane' … he seems to think it's LL Cool J. I'm sure one of them will stick," Bruce said in relation to Jurrah's new nicknames.
"Every time he goes near the ball they [the fans] get excited, I liken it to the way the crowd are with 'Buddy' [Franklin] and every time he went near the ball. It's something you don't experience too often.
"I was doing cartwheels in the backline, watching him go up for those marks."
Bruce said Jurrah, who hails from Yuendumu in Central Australia, is progressing strongly in his overall development.
"Hopefully he's going to continue to improve and I'm sure that'll be the case, because we've already noticed over the last five or six weeks that he's starting to come out of his shell and starting to feel a lot more comfortable within the group," he said.
"He's a bit of a practical joker and he's into locker room banter, so he's definitely going to be one to watch for supporters."
Meanwhile, Bruce says Melbourne has the ability to cause opposition clubs headaches in the run home to the end of the season, on the back of two wins.
Bruce said now everyone was contributing it would provide them with the confidence, which was sorely missing a month ago.
"It's an awesome feeling. We haven't done that for a while. To be the whipping boys of the AFL and to win two in a row, after a pretty poor three weeks is great," he said.
"We've come back from a really disappointing three weeks – probably the lowest point since I've been at the club – in terms of the way we were playing and the way we were looked upon from the outside."
Reflecting on a poor three-week period from rounds 11 to 13, Bruce said there were no internal problems among coaches and players.
Bruce said one of the things that changed since that period was that individuals stepped up under pressure.
"We have great faith and belief that they're [the coaches] doing a great job. It was simply the playing group not taking personal responsibility for the way we were playing,” Bruce said.
"We were probably [playing] a bit of a blame game and individuals weren't really taking too much responsibility for the own individual performances."