Terry Wallace need to see finals action
Katherine Firkin
August 12, 2008 03:30pm
TIGERS coach Terry Wallace has admitted his side needs to play finals next year if he's to get a contract extension
Wallace's five-year contract to coach the Tigers runs out at the end of 2009, and he knows time is running out for him to guide the team to September action. Richmond is again unlikely to finish in the top eight after losing to Adelaide on the weekend.
“Yeah, absolutely, that will be the case (that no finals means no new contract). And after a five-year period in term why wouldn’t that be the case?” Wallace said.
“We’ve got to be mature enough to handle that and deal with it and coming into the last year of contract, the speculation and everything else that will go on over that 6-8 month period. But that’s no problem, we’re all big boys, we know that that’s exactly where it’s going to sit and I don’t shy away from that at all.”
Wallace admitted today that his team was unlikely to play finals this year.
”Look, we've said as a group that we believe that (playing finals is) now out of our control, it really comes down to others winning and losing ... so really, we're not even looking at the eight.
"We saw the win last weekend as being the situation where that controlled our opportunity to make the eight, and we lost that opportunity.
"Now it's out of our hands and in the hands of others, so we just do what we need to do."
Despite the lack of finals football, Wallace said he’s comfortable with what he's achieved, and said that most of his work has been in rebuilding the side.
“When I started Richmond was one of the oldest sides in the competition … now we’re the third youngest,” he said.
“Somebody has to say, 'This is broken, and we’re going to try to fix it and change it' If that means that that’s all that you do, then so be it. But that’s the task I took on and I was comfortable to take that on knowing it would be a difficult task.”
While Wallace refused to consider the possibility of his contract being terminated early, he also admitted he wasn’t prepared to look past next season.
“From day one I’ve always said let’s do the five years, let’s see what works, let’s have a chat at the end of that five year term and say ‘Are we right for each other to step forward and go on?’ I’ve never ever once spoken or thought about extensions of contracts or anything like that. I’ve always been more than comfortable just doing the five years and working out where the club sits at that point in time,” he said.
“I’ve always from the day I walked in here said I was quite comfortable that I would put in place some scenarios for this club to make sure that they had a direction and that we would work on that direction for five years and at the end of that five-year scenario we’d sit back and both look at it.”
While his future at Tigerland is far from guaranteed, Wallace reaffirmed his commitment to the club and said if Richmond no longer wanted him he would not be pursing other coaching opportunities.
“I’m not at a stage in my career where I want to take up another coaching job, another starting challenge that goes for a seven or eight-year period,” he said.
“Would I love to see out the ability to see Brett Deledio get to 25 years of age, to see Trent Cotchin when he’s got 100 games under his belt, and our backmen have played together for five or six seasons? Absolutely and that’s my desire to do that and I’ll be working as hard as what I can to do my part of it and then decisions will be made.”
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24168659-19742,00.html
