Jekyll and Hyde
02 June 2006 Herald Sun
Michael Stevens
Chris Hyde has played 56 AFL games. Chris who? If you haven't heard of him, you're not alone. But a lot more people are starting to learn his name, starting with two Geelong defenders he danced around on route to goal last Saturday. The no-frills, run-with player has a new, attacking personality. RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace jokes that he created a monster when he asked Chris Hyde to change his style and become a more attacking player.
But after Hyde monstered Geelong with four goals to give the Tigers their first win at Skilled Stadium for 16 years, no one at Punt Rd is complaining.
Before Saturday, Hyde, 23, had managed just 12 goals in 55 games. And none would have been as memorable as his third for the afternoon in the second quarter.
Hyde baulked two Cat opponents, Paul Koulouriotis and Jarad Rooke, before slotting the ball through on his left foot.
It was exactly the manoeuvre Wallace had been looking for when he took over as coach after the 2004 season.
At that stage, Hyde's fledgling AFL career was just getting started, but he had played all 22 games that year and finished fifth in the club's best-and-fairest.
Wallace takes up the story: "In my first two weeks at the club I told the players we were going to play a free-flowing, running, carrying (the ball) style of game.
"It was similar to the style we had in place at the Doggies. It was the style I liked . . . 16 goals a game . . . blokes who can play for the baulk and run and carry.
"In the first couple of training sessions preparing for that style, Chris approached me for a private conversation and said, `I can't do this. I'm a tagger. I can run with a bloke and take him out of the game, but I'm not an offensive player'."
Wallace's response was short and to the point. "I think you are. You're selling yourself short, and if you're not going to adapt to what I want, you mightn't be here long," he said.
Hyde took the advice on board and set about transforming himself.
"After about a month he was running around, baulking blokes and doing things no one had ever seen before," Wallace said. "My reaction was, `I've created a monster' and the boys nicknamed him that and it's stuck."
Hyde, recruited from Barooga in New South Wales, just across the border from Cobram, this week sheepishly recalled the conversation with his coach.
"I think when he first came down everyone was a little apprehensive and wasn't really sure what to expect – if he liked you, and if he didn't like you, and how he wanted you to play," Hyde said.
"I was probably in that boat. I was a little unsure at the start, but he encouraged me to play an attacking style of footy and that's what I tried to do.
"The year before Terry came, I played all year as a run-with tagger, and that was probably my first year of playing consistent senior footy.
"So when he came I thought I'd be doing a similar role, and was a bit unsure if I could do anything else."
Wallace said Richmond fans would have seen more of Hyde's new attacking game last season but for a horrific, accidental clash of heads with St Kilda's Matt Maguire in Round 5.
The sickening impact left the youngster with a hairline fracture of the skull and was likened to a car wreck.
Both players appeared to be knocked out before they hit the ground and barely moved as the capacity Telstra Dome crowd sat hushed.
While Hyde's injury was serious, he was able to resume playing within three weeks with the aid of a specially designed helmet.
Although there were no physical complications, the clash severely dented his confidence.
"It was something I look back on and think it did take me a lot longer to get over. I don't know if it was mentally or physically, I'm not really sure, but it did take me a bit longer to get over than I would have hoped."
After only eight goals in 47 games before this season, Hyde's four majors against Geelong were a revelation.
He said game video reviews with assistant coach and former Kangaroos star David King, and playing most games as a half-forward, had been instrumental in his transformation into an attacking goalkicker.
"Looking at the videos, each week there's been opportunities where I could have kicked a couple," Hyde said. "He (King) has been showing me that if I had taken a few more risks, I could have kicked a few goals.
"So I don't think it was a one-off at the weekend. It was probably I took a few more risks closer to goal and it came off. If you go interstate or anywhere, you can't save the game; you've got to take it off the opposition.
"So that was something we talked about going down to Geelong."
Fitness and endurance have always been two of Hyde's strengths.
The Tigers' main test is the 3.83km run around The Tan, and Hyde's time of about 13min 12sec ranks him among the top two or three.
"It's probably helped me along the way to get a few games when I might have been on the borderline," he said frankly.
After a 115-point thrashing in Round 1, and a 118-point belting from Sydney in Round 7, the Tigers have done extremely well to bounce back.
With five wins they are in a good position to press for a finals berth, something that would defy history. Only one team in league history – North Melbourne in 1958 – has lost by more than 100 points in the opening round and gone on to make the finals.
"I'm not really sure what happened . . . two very big beatings," Hyde said.
"I think the guys here after those two losses showed a bit of resolve and character. Probably no one expected us to be where we are.
"There's no reason why we can't make the finals because we lost in Round 1."
And if the Tigers happen to crack it for a final in September, you can bet Hyde will play with the same flair he showed last weekend.
Opponents, you have been warned: the monster is on the loose.
Tiger heads out of dangerCHRIS Hyde says he no longer thinks about the fractured skull he suffered last year in a sickening clash of heads with St Kilda's Matt Maguire.
"I have no side-affects and it probably never enters my mind now," he said.
"Everyone seems to ask me about me about it, but as far as I'm concerned I don't even think about it at all.
"It was over a year ago now, so it's well and truly behind me."
After being carried off wearing a neck brace (right), Hyde was found to have a fracture "not quite an inch long" according to club doctor Greg Hickey, and was back after three weeks, wearing a helmet.
"It was just an injury, part of footy," Hyde said. "Everyone gets them. Kosi (St Kilda's Justin Koschitzke) fractured his skull.
"(It's) probably not the nicest thing to happen, but I only missed three games. I mean, if you do a knee you miss the season, so it wasn't really that bad."
Apart from severe headaches and swelling to his skull, Hyde also had bruising to the brain, which caused him most concern.
He also seemed to develop an alarming habit of being knocked in the head. In his return match after the Maguire incident, he clashed heads with teammate Joel Bowden, breaking Bowden's cheekbone, and later in the year was cleaned up by a big Brett Burton bump.
"It's probably not a nice thing to go to the neurosurgeon and be told that you need to be really careful with what you do in everyday life, let alone playing football," he said.
"When he says you've just got to be careful and you're not allowed to drive, when he seems a little bit concerned . . . when he's a professional at what he does . . . it just makes you wonder, that this could be really serious.
"It probably affected me more than I first thought.
"When it's your head and the neurosurgeon says you've got bruising on the brain, probably subconsciously I was a little bit hesitant at the start."
But the traumatic experience has not affected Hyde's daredevil approach.
"I don't think about it on the field at all," he said.
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