How Tigers' magnet man came unstuck
Geoff McClure
The Age
May 23, 2007
EIGHT losses from eight games, no win since August 26 (round 21) last year (that's 270 days ago) — phew, is it any wonder things are getting very tense in the Richmond bunker. Yep, so tense in fact that we can reveal it has just claimed its first casualty.
We speak of Terry Wallace's magnetic-board man who was right there in the thick of it at the start of last Friday's match against Adelaide at AAMI Stadium — and very visible to all his mates who watched all the action on television back in Melbourne — but by the time it resumed in the second quarter he was nowhere to be seen.
"It's true, I got the flick in just my second game," 42-year-old fireman Garry Connolly told us yesterday. "One minute I was in the box doing all the match-ups and the next minute I got flung to the job down at ground level. I made some mistakes, I acknowledge that, there's no hard feelings. Dare I say, 'That's footy.' "
Truth is, Connolly, who had a similar ground-level role for St Kilda last year, and was offered the main job at Tigerland in round seven after the regular magnetic-board men became ill, didn't realise just how intense keeping up with all the match moves while sitting alongside a coach would be.
"It may look a simple job but it's not." said Connolly. "It's full-on. There's not just all the moves to keep up with but you have to keep a tab on all the interchange switches too. In my first game there were 16 in one quarter. People who can do it well are freaks."
Connolly said at the end of last Friday's first term ("when everyone was leaning over my shoulder and switching names all over the place") Richmond football manager Paul Armstrong told him he would be spending the rest of the game with the interchange bench crew.
He said: "When we all got back to Melbourne next day, I said to Paul, 'Will you be needing me next week?' and he said, 'Probably not. I'll call you'. I haven't heard so I will assume now that it's a definite no."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/geoff-mcclure/how-tigers-magnet-man-came-unstuck/2007/05/22/1179601410612.html
