Terry Wallace feels the heat
Mark Robinson | March 20, 2008
TERRY Wallace knew they'd be coming in year four. It's why his highly sensitive five-year deal, worth as much as $2.5 million, not only gave him job security, but also sanctuary from a marauding media.
The Tigers, after 20-odd years of criticism, needed to bunker down. Be off the front and back pages for a couple of years.
Wallace, too, needed breathing space to plan ahead without looking to see who was planting one in his back.
Indeed, if Wallace was out of contract at the end of this year, and not next, the media and those oh-so understanding Richmond fans would have been climbing over Punt Rd like Zulu savages.
It hasn't happened. Yet.
Wallace knows, though, they are only a couple of bad games away.
He even suspects some will find his downfall pleasurable because, for all his life, there has always been somebody telling him he's not good enough, that he wasn't up to the challenge.
"It happened to me as a kid," he says. "People told me I wouldn't make it and I couldn't do it, but I thought I could.
"After leaving Hawthorn and the Richmond thing (a one-year playing stint at Richmond in 1987) failing, there was a lot of people in the industry thinking I could only play in a good side - even though I was able to win best-and-fairests in those good sides - but (that) I could only play with good players around me.
"I went to the Bulldogs and won a couple of best-and-fairests after that. So there has been those sort of challenges all the way through. It's funny how they come up. It's a like a seven-year itch."
There's something about Terry, and that ain't no comedic pun.
Tonight, he begins another AFL campaign. It's his 30th as a player, commentator or coach.
He began as a player at Hawthorn in 1978, took in Richmond (1987) and the Western Bulldogs (1988-91). He then coached the Dogs and now is back at the Tigers.
Along the way he's been sacked, rejected and traded. On the flip side, he played for Victoria, won premierships, and accepted four best-and-fairests - two at the Hawks and two at the Bulldogs.
As a footballer, he was fearless to the point of being kamikaze. He had no real pace and no dazzling individual skills.
What he had was heart, heaps of it, and he used it to achieve for himself and for his football club.
It's been a thread throughout his life, success despite the hurdles.
And somehow amid the journey, Wallace has been able to turn people against him.
It's odd, as Wallace is a nice enough bloke with plenty of friends. He loves footy and probably loves talking about footy even more.
As a coach, he is as honest as he can be, though sometimes observers think he deflects criticism more than he accepts it.
Of course, it's the cameras which help sway people's judgment. Wallace is slick. Media savvy they call it.
He has an ability to think quick, parry curly questions with explanations that appear cumbersome in response and yet, with deeper inspection, clearly outline what he and the Tigers are trying to do.
Masterfully, Wallace and his contract have avoided the blockbuster headlines. Some would say it was good management.
From his earliest football days, when he caught a bus from Templestowe to Heidelberg and another to Preston, where he played for the Pumas between the ages of 12 and 17, Wallace has had a career littered with trials.
Told he would never make it, three times he was rejected by Fitzroy which eventually sold him to Hawthorn for Gerry McCarthy. The Roys also threw in $15,000.
At the Hawks, he was a very good player. A premiership centreman. But he eventually fell out with coach Allan Jeans after Essendon's Darren Williams sliced him apart in the last quarter of the '84 Grand Final.
His next interaction with the Hawks came in 2005 and, truth or not, some at the Hawks believe Wallace gave them lip service when he was an applicant for the senior job, eventually won by Alastair Clarkson after Wallace opted for the Tigers.
In 1987, at the Tigers, he played just 11 games. The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers writes: "There were stories of how he had insisted on leaving the club if he was dropped to the reserves."
Then there was the Bulldogs debacle(s). It is known Chris Grant and Luke Darcy aren't big fans, nor is president David Smorgon.
Wallace got the coaching job in controversial times - in 1996 when Alan Joyce was sacked and Wallace was promoted from assistant.
He left in even worse circumstances in 2002 when he announced he was quitting before Round 22 and the players heave-hoed him anyway, denying him a swansong.
Then came the rumours that Wallace was destined for Sydney.
Website maniacs christened him "Terry Wallets" and despite so many people willing to whisper it as truth, there has never been any evidence Wallace accepted money from the Swans although the senior job went to Paul Roos.
On a personal front, fan websites, both at Richmond and opposition sites, harangue him mercilessly.
One has a thread titled "Top 10 messages on Terry Wallace's Voicemail".
Among the answers are: "Terry, Nathan Brown, I've checked out the samples, go the 'statue bronze' shade with your next appointment." The other nine are less good-natured.
Others despise him, sometimes for his columns in the Herald Sun.
While his team was being beaten, Wallace would scrutinise opposition teams. It grated on them that Wallace had an opinion and that he had the vehicle to express it.
Wallace knows the landscape but gives the impression people's perception and/or criticism go through to the keeper.
"I'm long gone worrying about perception," Wallace said. "Things that have happened along the way have cut deep in the past."
Such as? "The Bulldogs situation. It was probably the best time of my life, the 14 years I spent there with some of the closest people.
" It was really disappointing for all and sundry the way it was perceived to have finished."
Still hurting? "No, gone. But what I'm saying is that was probably the most difficult time I've had in the game and anything the game serves up from that time onwards to me seems minuscule in comparison."
The upshot is Wallace, who turns 50 in December, has had a full and frank football life. He has been challenged and challenged again, and never more so than right now.
His five-year plan sometimes seems like a runaway train, spearing into blackened tunnel after blackened tunnel with the occasional wreck a matter of course rather than surprise.
He maintains, however, the Tigers are headed in the right direction.
"People would say I'm a fairly confident individual," he starts with a smile.
"I've always thought that if you believe you've got the ability and you've shown the ability, it doesn't leave you. Coaching is exactly the same thing.
"I've shown I can coach sides into final campaigns, so from that point of view I have't lost any faith or belief in that. Nor have I lost faith and belief in a process we put in place to rejuvenate the club, and that process is ongoing.
"As we all know, it's four years down now so we need to start making some ground. That is exactly where we sit."
The pressure? Well, that's the business he's in. "I am the senior coach, of course we are under pressure to perform," he says.
"When we have a year like last year, the whole club comes under scrutiny, the senior coach is under scrutiny more than most. If I stepped away from the end of last season not considering the eyes are going to be on me early in the new season, you'd be kidding yourself."
With just 24 wins from 66 matches in three years at Richmond, Wallace's love of the game has been tested.
The Tigers' list, by most people's evaluations, is so-so. Too many players have "if" by their name, recruiting has been a bugbear, and Richo pulls up stumps in a year or two.
No matter what you say, Aaron Fiora over Matthew Pavlich and Richard Tambling over Buddy Franklin remain recruiting nightmares.
Still, Wallace's passion is unbending, and that's a great quality. He is an all-consuming coach, a footy junkie, and as kids do in the schoolyard so does Wallace in the box: He dreams of glory.
"I'll tell you how strong my passion is," he offers.
"I had a choice between jumping in with my family and going to Yarrawonga on Friday after the review (of tonight's game), but I want my footy fix.
"I'm staying home by myself, going to the Saturday afternoon game, going to the Saturday night game, going on the Sunday, going on the Monday.
"Hey, I don't go out on the Saturday night when the night grand final is on. That's what I like doing. I didn't have to watch eight games of footy when I was doing the press stuff. That's what I chose to do, but I bloody enjoy it."
On a roll, he is asked what is the best part of footy. He launches into a dialogue that would have even Tigers fans excited. "It ebbs and flows so quickly in different ways," he said.
"This time last year we played Collingwood in Mildura and beat them in the last practice game.
" I sat down, and thought, 'Yeah, both sides had relatively full sides in', and I didn't quite know where we were and wasn't quite sure where Collingwood was.
"I went and watched them on the Saturday afternoon play the Kangaroos in Round 1 and they had kicked six goals up to three-quarter time and I sat there talking to a couple of match committee boys and said, 'I'm even more convinced I'm not quite sure if Collingwood are there yet'.
"They kick eight goals and get up and win the game.
"Five months later I watch them win a qualifying final at Subiaco in overtime. I couldn't see it coming.
"On the same weekend, you witness the Bulldogs playing Geelong at the Telstra Dome and Braddy Johnson kicks his eight goals and they do a pretty good job and you walk away thinking, 'Gee, I reckon the Bulldogs are the real deal'.
" 'And Geelong? Are they, aren't they, I haven't been convinced by what happened.' All of a sudden they are history-makers.
"That's a love of footy. That's why you love being in it because people who dare to dream can get fantastic things out of the game."
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,23405698-19771,00.html
