Richmond coach Terry Wallace is compelled to fight on
Patrick Smith | May 12, 2009
BY reputation Terry Wallace is a more than competent coach. At Footscray he took the club to seven finals matches in six and a bit seasons. Twice the Bulldogs made the preliminary finals. He won 53 per cent of matches that he coached out west. No premierships but still the record of a man who knows the caper.
In 2002 Wallace staggered and hurt a lot of people when he wanted out at the Bulldogs before he had completed his contract. Something about doing everything possible with the group of players under his command and that he had nothing more to give.
That Sydney was looking for a new coach in 2003 did not go unnoticed, but Wallace denied it was a consideration. Nonetheless, the Bulldogs pushed him out the door with a round to go.
Paul Roos got the Sydney job and delivered a premiership in 2005, the very season Wallace took up a five-year contract at Richmond. Wallace has not taken Richmond into one finals series, though twice the club finished ninth. At Punt Road he has won 37per cent of games his side has contested.
The club has won just one of seven games this season and sits second last. Wallace, as a person and as a coach, now confronts the greatest challenge in his career. He cannot walk away from another club with the season incomplete. That, giving consideration to his premature exit at the Bulldogs, would be an indelible smear on his CV.
Last year he took Richmond to eight wins in the last 11 games. Evidence enough that he can coach, and that his team can play. It is his obligation now to duplicate that form. To do anything else would be to shun his responsibilities.
Wallace has received several deep wounds this season, one self-inflicted and the other not of his making and hopefully not of his medical staff's either.
Ben Cousins was recruited, an idea that came late to the club. Cousins brought heightened and unrealistic expectations with him. A factor that quadrupled the pain and the anger of supporters when Richmond lost the first-round match to Carlton.
Matthew Richardson is out injured for the best part of a season with severe hamstring complications. He is a champion, as good now as he was as a junior and as significant a player for his club as James Hird was for Essendon, Nathan Buckley for Collingwood and Robert Harvey for St Kilda. To calibrate how much he is missed, just watch a replay of Richmond kick the ball sideways for the best part of last Saturday afternoon. A running Richo would have demanded the ball.
With only seven rounds gone in the season there is a compulsion that Richmond continues to do everything that its coach and players can to win matches. It is why sponsors signed up, coteries toss in money and supporters become members. To forsake the season now would be to betray the trust between club and the Richmond community.
Wallace must make public, and firmly too, that he is committed and uncompromised in squeezing every win he can from the remaining 15 games. It is far too early to tear up the season. That is an easy out for the coach and the players. Such a surrender after just four rounds last year by Port Adelaide coach Mark Williams was debilitating to the club and supporters. If the coach had given away the season, so too would the supporters. It still irks Port officials that 18 rounds were so prematurely consigned to practice matches.
It is not that Wallace has any other choice. There will be enough coaching jobs available next year that Wallace would already be on more than one short list. He needs to finish his time at Richmond with a winning flourish - or at the very least attempt such an exit. He might not want to coach next year but he needs to remembered as a man who fought to the end not one who twice clocked off before his time.
It would be an indulgent option for Wallace to abandon the quest for victory - his job description - for the sake of trying the team's young players - who aren't nearly ready for senior play.
Richmond must throw everything at clawing its way up the ladder. The coach knows he has the support of the committee and administration. He knows, too, that a club review of all things football will be studied after the half-way point of the season. Only then might it be appropriate to re-evaluate the club's ambitions.
For his own reputation Wallace cannot quit Richmond as he did the Western Bulldogs. He owes that much to the club that entrusted him with a five-year contract. He won eight out of the final 11 matches last year when he had just won three of the first 11. It can be done. The Richmond administration must be equally determined. There are games to be won in the name of pride and not given away in the name of experimentation.
Wallace and Richmond. They must fight for their dignity together.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25464447-5012432,00.html
