Gaspar's second coming
By Melissa Ryan
The Age
February 5, 2005
Terry Wallace freely acknowledges that his opinion of Darren Gaspar has changed now that he oversees the Richmond defender as his coach, compared with last year when Wallace worked in the media.
Then, Wallace, like many, was not so kind to the full-back who played out his own season from hell within Richmond's depressing slump to the bottom of the ladder.
Gaspar returned in round one last year, only nine months after a knee reconstruction in mid-2003, but was a pale shadow in comparison with his All-Australian form. As a high-profile struggler, he bore much finger-pointing in the badly performing side.
"I think I was one of the ones that harshly assessed him and I know that Brian Taylor was worried about coming back to the club (to be the forward coach) because he was another who was harshly assessing him (in the media) but I don't think we're the lone rangers there," Wallace said.
"He wasn't able to stand up and do his job of what we knew as an All-Australian defender, but in fairness it was eight-and-a-half months off a knee reconstruction, which meant a very very limited pre-season."
In his quiet way this week, Gaspar, who took a pay cut at the end of last season to help the club in its recruiting hunt, reflected upon the difficulties of last year and said that 2004 and his comeback had been tougher for him to deal with than 2003 and the actual injury.
"When you're not playing, there's not much pressure on you because you're out of the spotlight and stuff, but last year I was trying to battle the knee and trying to play, it was pretty tough," Gaspar said.
"Doing the actual injury was not that bad, you do day-to-day things trying to get your knee better, but once you have to try to manage that and try to play, that's when it gets a bit harder."
He did not regret being there from round one, even though it created more duress on his body, which then had to be borne throughout the season.
"It's a hard one. How do you really know until you start doing it?" Gaspar said. "I could have left it until round 10 or something like that and then I might have taken a few more weeks to get going and then the season's over so I would have wasted the whole season. It's a hard one to say whether I should have left it for a few more weeks.
"In hindsight it probably didn't go that well early on and that set me back for the whole year so it was a bit tough, but hindsight's a wonderful thing."
But with the 2005 season looming, Gaspar is looking to re-establish himself as one of the game's premier defenders, and the difference in how he is physically feeling compared with this time last year is marked.
"It's been a lot easier. I haven't had to worry about my knee as much, or not at all," Gaspar said. "It's been quite good whereas last pre-season I was battling with the knee and my whole body was out of whack and felt that way, whereas this pre-season's been normal and I've been doing everything so it's been good.
"I'll be doing everything I can to be playing as good as I can and I'm looking forward to being very competitive this year."
It is something Wallace also anticipates in his planning, having left Gaspar out of the leadership group so the defender could concentrate on returning to full strength, and the coach said the signs were there.
"I always saw him at his best as being fairly cat-like, low to the ground, able to trap the ball and do those sorts of things and I've seen some of those cat-like qualities back in his training," Wallace said.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/02/04/1107476801397.html
