The Tigers' new tune
Lyall Johnson | May 5, 2007
The Age
Come gather 'round people/ Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters/ Around you have
grown And accept it that soon/ You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you/ Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'/ Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.WHEN Bob Dylan released his classic in 1964, Richmond had not won a premiership for 21 years, since the great Jack Dyer led the club in its heyday as captain and coach.
But what was notable about 1964 was that 16 Tigers debuted that season, the fifth-most in the club’s history. In the next seven years, a further 65 players debuted.
Most of the household names came between '65-'67 - Royce Hart, Kevin Bartlett, Francis Bourke amongst them - but '64 debutant Tony Jewell featured in the 1967 premiership side that was extraordinary in one amazing way - not a single player had any finals experience.
"It was a fair cleanout in '64, '65, '66, back in the days when Graeme Richmond was at it. There would have been quite a few blokes who were disappointed. So it was an amazingly young side," said Mike Perry, who debuted in 1965 and is now head of the the Tigers' Past Players.
In today's AFL, every second club is "rebuilding", and anyone who witnessed the events at Richmond this week will see that the times yet
again are a-changin' at Punt Road Oval.
The pointy end of it obviously was the demise of veteran Darren Gaspar, whose 228-game career ended on Wednesday when he was told, to borrow from Dylan, that the waters around him had grown to the point where he was being swamped by younger defenders. Sadly for him, there was no place to swim but the shallow waters of the VFL and he reluctantly hung up his boots.
More subtly last weekend, but equally telling, the dawn of a new era was evident in the forward structure used by the Tigers against West Coast.
Spearhead Matthew Richardson, who for so long has been the focal point of the Tigers' forward line, was used for large slabs up the ground as a running player and swapping with Troy Simmonds in the ruck. This left Jay Schulz and fourth-gamer Cleve Hughes to control the forward arc. (Coincidentally, in the defensive zone, new players Luke McGuane and Graham Polak stood beside Gaspar.)
It was a type of "half-forward flank role" former coach Danny Frawley also had Richardson play, although his plans were too often thwarted by injuries to Brad Ottens and the youth of Schulz.
According to Wallace, the philosophy behind the move is simple.
Schulz and Hughes must be allowed time and space to grow into key forward roles without Richardson dominating the attacking flow. They
also have to work with him when he is pushed up the ground, as he is still one of the best forwards in the league.
Wallace is aware that a successful side needs a spread of goalkickers - Richmond’s last finals side in 2001 had half-a-dozen players scoring more than 20 goals - and so he is trying to train the Tigers to see options other than Richardson.
"I remember when I was playing at Hawthorn there was a fat little guy sitting in the pocket saying 'they won't kick the ball to me, I reckon I'm
out and they won’t kick the ball to me'. And the fat bloke was struggling to get anywhere because the dominant bloke of the last 10 years was getting
all the ball directed to him," Wallace recalled last week.
"Then the next year the dominant bloke left the footy club and the fat bloke ended up becoming one of the greatest goalkickers of all time."
That "fat little bloke", of course, was Jason Dunstall.
"And Leigh Matthews was the one sitting at full-forward. It took until Leigh left for Jason to really be able to find his own footing and really
take control of it," Wallace said.
"Now what I’m hoping to do is make the marriage a little better than that, so that it's not cut and dry. That's why we have tried to get Matthew up the ground at times so that the boys understand that there are other options there, so that those players there (in the forward line) understand that they've got a real strong and dominant role to play in the side, that they’re not just bit-part players.
"And so when Matthew does come back in there, number one they're feeling better about themselves so they are still leading, and number two others are looking for what the options are because they've had to do that in portions of the game. So I'm trying to get the marriage of the best of both worlds. Whether that works, time will tell.
"It will be all the players, the players up the field, how they deal with it and handle it, the key players in the forward structure, Matthew himself, how they marry in and take on what will become, clearly, new roles for everyone."
Some have suggested the move "robs Peter to pay Paul", that Richardson's true strength is as a key marking forward and that his running game - unequalled in the AFL by anyone his size - does not damage sides enough and that his decision making is not sound.
Wallace says it is too early to tell. "You’re not putting him up the field and he's doing nothing. He's getting 14 marks and he's stopping them from going that way. Providing the return you get out of him coming back in is OK, does that balance off what you would be getting from him in the forward line?
"I can't give you the answer to whether you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, we've done it for one week. But unless you find out and put some time into it . . . you'll never fi nd out."
And if nothing else, Wallace believes Richardson "enjoys the freedom. He’s the big colt just running around the ground. He loves it".
Wallace says that while he would love to see success for some of the older players such as Richardson, he and they realise it might in fact come after their time has passed and that part of their work now is building for the future.
"I think there are a couple of players in our side who have been around for a long time now in unsuccessful sides that would do anything to finally get the success they are looking for," he said.
"And I think Matthew's one of those who would genuinely love to see the club have some success. He's had his day when he was the one, the shining bright star and that sort of stuff and I think now he is into team success.
"I’m not saying he wasn't then, but just all of a sudden now he is getting
towards the end of his career and he's happy to do anything that will see the club back up on the rise."
Perhaps if Richmond get over Geelong today at Telstra Dome, they might sing a few bars of Dylan’s classic to the tune of Tigerland.
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