Wallace's Tigers: insipid, unreliable
Caroline Wilson | June 7, 2009
THE MOST telling assessment of Terry Wallace's failure at Richmond probably came in the departed coach's own highlights reel, one he edited at his farewell press conference in the Richmond Social Club six days ago.
Wallace singled out his decision to move Matthew Richardson onto a wing in 2008, a tactical masterstroke which gave the football public one of last season's great spectacles and almost saw Richo win a Brownlow. Almost — but not quite — a recurring theme in Wallace's coaching career.
His second highlight involved Ben Cousins and his decision to give the disgraced champion another chance. Both worthy moves involving individual stars, one of whom is 34, the other who turns 31 later this month.
In terms of the Richmond Football Club, a place Wallace insists is better than when he arrived almost five years ago, the outgoing coach significantly did not discuss any young players in his Tiger highlights.
Wallace said he left recruiting to the recruiters but it could not be said that he, as a coach, could yet boast having overseen the fully successful development of any of the club's high draft picks in his time. That is with the possible exception Trent Cotchin.
But Wallace is gone now and few at Punt Road seemed sorry to see him go. Clearly the club believes its unreliable and generally insipid playing group is better off completing the desperately disappointing 2009 under the guidance of Coburg's coach of one-and-a-half seasons Jade Rawlings than the highly experienced Wallace.
The players largely like and rate Rawlings — he is also Richo's brother-in-law — which is not necessarily the reason he got the job. The Tigers board and executive have no reason to succumb in any way to a playing group it plans to cull as savagely as is possible under the AFL system.
The fact is the club does not believe Wayne Campbell is ready to become a senior coach. He is seen as still having too many flaws in his coaching make-up although those flaws are not considered insurmountable. Just as Campbell was highly regarded by the Western Bulldogs, a club which nonetheless privately regards its assistant Leon Cameron as a more complete coach-in-waiting.
Rawlings has coached his own team and the transition in the minds of the Richmond chiefs should prove smoother with assistants Campbell and David King retaining their roles and expected to pursue senior coaching positions. Craig McRae will be looked at to take over at Coburg.
Wallace's future is less certain. Despite strong speculation early in the week he appears to have never been in the mix for a senior football position at the Gold Coast although, like many who have mixed media and football commitments, the media no longer looms as the cash cow it was.
He probably conducted at least one too many interviews over the past week, interviews which seemed more and more to sound like job applications, particularly when Monday's outlining of his curriculum vitae going way back to Wallace's marketing role at Sky Channel would have been more than enough.
In isolation The Footy Show grilling — the result of a financial deal struck some weeks ago before Wallace was finally moved out of Tigerland — did not hurt him in terms of Richmond because no one would have thanked him for revealing all the details of the Chris Newman confrontation and he has been steadfast in his support of the current administration.
It is well known that Sydney compensated Wallace financially but, again, there has been no expectation of that ever being confirmed by either party and his dodging of that question was not surprising.
No, Wallace's big mistake was to give his watered-down version of the Bulldogs departure, a version hotly denied by the club itself which, since Friday night has seemed happy enough to point to the scoreboard.
Our understanding is that he never shook hands with David Smorgon and Campbell Rose at that fateful Monday meeting — they were stunned when he said he could take the club no further —and in fact drove away from the club the following day without saying goodbye to either man after one of his leadership group tipped him off that the players did not want him to coach the final game of season 2002.
So to suggest otherwise only diluted Monday's apology, which appeared to all who heard it totally sincere.
It is too easy to say that Wallace was badly advised. He is a grown man after all.
It was clear on Friday night that Richmond and Bulldogs supporters had mostly moved on from Wallace. In the coming days the Tigers board will ratify the coaching sub-committee, which will spread the net far and wide in finding his replacement, with Rawlings clearly only a caretaker at this stage.
The Gary March board and its administration — clearly being led in football terms by Craig Cameron and not Steve Wright — can rightly blame others for the failure of Wallace which, of course, is not Wallace's alone but which has destroyed his coaching career. This next decision and the restructure and rebuilding that accompanies it will be their true test.
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