Clean-up begins at Wallace's Tigerland
Caroline Wilson
The Age
October 28, 2004
Richmond has a new coach and a new look - and the same old political problems, writes Caroline Wilson.
There are two scenarios unfolding at the Richmond Football Club and one of them is as fresh as the other is murky.
Already, in a physical sense at least, Terry Wallace has transformed the place. The first move made by the new coach was in refusing to even consider taking Danny Frawley's old office.
Wallace would not sit in a room, he said, that was hidden behind a pillar in the corner of the players' gymnasium. Not only would players be unlikely to drop in uninvited but he wanted to see his charges coming and going. He has instead taken the middle office recently vacated by football manager Greg Hutchison.
While impressed by the club's new administrative centre and pool area, Wallace has told supporter groups he was shocked upon entering the players' meeting room and finding its main feature was a bar.
The famously named "GR Room" - in honour of Graeme Richmond - was not only dirty and largely unfurnished but still boasted an old kitchenette and men's and women's bathrooms off one side.
Wallace instructed his new assistant Brian Royal to rip out the bar. The kitchenette and bathrooms will be curtained off and the room repainted. As will the possum stains on the ceiling of football director Greg Miller's office. And an exterminator was called in to rid the club of two possums that screeched over Wallace's office.
When the coach questioned the presence of a large, unsightly cabinet in the middle of the club's main medical room, the only response was that it has been there for as long as anyone could remember.
Many of his more meaningful changes were revealed in an address two nights ago to members of the Tom Hafey Club supporters' group, who turned up for an end-of-year function at the Richmond Social Club. Wallace did not flinch in explaining the reasons behind the departure of Ty Zantuck, a player whose attitude and behaviour - Zantuck has been scathing in interviews with other clubs about his old teammates - he said could no longer be tolerated by the leadership group.
Nor did the coach conceal his dismay at the relatively poor skill level among a number of players. Having cleared the club of most of its football department, Wallace has retained the club's fitness and conditioning staff but baulked at their 2005 pre-season game plan which consisted of three ball sessions a week. Wallace pushed for 14 but compromised at 11.
It is not unusual for a new coach to come into a club and rearrange the furniture. Alastair Clarkson at Hawthorn has, for example, replaced the table tennis table with a boxing ring in the gymnasium and overseen the players' repainting of the room.
Like Clarkson, Wallace is acting despite the more complex backdrop of a forthcoming and costly election that could see the chairman who employed him, Clinton Casey, voted from office. This would not be a problem for the coach, who has the support of both camps.
But what has muddied the situation has been the apparent backflip by Casey's group to put itself up as a board for re-election. While Casey pledged as much at a meeting with the Charles Macek-Brendan Schwab camp, his fellow directors have said they made no such promise and that only the trio up for re-election will stand.
Which would not only indicate that the winter compromise struck between the two parties has evaporated but that an extraordinary general meeting the club can ill-afford looms in December. The Macek group is expected to gather the 100 signatures required early next month.
At least three members of the Macek ticket were in the social club on Tuesday night listening to Wallace. By coincidence, none of Casey's seemingly splintered board attended. Not that Wallace would have noticed. He has five years to rebuild a once-proud football club and too massive a clean-up job to worry about a mess he cannot fix.
http://realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2004/10/27/1098667834358.html
