The man behind the maskDate March 28, 2013
Emma QuayleFootball writer with The Age
Dustin Martin is not the only person at Richmond looking forward to the football season starting, and the 21-year-old spending the next five (or more …) months doing the thing he knows best and loves the most. No one at the club has bothered counting the number of media calls it has taken over summer, but they could count on one hand the times their No.4 hasn't been asked after, in one way or another.
People are fascinated with Martin. It's probably what happens when you make such a bold, adventurous debut, show up for your second season with neck tattoos and get in trouble for taking a sleeping pill and missing a training session. Look around the Tigers' cheer squad during the Carlton game: if the people behind the Tiger Tatts website have done their job there will be replicas everywhere.
They love him, yet so many people seem so determined to cut him down. It wasn't only the number of untrue rumours that were rehashed on social media every second week throughout summer that was disturbing, but the delight people seemed to take in them. It was almost as if people were barracking for them to be true, for him to meet some sort of crashing end, the more blazing the better.
Why? Richmond has had some genuine and serious concerns for Martin, the company he keeps and the things he does or doesn't do while away from the structure and sense of purpose that a training schedule gives him. The club's been honest about that. But rather than wanting him to fail, why aren't we celebrating what he is actually achieving in his life?
Martin has had very little handed to him. Not that he'd tell anyone. In the two years before he was drafted he lived with his mother in Castlemaine, having dropped out of school two years earlier. He moved to Sydney's western suburbs and worked long days for his father's transport company.
He came back, started playing for the Bendigo Pioneers, took up a personal training course and moved in with one of his teammates and his mother. Somehow he got himself drafted at No.3 that year. Almost immediately, he was in the Richmond team.
He's growing up in front of everyone, and there's no way he would be doing it at the Tigers if they didn't love him as a person. His teammates talk about the same things: his extreme shyness, how he's almost introverted. How he loves to be around people in spite of this. How he wants to do things right and follow the people around him, but can get directionless and follow the wrong people, if they're the ones around. The tattoos have been misleading: they are to acknowledge his Maori heritage, not to make him look tough.
The other thing they know is he is genuine. That, while other players have been caught out trying to find ways around the rules, his mistakes are just that, errors he doesn't realise he's making. How he needs direction, but it won't help to give him too much. ''We can't tell him who to hang out with, he needs to decide that for himself, but it's hard,'' said one player.
Martin lived for a few weeks over summer with Trent Cotchin, who can read people and their motivation with insight far beyond his 22 years. He wouldn't have invited him in if he thought Martin didn't care. Martin has become close with Mark Williams, who recently sent him home from a family dinner with a baked cake. The next day, Martin wanted to know what sort of cake he liked, so that he could return the favour. He has started working one day a week for Linfox, learning more about the transport industry, having something new to do. He's said things that have made it clear how grateful he is to know that so many people want to help him be good.
They're sure he will be, and it says a lot about Richmond that it has got him to a point where the club is now being asked about his improved endurance, his even greater power, the way he has been dominating training sessions.
Martin is only 21. He deserves credit for what he's done, and encouragement for what he could still achieve from here.
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