Martin a brilliant ray of sunshinerichmondfc.com.au
By Tony Greenberg | Wed 02 December, 2009From the time former AFL player Jamie Elliott, in his then capacity as coach of Bendigo League club Castlemaine, first saw Dustin Martin strut his stuff on the football field, he knew the teenager had exceptional playing ability.
Elliott, who played 58 games of league football for Fitzroy, Richmond and St Kilda in a career spanning six seasons (1991-96), was in his first year as Castlemaine’s coach, in 2008, when a then 16-year-old Martin came under his coaching direction.
Castlemaine struggled in the ’08 season, winning only five of its 16 games, but it had a real shining light in Martin, who last week was taken by Richmond with its first selection (pick No. 3 overall) in the 2009 AFL National Draft.
Despite missing the last two games of the season, when he was called up by TAC Cup team, the Bendigo Pioneers, Martin won Castlemaine’s leading goalkicker award, with 22 goals. Interestingly, 11 of those goals came in Martin’s final two games with the club - against Kyneton and eventual grand finalist Golden Square. And, not surprisingly, Martin was a runaway winner of the competition’s rising star award that year.
“As a club we felt we needed to be pushing the kid to be where he should be, because you knew at that early stage he was pretty special, but he was too young to be drafted in 2008,” Elliott told the “Bendigo Advertiser”.
“He’s just a powerful, powerful kid; I used to do one-on-ones with him as a 16-year-old and he would just push me off the ball.
“I thought he could have played senior AFL football this year as a 17-year-old, no doubt.
“I’ve never seen a kid run into a pack of six or seven men and come out backwards with the ball . . . it’s not as though he was running through the pack, he would run in like a bull, grab the footy and run out backwards.
“There’s no doubt he’s the best kid I’ve seen play at that age; he’s just a phenomenal talent.”
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