He's strong and he's boldEMMA QUAYLE
August 1, 2010 
Dustin Martin is comfortable in the spotlight. Photo: Craig SillitoeBEFORE he was drafted by Richmond late last year, Dustin Martin was boarding a few minutes' drive outside Bendigo with one of his junior teammates and his mother. They lived in a housing estate with new homes springing up everywhere, and as Martin leaned against a tree on a vacant property, having his photo taken for an Age article, a group of men working across the road began giving him a hard time.
They outnumbered him, they weren't particularly nice and they would have prompted many teenage footballers to request an alternative location. But they didn't worry this young man, at all. “They're idiots,” shrugged Martin, tucking a football underneath his arm, looking back at the camera, ignoring them completely and getting on with things. “Who cares about them?”
Not much gets under Dustin Martin's skin. “I don't like traffic …” said the midfielder this week, adding, “… and I hate slow drivers. But that's probably it, I reckon.” Watching the 19-year-old play all but one of Richmond's games this year, it has become clear that not much ruffles him on the field, either. He ranks second at his club for clearances and inside 50s, and third for contested possessions and disposals, and was nominated for the Rising Star Award after the 47-point win against Port Adelaide in round 10.
http://images.theage.com.au/2010/07/31/1727263/svTATTS-420x0.jpgDustin Martin shows off his tatts. Photo: Vince CaligiuriShadowed by Brett Kirk for much of the Tigers' round-14 win over Sydney, it was Martin who burst out of a pack late in the game, thumping the ball towards goal — this from a first-year player. Everything that has happened in the past eight months has been new to him. He wanted to play all of his first season, and he has found a way to, but not all of it has been as seamless as it has seemed from the outside.
It was obvious, in the few weeks leading up to the draft, that the Tigers would call Martin's name, but it still had to happen and he still went to bed each night thinking about how much things would suck if, for some reason, he didn't end up at an AFL club.
Moving to Melbourne, he was seriously unsure how he would remember the way to training each day. Waiting to start a pre-season run around the Tan, he felt nervous, hoping he wouldn't post a lousy time. “I thought I knew what it would be like, but everything surprised me, just with how professional it was, all the little things you had to do,” he explained. “I thought it would just be that we'd go to the club, train, and that's it. But you've got meetings, massages, physio, heaps of little things you wouldn't have thought of.”
He might have looked instantly comfortable against some of the competition's best midfielders, but he hasn't always felt that way. “It's still pretty weird, to be honest, playing against any team,” he said. “I still think of how I used to watch some of the players and think of how good they were, how I could never be that good. And then to be playing against them, competing against them and trying to beat them to get the footy, it's the weirdest thing. I like it, though. I like it a lot.”
As a footballer, Martin has been trying to get better every day. In training sessions, he reminds himself to ask not only why he has done something wrong, but what he has done right. At a stoppage during his round-one debut against Carlton, he paused for a moment, watching the ball, then looked for his opponent and saw him metres and metres away, running into the Blues' forward line. “I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe how fast the game was, how quick the players were. I had this problem with my defensive side — and I still do it a little bit — where I was watching the ball more than I should have been,” he said.
“Sometimes I just sort of sit there and watch where the ball's going, and all of sudden my man's down the other end of the ground and I'm chasing him. It's not like you can just go out there and play footy, in the AFL. You can at times, but you've to remember game plans, structures and all those things. There's a lot more to think about, but I think I'm getting better. Now I'm a bit more aware about what's going on around me. I still watch the footy a bit, but I think I do it less. That's what I had to do, switch on a bit quicker, jump onto things. I've improved a bit each week, I reckon.”
In other ways, Martin has tried not to move too far, too fast. As a teenager, he dropped out of his Castlemaine high school at the end of year nine, a decision he regrets now, but understands. “I was always keen to play AFL and I'd played in a schoolboys team and that sort of thing, but I started hanging out with blokes who weren't that interested in footy and who were kind of dragging me away from it a bit. Or, not dragging me away, but who probably just weren't such a good influence,” he said.
His father, Shane, made him move to Sydney and put him to work at his transport company, where Martin worked on the computer in the back office and loaded trucks. At Campbelltown, he played football alongside a few kids signed to NSW scholarships, and realised he should be able to play AFL too, if he wanted to.
He was away from home, he had no friends and he was working long, boring days. He was ready to go back, and he went back with more purpose. “I was just wasting my time, wasting my life up there,” said Martin, who made the Bendigo under-18 side four rounds into last year and by the end of the season was a No. 3 draft pick. “It was just, 'what am I doing with my life?' My dad was saying to me, 'These mates are no good for you' and all I was saying was, 'Yeah, whatever'. I wasn't going to school, I wasn't doing anything good with my time. He got me up there and it made me realise that I wasn't really going anywhere. I was working 12 hours a day, in a crappy job, and I didn't want to do that for however many years, for the rest of my life. There was no point in me being there, so I pretty much knew that I had to knuckle down.”
Martin grew up quickly, but he has, in his words, “sort of settled back down”. He moved in with a host family after the draft, then out to Altona with teammates Jayden Post and Ben Nason. He thought it was what he wanted to do, but he quickly realised that being independent meant cooking, and cleaning, and all those annoying things. From there, he moved in with club president Gary March and his family.
"I realised I wanted to just have a family around me again. I don't know what it is, it's just going home and having people there, I guess, sitting down to dinner with a family. It's been a much better thing for me, but we joke about it a bit. The boys were probably happy I went. I can be a little bit messy.”
He also has, he said, one more pet hate for the list. “Jayden Post's cooking. It's pretty bad. Can you add that in?”
Martin is learning more and more about footy — and about life — each day. “I've learnt a lot about life, I reckon,” he said. “Like how good it is to have a routine, to have a bit of purpose with what you do. How important it is, if you're doing something, to do it properly.” He is looking forward to the next month, to complete his plans to play an (almost) full first season.
“It feels like I've been here for ages already, but I'm still loving it every day,” he said. “I never wake up and wish I didn't have to train. I just love doing everything. When you're with the boys after the game, singing the song, it's so good. Even when you walk out of the ground, walk down Punt Road after a game with all the supporters, it's a pretty awesome feeling. It's been a good year, so far. It's been a really good year.”
TALE OF THE TATTS DUSTIN Martin had his neck tattooed in June, returning from the mid-season break with two Maori phrases - Ngati Maru and Matai Whetu - on either side of his neck. He and father Shane also have an identical tattoo, "Live Free. Die Free" across their stomachs.
Ngati Maru, said Martin, represents his father's "bloodlines", while Matai Whetu is his family's traditional meeting place. "It's just about my heritage. It's something I'd wanted to get done for a while," he said. "Some spots weren't too bad, but other bits just killed."
RISING FAST(Stats for Rising Star nominees after round 17) Disposals (ave) 1 Tom Rockliff (BL, 14 games) 22.1
2 Jordan Gysberts (Melb, 3) 21
3 Tom Scully (Melb, 16) 20.4
=4 Dustin Martin (Rich, 16) 20.3 =4 Jack Trengove (Melb, 14) 20.3
Disposal efficiency 1 Phil Davis (Adel, 12 games) 83.4%
2 Ben Reid (Coll, 14) 78.9%
3 Ben Stratton (Haw, 15) 77.7%
4 Jarrad Grant (WB, 13) 75.3%
5 Tom Rockliff (BL, 14) 73.2%
(Martin 70.2%) Contested possessions (ave)
=1 Dustin Martin (Rich, 16 games) 8.4 =1 Nic Naitanui (WC, 17) 8.4
3 Jordan Gysberts (Melb, 3) 8
4 Dan Hannebery (Syd, 15) 7.6
5 Jack Trengove (Melb, 14) 7
Clearances
1 Dustin Martin (Rich, 16 games) 4.8 2 Nic Naitanui (WC, 17) 3.8
3 Ryan Bastinac (NM, 17) 2.9
=4 Jack Trengove (Melb, 14) 2.9
=4 Jordan Gysberts (Melb, 3) 2.9
Tackles 1 Jack Redden (BL, 17 games) 5.7
2 Jack Trengove (Melb, 14) 3.9
3 Tom Scully (Melb, 16) 3.7
4 Todd Banfi eld (BL, 17) 3.5
5 Dustin Martin (Rich, 16) 3.4 Inside 50s
1 Dustin Martin (Rich, 16 games) 3.7 2 Todd Banfi eld (BL, 17) 3.5
3 Jack Redden (BL, 17) 3.4
4 Nat Fyfe (Freo, 12) 3.3
5 Ryan Bastinac (NM, 17) 2.9
Marks =1 Ben Reid (Coll, 14 games) 5.4
=1 Tom Rockliff (BL, 14) 5.4
=1 Ben Stratton (Haw, 15) 5.4
=1 Jack Redden (BL, 17) 5.4
=1 Phil Davis (Adel, 12) 5.4
=1 Jarrad Grant (WB, 13) 5.4
(Martin 2.1) STATS: CHAMPION DATAhttp://www.theage.com.au/afl/richmond-tigers/hes-strong-and-hes-bold-20100731-110mz.html
