Don’t argue: Why Dustin Martin can’t be tackledMichael Gleeson
The Age
March 26, 2021 Patty Dangerfield would reasonably have thought he had him. With a minute and bit to play in last year’s grand final, Rhys Stanley fumbled the ball and Dustin Martin sliced between him and the Cats champion Dangerfield, pick-pocketing the ball and wheeling onto his left foot on the boundary line. Dangerfield lunged across and grasped at Martin’s waist. Dangerfield was off-balance but he is strong, he’d be able to hold most players. He couldn’t hold Martin.
Dusty wriggled free and snapped his fourth goal. The Tigers’ third premiership in four years was already won by then, and if another Norm Smith Medal was not assured for Martin, the Richmond superstar made certain of it in that moment. He could not be stopped.
“He is so strong,” said former Richmond assistant coach Justin Leppitsch. “That one you saw in the grand final, the last goal where he can just stamp his ground and roll his hips ... Dangerfield flew off him. He just has that strength through the core, that if he needs to also plant his feet and wiggle his hips the tackler just goes flying.”
If Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury is the player who stops time, which means he is rarely tackled, Dustin Martin is the one who can’t be tackled.
Pendlebury is an eye-of-the-storm player who finds a place of calm as chaos swirls around him. Martin is the actual storm, the twister that sucks players to him, picks them up and spits them out like tin rooves across a field.
Martin has broken twice as many tackles as any other player in the AFL over the past five years, according to Champion Data. Some players barely break one tackle; Martin breaks hundreds.
Since 2016, he has broken 206 tackles in 102 home-and-away games. The next best is Dangerfield, with 103 from the same number of games. After them comes Melbourne’s midfield bull Jack Viney with 100 in 83 games.
Don’t argue, the numbers don’t lie. The competition can’t touch Dusty.
How does he do it?The weird thing about Martin is that he is clearly strong, but he is not elite in the gym. Well, not at everything. He could squat-lift a small car but as someone at Richmond put it, he is no Alex Rance. Rance, the retired champion defender, was renowned for his freakish exploits in the weights room. Gym work is one of the few things in football at which Martin is average.
Like many of the best players Martin’s power best translates not to lifting weights but in moving players. His power is in his hips and backside. It is in his fast-twitch fibres and sharp feet that have the lightness to move quickly, but also the sturdiness to plant and stick.
He has relatively short legs and a longer torso, which gives him strength over the ball to brace. But he also generates enormous speed and power in a short space and in quick time, so he can move sideways very quickly. That’s what makes him slippery when an opponent tries to grab him.
“Dusty is in about the best third of players for squats and lifting but the feature of Dustin is his ability to prepare himself is elite, that’s why he just doesn’t miss. He swims at one of the sea baths every morning .... he gets out on the mountain bike, he is religious about getting a certain amount of ks in his legs on the bike,” Tigers recruiting managing Matt Clarke said.
“It’s more for Dustin about his flexibility rather than lifting heavy weights. It’s his core strength and his reaction time.”
There are plenty of players with power, plenty of players with balance and plenty of players with speed. Not many have all three.
Martin’s technique, combined with those physical assets, separates Dusty from the rest.
“He steps into the contact,” Leppitsch said.
“A lot of people run away from the contact and try to avoid it whereas he embraces it and steps into it and either fends or hits and then steps away from it.
“He has a great knowledge and understanding of how and when to do that.
“All the best players over time have been well balanced - Gary Ablett – they just have superior balance. Dusty doesn’t just have the balance, he has got the core to hold himself up. That is the main strength of his game.”
Former Richmond assistant coach Mark Williams, now at Melbourne, worked closely with Martin and said an under-appreciated fact is Martin works hard at it.
“We would spend 20 minutes after every training session just doing stuff for what might happen in the game and how to get out of it and get a better result,” Williams said.
“He has the ‘don’t argue’ but he has strength in the core, he shakes his bum. Back in the day Tim Watson and Robert Harvey had the same thing, they could shake you off so they knew, ‘Yeah, you have got me kind of but you haven’t really got me’. He drives the legs and shakes them off.
“Some people become panicky when they get touched.
“A touch could be a tackle or it could be just a touch and that is what Dustin thinks of it as: ‘you are only touching me you haven’t actually got me.’”
Don’t argue (TM)Martin’s signature move, of course, is the Don’t Argue (TM).
He doesn’t have abnormally long arms, but he has timing. As Leppitsch said, he steps towards the tackler, not away, so he drives more force through his fend off. He also reads the tackler expertly to know when he has over-committed and thus slightly overbalanced in the tackle, and then he times his fend-off.
“He has the power and lateral speed but he times his move to step into the player and then throws out the fend-off and it makes it [the don’t argue] stronger,” Leppitsch said.
“He pushes. Most people think he is trying top run over people but he actually pushes and runs away from them. They are trying to grab something that is not there for very long.”
Williams agreed, saying it was an artful deception.
“He upsets the tackler before they upset him. As soon as he makes a connection he doesn’t keep running over the top of them he runs away. People are thinking he is coming forward but he is actually going away,” Williams said.
The Don’t Argue is more akin to a rugby move, like something Jonah Lomu would do, than an AFL technique.
Kevin Foote, defensive coach for the Melbourne Rebels and former South African national player, has been impressed by Martin and his style of fending off, which he feels AFL players are more vulnerable to because they have to remain upright when tackling. They can’t go low to try to wrap up the legs as you would in rugby.
“He looks like a boxer. He stands with a left hand to fend and right hand to carry [the ball] ,” Foote said.
“He obviously ticks a lot of boxes with his strength and he is very balanced and he has that big left fend, he is predominantly right-handed.”
Dusty did play some rugby league when he moved to Sydney as a kid but the Don’t Argue, according to those at Richmond, emerged later through footy.
So, how do you tackle him?“I wouldn’t over-commit on the first tackle,” Leppitsch said.
“I would sort of stay with him, wait for the arm to come up and wait for your opportunity because he is so good at seeing when the tackler is over-committed and that is when he strikes. That is when he pushes forward off them and gets them to ground, where if you stay balanced and stay in the tackle a bit more and don’t over-commit to that first tackle, that would be the way to stay with him and maybe get him on the second or third opportunity.
“But he is so good at reading the tackler.
“ ... It is like a rugby league skill, he is so good at knowing when the tackler is coming at you to break it.”
Foote recommends a two-fold approach. Firstly, attack his right side. Secondly, get help.
“I would make sure defenders always line up to attack the ball and get away from that fend as much as possible and make him shift the ball into his left hand because he likes to carry with his right.
“So make sure [where you can] defenders are coming to that right hand side and close his space as quickly as possible.
“We call it havoc defence. I would put as much pressure on him and then put as many players between him and his teammates as possible so he has to go for that harder kick.
“And double mark him. Make sure we approach him from the right hand side. I know in AFL you have to tackle above the knee but I think you can grab the arm so I’d grab his arm or hit it down.”
Williams channels Mr Miyagi from Karate Kid, who taught “Daniel-san” the art of defence with the “wax on, wax off” method.
“You have to be aware it [the fend-off] is coming ... Get yourself close to him because the bigger distance between you and he the easier for him,” Williams said.
“It’s Mr Miyagi, wax on wax off. That is exactly what it is about and it still applies. No doubt I would do that [try to swipe away Martin’s arm]. But you have to hit him before he hits you.
“And then, good luck.”
The teammate who brought Dusty downWhen Steve Smith made hundred after hundred in the 2019 Ashes and England’s bowlers were bereft of ideas as to how to get him out, Nathan Lyon wondered what the fuss was about.
Lyon routinely got him out in the nets, the off-spinner laughed in an ABC interview on grand final day 2019.
Richmond winger Patrick Naish is like Lyon. He wonders what all the fuss is about.
During a practice match early last year, Martin had the ball and looked up to see the menacing figure of Naish. Generously listed at 78kg, possibly while wearing clothes, boots and carrying a bag, Naish went at Martin with trepidation and a plan.
“It was a bit weird because he sort of fended me off but because I have a massive physique I was able to stay with him. Look, I am massive, so I was able to tackle him. Yeah, I brought him down,” Naish recalled.
“He had the ball and pretty much tried to take me on and I just caught him. With Dusty you have to get a bit lower which is what I did. By the time I tackled him he was a bit too slow getting the don’t argue up. I completely beat him for pace.”
Martin didn’t like it. But the rest of Richmond did.
“He hated it. He whacked me afterwards. He said ‘stop being a champion’,” Naish said.
“The boys loved it though, especially Shane Edwards. He loved it the most. He gave it to Dusty. He went straight to him and said ‘Not today mate’.”
During the Tigers’ long stretch in hubs last year, the moment Naish brought down Martin was revisited more than once. In team meetings, at breakfast, on a bus, a voice would float over the room: “Hey Dusty remember the day I tackled you?”
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