Brendan Gale on SEN - Sept. 4

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AUDIO: Benny Gale on SEN today ...

http://soundcloud.com/sen1116

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Tigers confident Martin will stay: Gale
Brett Anderson
SEN
4-9-2013

Richmond CEO Brendon Gale has told SEN that the club is “very confident” that out of contract star Dustin Martin will remain at Tigerland beyond this season.

Martin, who is enjoying a career-best season, reportedly rejected Richmond's most recent contract offer, and is understood to be seeking somewhere between $600,000 and $650,000 a season.

Despite this, Gale said that Tiger fans shouldn’t worry too much about their young star’s future at the club.

“We are very confident that Dustin will be at Richmond next year…he’s indicated as much,” Gale said.

“We were very close to coming to terms, there are a couple of minor details we are working through and we decided, “lets just defer this to the end of the year, we don’t want it to be a distraction.”

“Dustin has got some talent, he’s a maturing player, we’d like to like that he’s got a very important future at our club and we are confident that he’ll stay at our club.”

Gale also said that the club wouldn’t stand in the way should highly sought after development coach Mark Williams be offered a senior coaching job elsewhere.

Williams had been linked with the vacant Melbourne position until it emerged that former Sydney premiership coach Paul Roos is set to take on the job and could still be in the hunt for either the Brisbane or Essendon roles.

“We are on record that we certainly wouldn’t stand in his way should he be offered a senior coaching job,” Gale said.

“Mark is a very important part of our coaching team.

“He’s very close with Damien – they have got a long established relationship.

“He’s great to have around the place – he’s a bit mad, but he’s just passionate about footy and improving players.”

http://www.sen.com.au/display-article-2013/Tigers-confident-Martin-will-stay-Gale/61510

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* Sometimes the experience for our boys is the experience itself. There could be no bigger experience than playing Carlton in a final with the history and rivalry between the two clubs. Our last victory in a final was against Carlton in 2001. We're looking forward to Sunday.

* Dimma believes playing the best brings out your best so we want to play Carlton at full strength. We're confident our best is good enough. We disappointed with how we played a few weeks ago against Carlton but we believe Sunday will bring out our best.

* Is Sunday a sell-out? Depends on walk-up numbers. AFL members and guests are sold out and the RFC allocation is sold-out. Up to how many MCC members show up but all signs are pointing towards a sell-out.

* Identified 3-4 years ago you can't have a competitive football program without a competitive business. There's a unity of purpose at our footy club and Dimma and the leadership group epitomise that. We've cleared our debt a year ahead of schedule; we have 60k members this year and will give 75k a shake next year; we can't reach the 3 finals in a row mark by 2014 but Benny believes we'll get there soon.

* We were bottoming out (non-intentionally) at the worst possible time with the two new teams and compromised drafts when Benny arrived so we needed to invest in our recruiting. It's an ongoing process. Trades are a lot better (eg: Chaplin) and Benny knew free agency was coming in via his role in the AFLPA so we were well prepared for that. It's ongoing so we've still got to work hard in recruiting to keep improving.

* When we played Melbourne this year we lost $100k at the gate. So having struggling teams in the comp. affects crowds etc ... so affects everyone. So Benny supports the AFL helping our struggling clubs.