Is Campbell's use-by date approaching?
July 16, 2005
Jake Niall
The Age
An in-form Wayne Campbell, on the cusp of 300 games, is still considering retirement, while Terry Wallace is considering how to change his mind, Jake Niall reports.As it stands, on the day of his 291game for Richmond, Wayne Campbell is more likely than not to turn his back on 300 games, turn down the $250,000 or so he would get next year and backpack off into the sunset just as success dawns on Richmond.
But, assuming he sticks to his plan of leaving the game, its money and milestones behind, Campbell will open his arms to the vast possibilities beyond the AFL cocoon, spending 2006 travelling the world with the woman he will marry in November.
Campbell had indicated from the outset of 2005 that this season would be his last. It seemed clear that the former skipper would enjoy only one winter under Terry Wallace, a solitary final year’s freedom from the captaincy, and that he would not be around when Richmond was re-acquainted with the unfamiliar month of September.
At the completion of 15 rounds, each of these assumptions has been challenged. Wallace has invited Campbell to play on in 2006, dangling the 300-game bait. Campbell, although still preparing for marriage and 12 months of travel, has left the door slightly ajar for another season.
And, having deprived him of the team success he always craved, the capricious Tigers, unexpectedly, have come to Campbell’s aid. Defeat the Saints today and they will probably make the eight. Campbell, 33 in September, has played finals in two of his 15 seasons at Punt Road Oval.
Mindful of rebuilding club pride as much as the team, Wallace wishes to see Campbell become the fourth Richmond player to play 300 games in yellow and black.
Only the iconic trinity of Jack Dyer, Kevin Bartlett and Francis Bourke have fronted up 300 times for Richmond and, as Wallace observed, it would be a “gala moment in the history of the footy club” if Campbell became the fourth man.
With a further nine games required after today, Campbell could make it to 300 if he did not miss any games and the Tigers managed three finals - an improbable scenario.
He would not return next year, as some creaking desperadoes have, just to limp to 300 games. In the unlikely event that he shelved his retirement and Lonely Planet travel guides, Campbell would play on because he was still capable of playing decent footy.
“There are so many things to run through before I decide whether I play or don’t play,” Campbell said this week.
Campbell confirmed that he intended to travel for 12 months soon after he married his fiancee Sarah in November, a trip that had been on the couple’s horizon for some time.
Like most prominent AFL players, Campbell has not enjoyed the luxury of getting away for more than a month at a time. He gave his youth to Richmond, perhaps he thinks Sarah has given enough of hers?
“It’s pretty hard when you’re playing footy and you get to the age where you’re almost too old if you’ve got a family and that sort of thing,” Campbell’s teammate Matthew Richardson said of his friend’s travelling ambitions. “It is a big decision that needs to be made.”
While Campbell would not say much more, because he had not made an unequivocal decision to retire, Wallace is willing to make it easier for him to play on. The Richmond coach would consider allowing Campbell to miss a hefty chunk of the pre-season, enabling him to take a truncated trip overseas.
“We haven’t had the discussion, but absolutely, there’s always flexibility,” Wallace said. “I mean, you’ve only got to look at Shane Crawford stepping away when Schwabby was there and taking some extended time. So it’s not anything that hasn’t been done before.”
Wallace was of the view that players aged 28 and over might be helped by a longer summer break anyway, and Campbell shaped as the ideal guinea pig.
“I reckon someone in this competition will be game enough some time shortly to allow the 28-pluses to almost come back after Christmas . . . I’ve heard so many players say, ‘I could have made it through another season, I didn’t think I could make it through another pre-season’.”
Fully recovered from the torn Achilles tendon he snapped celebrating a goal in 2003, Campbell is certainly playing well enough to justify another year. Wallace rated him as one of Richmond’s top halfdozen in 2005. Having climbed to within a handful of games, Wallace thought Campbell should charge for the 300-game summit.
“I just mooted it with him, it would have been probably six or seven weeks ago. But I thought a player playing in the form he was in that was so close to 300 games ought to get there. I mean, it’s hard enough for any player to get there in the AFL, let alone a player who’s playing in that good a form.”
Yet, it also would be fitting for Campbell to walk away while he is still roadworthy, eschewing the milestone, the dollars and the prospect of Richmond on the rise. Few professional footballers would in his circumstances, but Campbell is far from the prototype player.
Campbell is an independent soul and, for that, he has been almost as misunderstood as Nathan Buckley, whom Danny Frawley thought the forthright Campbell resembled in some respects. “He doesn’t suffer fools,” Frawley observed.
A sizeable part of the Tiger Army, reared on a basic diet of '70s violence, struggled to warm to Campbell, a consummate accumulating running player, rather than basher and crasher.
When Campbell asked Richmond for a trade in 1998, he was viewed as a deserter, when in fact the midfielder was making a statement about the troubled state of Richmond, then unequal to his own standards of professionalism.
Campbell also spurns football's insular culture and takes an interest in the wider world. Wallace called him "well-rounded". "And I think some of that well-rounded behaviour is summing it up. You know, he's made a commitment.
"He's made a commitment to the Richmond Footy Club, but he's also made a commitment to his wife-to-be. You don't just make those commitments and then walk away and do exactly the opposite in two seconds.
"And I understand that and, you know, I wouldn't ever step in the way of him and Sarah working out what they need to do or don't need to do . . . I think my role is, and I only have one role, my role is to sort of say what I believe he can achieve and say to him that the Richmond Footy Club would love for him to achieve that."
In an era when the financial and social rewards are far greater than even a decade ago, the players who bale out when they have at least one year left tend to be those with viable non-playing careers.
Essendon's Sean Wellman, a practising podiatrist, was as well-placed to give footy the boot last year as Campbell today.
Clearly, Campbell is not desperately seeking dollars. In recent years, he has established a reputation as one of the shrewder business heads among the AFL players, with a stake in two popular pubs, the trendified Swan on the corner of Swan and Church streets in Richmond, and the once intimidating, but increasingly pacified Waterside Workers on the corner of Flinders and King streets.
"It wouldn't be a career thing, it wouldn't be because he needed to keep playing to earn a few extra dollars," Richardson said. "He's certainly been well set up outside of footy."
Should Campbell walk away and disappear for a year, one suspects that football will not have seen the last of him. For all his diverse interests and desire for balance, Wallace notes that Campbell also possesses a sharp football brain.
This year he expressed interest in becoming involved in football administration at club level.
True to his methodical ways, Campbell arranged to speak to a couple of the better AFL club chief executives, to better understand what might be involved; perhaps he thought Richmond, with its history of boardroom bloodshed, had not provided the ideal education in how to run a club.
Whether he pursues this, buys more pubs or does something else entrepreneurial, he is fortunate to have what all good players have when they get the ball - time, and options.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/07/15/1121425076526.html
