Humble Campbell departs without fanfare (The Age)
By Greg Baum
August 10, 2005
theage.com.au
If, as is possible, Wayne Campbell finishes on 299 games, it will tell the tale of his career. It will say that he was good enough to last, that he was somehow different and that something was missing: success for one, the unconditional favour of the fans for another. He acknowledges it.
Not that Campbell will need a figure to speak for him. He was and remains until season's end original in his thoughts and lucid in expressing them. This also sets him apart from the platitudinous multitude, and casts him as a suspicious figure among those who can't spell "suspicious". He will make no apology.
Yesterday's announcement of his imminent retirement typified him. "I'm retiring basically because I've just had enough," he said. Even if he had wanted to go on, he could not have summoned the will to face the pre-season tyranny of pool, gym, track and especially boxing.
Besides, if he had gone on and the Tigers had had success, there would still be seven or eight defeats next season, and their inevitable corollary, glum evenings of asking himself: "What's the use?" He was about to turn 33. He needed more evenness in his life.
Campbell volunteered that Richmond in his time had been "spectacularly unsuccessful". He said he had looked for meaning in this, but found none, not yet. He remembered the false dawns, but said this start under Terry Wallace felt real and sustainable.
But he would not change anything about his own experience, he said. Regret would not win him a retrospective premiership.
The ambiguity of fans seems unfair on a man who has stayed so long and given so much. But the bond between a football club and its followers is necessarily and gloriously illogical. Campbell acknowledged the reality of his qualified standing. He suspected it had two sources: his decision to ask to be traded in 1998, and his appointment as captain in 2001, succeeding the popular Matthew Knights.
Again, he said he regretted neither. Kevin Sheedy had told him that his transfer request had forced Richmond to take an honest look at itself for the first time in 15 years. As for the captaincy, he regarded it as the greatest personal honour of his career, greater even than his four best-and-fairests.
He had been gratified by the warmth of the fans at a 1000-head function on Monday evening. But he had never been a populist anyway, he said. He had sought only the respect of his peers.
Getting a fix on Campbell's place in Richmond history is not easy, for him or others. He will lie fourth on Richmond's list of long-servers, behind Kevin Bartlett, Jack Dyer and Francis Bourke, but said it was an narrow measure. "If I play 303 (games), am I a better player than Francis Bourke?" he asked. "(I) Don't think so."
He had grown up a Richmond supporter, revering the club's greats, and even now thought his name looked incongruous among them, like Smith next to Koutoufides. But it is, and that will be his lasting tribute.
Campbell's fate, like Shane Crawford's at Hawthorn, has been to be a good player in a generally bad time. Inescapably, some blame attaches, as it does to Matthew Richardson, and Knights, and Daffy and Gaspar and Gale and the rest of the unfulfilled.
But Campbell was not cut out to be a saviour. He did not take football games by the scruff, as did contemporaries Buckley and Hird. He did not quite have their skills, nor their sixth sense. What he did was to give his all in every game, until he was red in the face, and no matter what the scoreboard said.
Campbell said how much easier it was to run when your team was five goals in front than when it was five goals behind, and when it had won 15 games for the season rather than five. Wallace said the most difficult thing in football was to play consistently well in a regularly beaten team. He said the measure of Campbell should not be his four best-and-fairests, but that he had finished in the top three eight times.
Campbell said he would miss the blokey camaraderie. "I don't know if I can use the word 'love'," he said. "I guess I can."
He would miss "the magic of being a league footballer". There were 10,000 former players, but only 600 active. He had made that point to his teammates yesterday, as if to say: cherish it, it passes. He would miss winning at the MCG on a Saturday afternoon, and the rush it gave him. The best was the victory over Carlton in a semi-final in 2001. But he would also remember a series of last-round defeats that cost the Tigers finals football.
Immediately, he will get married and travel overseas, both long fixed on his agenda. The 40 years thereafter were blank at the moment. He imagined he could coach, but ¡ª oddly for an ex-player ¡ª said he was also interested in administration. He had, he said, ideas about how a football club should be run. He ought to know how it should not be run.
Life's rhythms now change for Campbell, and friends and family. Campbell's mother, a lone parent since he was 12, had missed few games and rang him before everyone, so predictably that he admitted with a slight blush he sometimes let the phone ring out. But when he rang to say he was quitting, she replied: "Thank God, I've had enough!"
So Campbell goes, with many accolades, but not a single false air.
THE CAMPBELL FILE
Age:
Debut: 1991
Games: 294 (six finals)
Goals: 170
Fourth in games played for Richmond behind Francis Bourke, Jack Dyer and Kevin Bartlett.
Four-time Jack Dyer Medallist. Only Bartlett (five times) and Dyer (six times) have won more awards
Eight times top-three in the B & F
Captain 2001-04
All-Australian 1995, 1999
Played under seven coaches
Since 1993 has averaged more than 23 possessions a game
Wayne Campbell 33 next month
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