Pavlich would be icing on cake for Tigers
15 August 2005
Herald Sun
Trevor Grant
TERRY Wallace has built his considerable reputation on a razor-sharp awareness of the brutal realities of football.
Those who want to discuss "what-ifs" or talk about the past get no time from him.
He has said on many occasions since he arrived at Punt Rd late last year that what has gone before at a club is irrelevant. It's all about the present and future.
All season he has dismissed questions about Richmond's pitiful past two decades. "I'm not interested in history," he has said many times this year, cutting off reporters' attempts at comparisons.
Even the most pragmatic team boss, though, sometimes can't help but indulge in a little reflection about what might have been.
Such a day came yesterday when Richmond bravely pushed itself to its limit against the Western Bulldogs, and proved to be only marginally short of a team that is running higher on momentum than any other in the competition.
After the loss, which effectively ended the Tigers' hopes of a finals berth, Wallace wondered aloud what might have happened in this contest if Richmond had chosen a different path in the draft in the past few years.
Indeed, he went so far as to nominate four gun players at other clubs who might have been Tigers now: Sydney's Jude Bolton, Geelong's James Kelly, Kangaroo Daniel Wells and Fremantle's Matthew Pavlich. "If you had those four running around, I reckon we might have got the job done today," he said.
Wallace was making the point that he believed Richmond had traded away its future for quick fixes in the recent past, leaving a shortage of players in the 22-24 age bracket; players, he says, who "win you premierships".
The draft is widely acknowledged as an inexact science that can embarrass all clubs at some time.
But Wallace said he had taken the time to examine closely the draft history and Bolton, Kelly, Wells and Pavlich had all come up as possible Tigers who got away.
"I've done my analysis of it all and you would cringe if you saw some of the names that ought to be running around in yellow-and-black jumpers," he said. "(They) would give us the run and carry that we now don't have."
Of course if there is a team that can expose a lack of run and carry, it's the Bulldogs, who, in the end, ran the Tigers' off their feet yesterday.
There was no greater example than the amazing race for the ball late in the third quarter, which took place after all 36 players were caught in one half of the ground.
When Bulldog Mitch Hahn kicked the ball over the centre line from inside Richmond's forward line, not one player was in the Bulldogs' half.
It was left to Matthew Boyd to chase it down, kick it along the ground and, after being well shepherded by Farren Ray, slot the goal from the square to give the Bulldogs a five-point lead.
It was an 80m-plus chase, in which the nearest Tiger was also the oldest. Poor Wayne Campbell announced his pending retirement last week, and, as his lungs threatened to collapse at the end of this gallop, he no doubt reckoned it was a very good decision.
"All dues to Wayne, but you wouldn't be backing him in a 100m foot race against most people at this stage of his career," said Wallace, who described the goal as a "real spiritual win" for the Bulldogs.
But, despite the defeat and a gradual slip out of finals contention, the Tigers coach reckons his side also has had its own spiritual victory with another fighting loss.
"This whole game is about image, and the image of the Richmond Football Club is, `Here they go, they are fading away again'. I've seen none of that," he said. "I'm comfortable with my guys (who are) having a real crack. And I'm comfortable with knowing where the future needs to go."
As for the past, says Wallace, it's history.
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