Quality man, quality footballer
By Martin Flanagan
The Age
August 27, 2005
TOMORROW, Richmond's Wayne Campbell will drive to Geelong with Matthew Richardson, the player who has been second longest at the club, for his 297th and final game. In the 15 years he has been at Richmond, the Tigers have never won at Geelong.
His mother was disappointed when Campbell was drafted by the Tigers in 1989. The club was in a lull. Campbell, then a year 11 student at Bendigo High, thought this meant that success had to be just around the corner. It wasn't.
Recently he read a series of interviews with Geelong footballers who played in grand finals and lost. He reasons that if he doesn't know what it is to have won a grand final, he doesn't know what it is to have lost one, either.
On Thursday, he showed me around Punt Road. He's proud of the new facilities but says one of the best things the Tigers have is that when you open the door of the training rooms, you're looking at the oval. "It still feels like a footy club," he said with enthusiasm.
He showed me a photograph of former property steward Dusty O'Brien. If anyone sums up Richmond for Campbell, Dusty does. "He was hard, he'd been in the war, he gave his all for Richmond. He kept his thoughts to himself but he knew the blokes who had a go, he knew the blokes who didn't, and you knew if you had his respect or not."
After the property room and the lockers, he showed me the boxing ring and the new pool. In the end, he says, it isn't the desire to play that goes but the desire to do all the things necessary to continue playing. The weights, the boxing, the swimming, the pre-seasons.
Then he took me to the Richmond museum and we talked to curator Ronnie Reiffel in front of a set of cutlery Jack Dyer won in 1936 as a best-and-fairest award in the Victorian Police Football Association.
Campbell has a place in that history as club captain for four years and a four-time winner of the best and fairest. In fact, he went within one vote of also winning it in his first full season at the age of 19.
He says his second coach, Yabbie Jeans, gave him a lot of confidence simply by telling him that, in his opinion, Campbell "could play". "I was surprised he even knew my name."
He won't, when asked, say who was the best of his subsequent coaches. I suspect this is because it's Richmond we're talking about and such a remark could trigger a brawl. Campbell got badly mauled twice through club politics, once when a dispute with then coach Jeff Gieschen led to him considering leaving the club and, second, when he replaced a player popular with supporters, Matthew Knights, as captain.
As a footballer, Campbell has been misunderstood. Because he played with a poker face, people didn't see the passion that is immediately obvious when you talk football with him. Doug Vickers, who recruited him to the club, says what a lot of people don't see is his intelligence.
Vickers, now a headmaster in Bairnsdale and coach of Wy Yung, says "he was always two possessions ahead of the play. He'd give it to you because he could see who you could give it to".
On Thursday, I asked Campbell a few questions about football and he asked me a few about journalism. One of the ways I first noticed him was through his newspaper writing, which I thought both articulate and considered.
When the matter was still in dispute, he came out against football racism and no Richmond footballer's name elicits a fonder response from him than that of Andrew Krakouer. Campbell made it his job to welcome him to the club. Of Campbell, Krakouer said: "His football record speaks for itself, but he's also a real good man."
The two things Campell valued most this week were a text message from Scottie Turner, Richmond's full-back from the mid-90s. "Everyone'll tell you Scottie Turner's a good bloke." Turner's text read: "Well done. My shout."
And he valued a letter from a rookie who didn't make it, thanking him "for the conversations". Campbell's a natural leader. People in the know, such as former champion and club official Flea Weightman, will tell you that.
Campbell, like Nathan Buckley, is an enthusiast for Australian football. I asked him to tell me a moment when he knew it was a great game. He nominates an incident at Waverley in 1992 when, from a wrap of Carlton arms, Weightman sent a handpass behind an opponent's head to Campbell running past, who goaled.
When reminded of it, Weightman said: "He was good enough to be in the right place." He describes Campbell as "a quality bloke who played quality footy". Vickers sees him as having been Richmond's Craig Bradley. Weightman wonders if the fact he wasn't in the old Richmond knock-'em-down mould told against him with supporters.
Campbell says the best thing about footy is the humility it teaches you. Your first 50 games you play for yourself, he says, then you start playing for the team. When he started, the satisfaction was in kicking a goal.
By the end, his satisfaction was in giving the ball to a young player and watching him do it.
He marries Sarah Johnson in November. Outside having a family, he can't imagine anything more exciting than playing league footy. He'll go to his last game with Richo and come home with Richo. Then on Monday, he will start finding out what it means to be retired from the game he is glad to have played for so long.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/08/26/1124563031815.html
