Dustin Martin untold story: Where it all started for Richmond starELIZA SEWELL,
Herald Sun
2 September 2017THE lights at Castlemaine’s Camp Reserve are starting to dim as, deep in the pocket closest to the Magpies’ rooms, the kid lines up.
He’s 16, maybe 17, and older teammates including Luke Walters look on from a splintered bench seat, cans in hand.
“We’d be sitting here having beers and the lights are virtually off and he’d be there checksiding goal after goal after goal,” Walters, 36, tells the Herald Sun.
“He’d go and get his footies and run them back, by himself. It was bizarre.
“You’d actually sit there and have bets — ‘All right he’ll get four out of five’. Most times he’d get five out of five.”
Today Dustin Martin arguably is the biggest name in football.
Back then he was just a boy with a dream — and a killer banana kick that only got better and better. Hard work will do that.
The Castlemaine ground is nestled between train tracks and a rise of houses, a lone palm tree at its entrance. It’s the footy ground and the town’s showgrounds, even home to the table tennis club.
Bryan Maltby first saw Martin play there for the Magpies in an under-16½ competition, but he didn’t last long in the juniors.
“He went straight into the seniors, more or less,” Maltby, 65, says.
“They’d isolate Dustin out on the wing and the coach would say, ‘Just kick it out there, any old how, anywhere, and he’ll get it’. Ninety-nine times out of 100 he’d get the ball.
“He’s always been a prodigious kick. It’s not a big, long loping kick; it’s long and hard and flat. From day one. Both sides of his body.
“When he started his football career here, if you made the seniors you got $50. That’s what he started on. But it wasn’t about money for him. He was always striving to improve himself as a footballer.”
Walters was a key player in that 2008 game plan described by Maltby — it helped secure him a best-and-fairest win over Martin, legend has it by a single vote.
(A year later Martin was at the Bendigo Pioneers, and by Round 1, 2010, lining up for Richmond at the MCG).
“He’d play on a wing and every play had to go through Dustin,” Walters confirms.
“He was 17 playing against 25 to 30-year-olds and our game plan was to kick it to Dustin.
“It didn’t faze him and he’d just get the ball and he knew how to push people away. He had that don’t-argue back then … he was only a kid but it was crazy how he’d push blokes over.”
“He was pretty much a bull when he started,” recalls Jamie Elliott, who was Martin’s coach that year.
“There’s not too many people who can run into a pack, grab the footy and run out backwards pushing people away, especially when you’re 16 years of age.
“He’d listen, want to train, always the last off the track.”
Nick Churchill tells a bloody good tale and sells cider for a living. He’d sell a lot of it, you suspect.
The 46-year-old Castlemaine local played for the Magpies through the 1980s and 1990s. He remembers watching one of Martin’s first senior games.
“Dale Bower was a recruiting agent for Footscray and I actually said to him, ‘Mate, I’ve just seen this gun who’s going to play AFL’,” Churchill says as he watches the Magpies take on Golden Square.
The recruiter was sceptical. The scout was adamant.
“I said, ‘He’s just kicked eight, at 16, against the reigning premier ... from centre half-forward’.
“He was the only player at Castlemaine who was getting a kick; we lost by about 15 goals.”
The margin last Saturday in the seniors, as Castlemaine hosted the final game of its Bendigo League season, was much the same. The Magpies were thrashed by 138 points.
“I don’t even know if Dusty could help us today,” Churchill jokes.
It’s been a long season for the Magpies, who will finish second bottom.
Last Saturday the under-18s, backing up after a default the week before, lead into the last quarter only to be overrun.
The reserves, with club president and veteran Ian Bracken everywhere, hang on for a stirring upset win over the Bendigo visitors. The uplifting victory gives the seniors confidence they too can defeat the finals-bound Golden Square.
But “The Square” is far too strong for the young Magpies.
Playing down back for the seniors is 18-year-old Zac Denahy. Turns out he’s Martin’s cousin.
Knowing his breeding, you can pick up a bit of Dusty in the gait. And he’s got the same bright green Pumas.
Denahy has a fair leap and he’s played two games for TAC Cup side Bendigo Pioneers this year. He remains tight with his cousin.
“Everyone gets around him at the club,” Denahy says as he watches the seconds play.
“I go down and watch his games. He’s come down and watched a few of my games over the years. It’s good to get him down here.”
While the Castlemaine crew are proud of their product, 5km out the road towards Daylesford, the folk at Campbell’s Creek have an even earlier claim on the Brownlow Medal favourite.
At the Creekers, Martin wasn’t yet Dusty, he was simply Dust.
Cody Adamson, now 27, remembers Dust turning out in the under-10s, illegally, as it emerges. He was only six, after all.
“One of the other kids in our team wasn’t allowed to play because he was under seven, but we all wanted Dustin to keep playing, but because he was under seven he got dobbed in as well,” Cody says.
“We lost one of our best players … in under-10s it was like he was already a 10-year-old. I don’t know, it was just his skills and everything. He was big.”
Back then Martin loved the Saints, and especially Robert Harvey.
“You could not get Robert Harvey’s jumper off him,” remembers Steve Adamson, Cody’s dad and a life-long Creeker who coached Martin in the under-12s.
“He trained in it, he went to school in it, he slept in it. Robert Harvey was his idol.”
And Martin always knew what he wanted to do with his life.
“Mum and Dad used to have the Campbell’s Creek store and (Martin’s Dad) Shane would pick us up in the ute and (take the boys out to Dustin’s house),” Cody says.
“They’d made a footy field for us out of a paddock. We’d play football all day, the three Martin brothers (Dustin, Bronson and Tyson) and my brother (Josh), until it was dark.
“We’d go inside and Dustin would always stay out by himself, practising kicking goals.
“That’s all he wanted to do. Just play AFL. There was no other option.”
Martin left school in Year 9 and moved to Sydney to live with Shane, but Cody says there was no way he was missing the business end of the under-15 season, flying back for the finals.
Steve Adamson remembers the grand final, a loss to Maldon.
“He did some amazing things that day,” Steve says.
“I remember when he was getting drafted … we gave (Mum) Kathy a video of that grand final and you see him taking species and spinning around on a 20 cent piece.”
In a little over three weeks, vision of grown-up Dustin Martin will flash around the Crown Palladium as the Brownlow Medal count warms up.
Ninety minutes up the Calder, the party will be getting started in those old rooms at Camp Reserve.
A flyer on the door at the footy last Saturday reveals the feeling in the town.
“Who is the favourite for the Brownlow Medal? Our very own Castlemaine local Dustin Martin,” it read.
“Come on down to the social rooms …. on Monday, 25th September to cheer him on as a town.
“Let’s all get behind him and join together to show him how proud we are and to celebrate his amazing achievements as an elite AFL player. You will also be supporting our club and its ongoing ability to nurture and produce future champions.”
At the Five Flags Hotel, on the Midland Highway in Campbell’s Creek, there’s a party planned, too.
“I just know he’s going to win,” Steve Adamson says. “We’re going to have what’s called a Dustin Martini.”
Cider salesman Churchill says the whole district is proud of the one-time Magpie winger.
“As far as Castlemaine goes, we’ve never had anyone as good as him,” Churchill says.
“Apart from Ron Barassi, but he’s actually from Guilford.”
Maltby has two affiliations in the AFL now — St Kilda and Martin.
“I love following him obviously because he’s us. He’s part of the Castlemaine Football Club,” Maltby says.
“I think people have judged him a little bit for his tatts around his neck. It gives most people the impression he’s a rough diamond, a bad sort of a person, but he’s certainly not.
“He’s just one of the quiet boys, a quiet achiever.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/from-castlemaine-to-the-mcg-where-it-all-started-for-dustin-martin/news-story/0d1aab7e4f0322929339cf3510b15f06
