continue:Cohesion, though, is only oil. It needs magic to set it alight. Most premiers have eight or nine magicians. The Tigers only needed four.
Jack Riewoldt seems perpetually unhappy on the football field. When he is elated, his teeth only become more gritted. It’s not hard to envision him as a tragic figure, chasing something unreachable, forever in need, the type of player who is destined to kick three first quarter behinds in a losing Grand Final. But Riewoldt, whose presence and impact were merely functional the week prior, gripped his destiny against Adelaide, strangling it and the game into something else. He combined the best elements of his younger days with those of his more seasoned. He was explosive and electric, taking hangers and slotting goals, by far the most forceful and present forward on the day.
But he also sacrificed, content to be a link and a pillar, not a focus and main attraction. He crashed packs and brought the ball to ground for Richmond’s smalls to dominate. He demanded defensive attention whenever the ball was in his vicinity, the threat of his magic enough to worry defenders that he might win the game. In the past he might have indeed tried to use that magic to win the game himself – and he’s so talented that he might have succeeded. But he played the percentages, always did the team thing, sacrificed so others could prosper, and as a result he got a performance with The Killers to go with his Colemans.
Trent Cotchin, you suspect, would not be caught dead with The Killers. Exactly why, it’s hard to know, but almost certainly because he’s: a) far too cool or b) not nearly cool enough, with no in between. Cotchin is Richmond’s greatest enigma, which is ironic, because he’s also, arguably, their most consistent and reliable performer. He has lived many football lives, from incandescent phenom and potential saviour to weary, battered disappointment to, finally, inspirational captain and lifeblood of his team.
After a long, difficult journey, Cotchin has finally reached his destination. There is no more confused captain who kicked into the wind against Port Adelaide, man who had nine touches against North Melbourne. There is only a Brownlow medallist and premiership captain, and a player worthy of both those honours, a champion who launched himself at every contest this year like his life and honour depended on it and lifted his team with every bruise suffered and inflicted. Everyone will have their own defining image of Richmond’s finals series. But perhaps the most enduring is that of Cotchin attacking the ball and the man with furious intent, a maniac unleashed, his perfect haircut and suit dissolved in lava, the only remains a beast with one plan.
If Cotchin is fire, Alex Rance is ice. The best defender of his generation by an accelerating stretch, Rance is, in a lot of ways, the most impossible player in the AFL. How can one man be everywhere all the time? Livewire forwards kick goals from geometrically divine angles and powerful midfielders burst through and past packs of elite athletes like they are nothing but glorified air. But the defender who absorbs it all, who can see the future and crush the opponent’s present, is perhaps football’s most inspired creature. That is Rance, who was the most vivid symbol of the Crows’ plight. Every time they went forward, he was there, looming ominously. At times it feels like his mass consumes the entire 50, through the ethereal, borderline suspicious combination of his size, pace, vision, courage, decision-making and overall genius. In the modern game, where defensive structure and playmaking is so decisive, there are credible arguments to be made that Rance is the best player in football.
If not for his teammate.
The Tigers are so much more than Dustin Martin. They are Dylan Grimes – reliable to the point of cliché, a man who has never looked like losing a contest, and if he does, you suddenly feel confused and afraid. They are Bachar Houli – no longer the most underrated player in the AFL, because how could you be after you played the game of your life in the Grand Final, a steady beat to all his movements, so smooth, poised and composed, a cauldron of pressure doing nothing to lift the temperature of the ice water in his veins.
They are Shane Edwards – perhaps the new most underrated player in the AFL, a late-era Luke Ball type with more explosive menace, a ferocious tackler and a delicate, expert in-close wizard by hand. They are Josh Caddy and Toby Nankervis – the type of recruits that win you premierships, hardened players that colour in the sketched outline of a contender.
They are Nick Vlastuin and Brandon Ellis – the heartbeats of any great team, the brave corporals in defence who lift their teammates with every collision absorbed and dealt. They are Kamdyn McIntosh – a punchline for so long, who somehow shared midfields in finals at the MCG with the likes of Patrick Dangerfield, Josh Kelly and Rory Sloane, and not for a moment looked like he didn’t belong. They are Daniel Rioli – the spark whose preliminary final was as good as any Norm Smith his relatives might have.
But more than anything, they are Dustin Martin. The qualifying final was his, the preliminary final was his, the Grand Final was… probably Bachar Houli’s, Shane Edwards’ or Alex Rance’s, but it was Martin’s too. And then the competition was his, and the city as well.
Martin is not the best player the game has ever seen, but when you watch him you question how anyone could play it better. He is a beast-freak and a world-class violinist, someone who makes brutality look delicate and finesse look cruel. The sight of his wide, powerful frame accelerating through the middle of the MCG, purposeful, upright, arrogant and wonderful, is surely the game’s most perfect image. The endpoint of those runs, though, is rarely obvious, rarely cinematic. It’s always so much better.
In the past, Martin was exquisite but uneven, too young to know how to control or harness all of his powers. He tried check-siding goals from 50 when there were free teammates waiting, tried taking players on when a lateral handball was the play. But he learnt. He didn’t have to – he was at a level of quality where refinement would never be a survival instinct. He could have remained raw and still been a top ten player in the game. But he got smarter and he got fitter. He was already a freak – then he slowly became a professor.
Watching the gears of Martin’s mind is every bit as enthralling as watching him fend men off into oblivion. The fend-offs are popcorn – the processing of situations is There Will Be Blood. As that perfect image moves, as Martin drives himself forward through the middle of the ground, the straightness of his torso somehow mimicking the sharp angles of his haircut, you can see him crafting a new masterpiece.
His first instinct is always altruistic. He wants to feed the ball to a teammate, but he knows that his body is so powerful that he can always defer that moment until later. That, really, is the beauty of Martin – that his body allows the genius of his mind to reach its maximum potential. Want to imagine the things that Scott Pendlebury could do in traffic emboldened by the knowledge that no man can bring him down? You don’t have to anymore.
As that perfect image moves, as Martin drives himself forward through the middle of the ground, the straightness of his torso somehow mimicking the sharp angles of his haircut, you can see him crafting a new masterpiece.
How Martin finishes these sequences is what football is all about. Passing up a good shot at goal for a great one. Weighting a ball perfectly in front of a forward’s lead that only begins as the ball is already airborne. Slicing a pass so low and sharp that you can almost feel the blades of its flight making the air bleed.
Martin just had the most decorated season possible, and right now, he sits atop a peak that perhaps only Michael Voss, Chris Judd and Gary Ablett Jr have reached this century. Martin, though, is somehow more special than any of them, more fascinating. Voss and Judd were so professional and polished, and Ablett has always been a little weird. Compare them to Martin, who just gave the most painful and authentic Brownlow medal speech you will see. He is not a brand or a sculpted ambassador – he is a guy who dropped out of school at 14, hates talking in front of people and just happens to be the best football player in the country.
On field, he was a force powerful enough to take a knife to Richmond’s fatalism. The gap between he and Rance is smaller than the hype suggests, but in 30 years, when we see highlight montages of the end of Richmond’s premiership drought, the screen will always flash to Martin, as it did when the siren went in the Grand Final. He will be the player forever most associated with this flag, the way Tony Shaw is with 1990, Leo Barry with 2005, Marcus Bontempelli with 2016. Unlike those players, though, Martin didn’t just rise to the absolute pinnacle in September. He spent the whole season there – September was just life continuing as it was.
It’s a testament to Martin that he was able to get himself there, but also a testament to his club. One suspects that had Martin been drafted by Brisbane, or a couple years later by Gold Coast, he would still be unfulfilled potential, on his second club by now, someone’s reclamation project. Richmond’s infrastructure, though, was strong enough to deal with Martin’s complexities and allow him to realise his ideal football self.
This premiership, ultimately, is about that infrastructure. It’s about staying the course and having a plan. Last year Damien Hardwick was a dead man walking, someone whose coaching future existed on the same plane as Justin Leppitsch and Nathan Buckley. Peggy O’Neal, Brendon Gale and the club believed enough in Hardwick and stuck with him. They saw, like he did, that this Richmond team wasn’t one that had run its course like most figured. It was one that had made finals three years in a row then simply had one bad year. A renovation was in order, not a demolition.
Hardwick has always been one of the game’s most likeable coaches, articulate, candid and, in an almost odd way, exceedingly warm. His genuineness makes it easy to doubt him – deep down, we always suspect that nice guys will finish closer to last than first. He doesn’t carry the obvious, archetypal coaching gravitas of an Alastair Clarkson, Ross Lyon or Luke Beveridge – he’s too honest, too accommodating. But behind what appears to be an exceptionally decent person is an extraordinarily capable coach. Beveridge’s achievement last year was the finest coaching accomplishment in decades. That title lasted only 12 months.
What Hardwick has done, and overcome in the process, is a football marvel of historical proportions. No one has ever done more with less.
This flag is a testament to the power of coaching, to the possibility of a cohesive collective having the strength and force to tear down more talented individuals. It is a realisation of sport’s greatest, most seminal story.
Written by Jay Croucher.http://www.theroar.com.au/2017/10/10/destruction-tour-tigers-eviscerated-rest-afl-everything-thought-knew/
