Snippets from "High and mighty"
Martin Blake | September 9, 2007 | The Age
Brad Ottens has suffered from excessively high expectations from the time he walked into Richmond from Adelaide as a teenager at the end of 1997. He was the No. 2 draft pick, an All-Australian under-18 player and the son of a South Australian football star, Dean Ottens, who was a member of Sturt's flag-hogging teams of the 1960s and 1970s.
He had the pedigree and he looked a player, a big-time player. No one was particularly surprised when he sauntered into an All-Australian team in 2001, just his fourth season, as a goalkicker (he snared 46 goals that year with picture-perfect drop punts) and an occasional ruckman.
Then in 2002 he damaged his back, requiring surgery to remove part of a vertebrae. Around the same time, according to his then-coach, Danny Frawley, he matured physically. "Brad grew into a big man," says Frawley. "And he lost that agility he had because of his back injury. He was leading in straight lines. The better defenders could just pick him off."
So began a downward spiral that would take him out of Punt Road three years later. For the first time, Ottens drew the public heat familiar to all but the best of players. He was on big money as a result of his 2000-2001 performances, but his output did not justify it.
Frawley went at the same time in 2005, his coaching days over. He recalls a telephone call from his prized player near the end. "I didn't want to do the wrong thing by the club," says Frawley. "But he'd made up his mind. He was going to leave."
Ottens told his coach that Sydney and Geelong were interested. "What's (Paul) ‘Roosy' want?" was Frawley's first question, and Ottens said that the Swans wanted a ruckman (they would eventually get Darren Jolly out of Melbourne). Ottens told Frawley that Cats coach Mark Thompson wanted to use him primarily as a forward.
"He was keen on Geelong because of the lifestyle," says Frawley. "But I pretty much told him he should be looking at Sydney. I said, ‘That (rucking) is where you're at, Brad'. I thought it (Geelong) was fraught with danger because he was going to be the great white hope. They hadn't had the forwards since (Gary) Ablett and (Bill) Brownless and he's such a good guy, those things can eat at him at times."
Brad Ottens was always a ruckman, as far back as his teenage years, when he led Emmanuel College to a premiership in public school football while he boarded in Adelaide - the only flag of his footballing life. "It's been my natural position," he says. Brendan McCartney, Geelong's stoppage coach, saw it all along. McCartney was Richmond's reserves coach when Ottens first arrived in Melbourne. "He was an exceptional ruckman from day one. He knew how to palm the ball and he knew how to find a teammate."
The public expected him to bash and crash, when in reality, he had his eye on the football. "I don't think I need to throw elbows around or get myself reported. It's something I've never done. If I did it, it wouldn't be natural," says Ottens.
At one point, Richmond coach Terry Wallace, attempting a Sheedyesque ramping up of the atmosphere before a Tigers-Cats match, publicly accused Ottens of leaving Richmond for money.
In truth, Ottens had been offered a smaller contract by Richmond but he was in a rut anyway, and he believed he needed a change. Sources suggest that Ottens thought there was no room in the Tigers' forward line for both he and Matthew Richardson. Wallace's comments stung, but only momentarily. "I knew the reasons why I left, and people that matter to me knew the reasons. That was just his opinion. I'd spent seven years at Richmond.
"I guess my performance had dropped away a bit. I wanted to get a bit more out of my footy and enjoy it a bit more and to do that I had to make a change. I've never thought twice about it since. It doesn't bother me. I haven't had a whole lot to do with him."
Recruiter Stephen Wells' 2005 trade for Ottens - Richmond extracted draft picks with which it selected Danny Meyer and Adam Pattison - looks a better deal with each passing moment.Full article at:
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/high-and-mighty/2007/09/08/1188783557068.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
