Tigers steel for the worst with Polak
Lyall Johnson | August 27, 2008
IN A season that provided enough positives for the Richmond Football Club to consider it a successful year despite not making the finals, the tragic brain injury to Graham Polak in June was far and away the lowlight, coach Terry Wallace admitted yesterday.
Polak was at training again yesterday to watch his teammates prepare for their final game of the season against Melbourne on Sunday and was in the rooms last Saturday after the Tigers defeated Fremantle. Yet his progress in recovering from being hit by a tram has been gradual and remains far from complete.
And, given that slow progress, Wallace admitted one of the toughest decisions the club was already steeling itself for was potentially having to tell Polak he was no longer a required player.
Everyone around Tigerland hopes such an eventuality would not come to pass; that Polak would, indeed, make a full recovery and return to normal life on and off the field. He is still contracted till the end of 2009.
But Wallace admitted yesterday that with the medical data still inconclusive about the 24-year-old's health and future, the club, realistically, had to at least prepare for the worst as much as it would hope for the best.
"Yeah we do," said Wallace when asked whether the club had to soon start thinking about Polak's future at Richmond.
"We'll wait till the end of the season, but we'll get as much medical data as what we possibly can to make those decisions. But it is one that's not clear, it's not clear-cut that he either will or he won't (recover fully and play football again).
"We have got to get the appropriate medical data, speak to the AFL and see where that sort of sits.
"He's contracted for another 12 months. So that's the scenario there. Once we get the data in, we will sit down and work through all that. We don't actually really know."
Such a process was an extremely sad and unpleasant one for the club, which had well and truly adopted "Polly", a native West Australian. Wallace conceded it would be one of the toughest the club would have made in recent memory if it came to pass. In the meantime, his teammates and others around Punt Road Oval were heartened every time Polak walked into the clubrooms, as he did yesterday.
Wallace said, "putting my coach's hat on", before his accident, Polak had started to emerge as the type of player Richmond had hoped he would become when they brought him to the club at the end of the 2006 season. His absence from the field since the accident had affected the development of younger players.
"We got him across as a player that we thought could clearly impact and play at either end of the ground for us as a strong key position player, right at the right age. When he went out of the side he was our second-leading contested-mark player and starting to play some good footy for us," Wallace said.
"He hadn't absolutely established himself to the levels that we wanted, but we clearly saw signs that that was coming. I think Jack Riewoldt has probably not quite been the player in the last five or six weeks because he hasn't had quite the support.
"Clearly there is a bigger aspect than that and that (is) his health and wellbeing. We (still) don't know where that sits to the top end of it from being 100% right, and I don't think anyone could sit and give you any clarity on where that sits for the future.
"But it's great to see him here smiling and reasonably OK, to be working through."
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/tigers-steel-for-the-worst-with-polak/2008/08/26/1219516471703.html
