Either Wallace is up to it or not
Patrick Smith | The Australian | September 04, 2008
IT is not easy working out exactly what Richmond has done well this season.
The board sacked football hot shot Greg Miller, the president Gary March publicly torched fellow director Tony Free, a major sponsor called it quits and now the club is lining Terry Wallace up for the chop.
About the only positive turn of events at the club was the leap up the ladder: the Tigers finished bottom with just three wins last year and then ninth this season with 11 wins.
We would invite you to at least celebrate that significant jump up the ladder, but March has told us it is not worth a single cheer never mind a merry jig. He has only given that performance a five out of 10. He argues that if you don't make the top eight then the season cannot be considered successful. Just why then he gives the season a five when ninth in a competition of 16 teams can hardly be a pass mark is quite beyond us.
If he applies his standards rigidly then a leap from 16th to ninth is still worth no more than a four. We might also conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the Richmond board knows nothing about football. The club directors still cannot work out whether coach Terry Wallace is any good even though he has been at the club for four and more years.
March has decreed that - in agreement with Wallace, and as though the coach had any option - the future of the coach will not be decided until halfway through next year, the last in Wallace's contract.
Surely it is fair to ask what will the club learn between now and June 2009 that was not bleeding obvious in late 2004 and all of 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008? Either it believes Wallace can do the job or it reckons he is a dingbat. If the directors are of the mind that he is a dunderhead then replace him now and not waste 2009. If they think he has the wherewithal to continue the improvement shown this year then the directors should offer him a new contract so he has the confidence to coach for the benefit of the club and not just his immediate future. Because there is a difference.
A coach fighting for his future is vulnerable - no matter how drenched in integrity he is - to taking an expedient option rather than the one best placed to strengthen the club not momentarily but permanently.
If the Richmond board of directors thinks it needs another six months to figure out if Wallace is the right coach for their club it is more an indication that they need to reassess their competency rather than that of Wallace.
All of this, of course, is predicated that Wallace wants to continue on after next year. He might not now that he has a good indication of the club's faith in him. There is the possibility, too, that he might just have had enough of coaching not only Richmond but anybody. He has just finished his 11th year as a senior coach and that is a long time on the front line.
The Tigers' managerial style this year has not been something they might boast about. First up, Miller. The club sacked the football department head at a critical time in the year with the Tigers very much a chance to make the finals. At the time March said: "What we wanted to do was not be behind the rest of the field. It's well documented there are a number of clubs out there looking for different people - Melbourne, Port Adelaide, West Coast - and what we didn't want to do is miss the best available person once we'd made the decision to move forward.
"All the key decisions that are made around football are made in October, but we felt that once we made the decision, we needed a new person to come into the organisation and we wanted that person in the chair to be part of those decisions."
That was back in July. Richmond is yet to name Miller's replacement while Melbourne, Port and West Coast (until Michael Voss decamped on Tuesday) have been busy filling their vacant positions.
While Wallace would not have been at all fussed by Miller's dismissal, nobody can be impressed by Richmond's handling of it. The Tigers also fluffed the management of Free, appointed to the board, effectively as football director. He commented inoffensively on Miller's dismissal on radio and was then publicly humiliated by March. The president all but indicated Free was talking out of school, had been too enthusiastic for his own good in pursuit of his brief. That Free did not walk away is evidence of a man hard to rattle.
It has been reported that Wallace has not been consulted on Miller's replacement. Well, at least March and the board have got that right. It would be untenable for Wallace to have any input in the appointment of the football department boss because he will become Wallace's boss.
Anybody at Richmond's centenary celebration dinner - now that was well run - could sense that the Tiger spirit is strong and that past players dearly want old Richmond people in charge of the club. If that mood is shaping the board's thinking then end Wallace's contract now and save itself the angst of publicly debating his future over summer and into winter next year. Richmond promises much next year and a distraction over its coach's future could be destructive.
The board can avoid all that by reappointing Wallace now so everybody at Richmond can work together, unencumbered by divisive headlines of the coach's tenure. If the Tigers don't do that, then good luck finding a better coach than Wallace.
It won't be easy.
patrick.smith@bigpond.comhttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24289704-12270,00.html
