Four games to decide a coach's future
Michael Gleeson | April 4, 2009
TERRY Wallace arrived at Federation Square just as the thunder rumbled past, before the forgotten rains fell. He walked into the foyer at Zinc as Kevin Bartlett, the repatriated legend, arrived and the pair stopped to chat and pose for a photo.
Tony Jewell and son Nick, fresh from winning the Sheffield Shield, entered moments later. More photos. Francis Bourke was already seated inside. Tiger coaches all, they have walked Wallace's week before.
The Tommy Hafey Club, gathered to induct the 1980 premiership team, settled for lunch and, with Bartlett's good humour, embrace the club's albeit distant successes and praise the worthy.
This was the ultimate Tigers' Den: three sacked coaches were among the number, at the very least three club legends — Bartlett, Bourke and Hafey — and revered figures such as Michael Roach and Dale Weightman sat before Wallace as he ventured forth to speak. It was a tough room.
"What a week to come to this function. A premiership function of all things," he began.
How do you explain the inexplicably bad? How do you reinflate the pricked balloon of expectation when the prick is Carlton? How do you plead for patience when 28 fruitless years have passed? By stating the obvious: it was round one.
The coach being in the final year of his contract adds to the undercurrent of restlessness about the result of the first game, especially at a notoriously restless club, but the inescapable fact was still that only one game had been lost.
Wallace then boldly offered his own deadline on judgement day and sought for his team to be judged in four games' time. He knows that the judgement will be about him, not some half-back flanker.
It was a courageous move, but also a realistic one, for he knows that whether he puts the one-month deadline out there or not, he will be judged in that time.
The games ahead — Geelong, the Western Bulldogs, Melbourne and North Melbourne — are indeed a testing bracket of matches to be measured against. But judgement, doubtless, should be made on competitiveness, not results.
As a top-eight hopeful but an unlikely top-four side, the next two games against premiership contenders most likely will result in losses, but it will be the size of the losses and the type of team that turns out that will be critical.
Similarly, as a top-eight contender, Richmond should easily account for Melbourne. Scrape home narrowly and questions remain; win convincingly and the Tigers have at least done what they ought.
Which leaves North Melbourne — a finalist last year but fancied by few this year — as the game to shape a season.
"You can't judge them on one game," Tony Jewell said. "I think Terry was right that the next three or four games will tell. I thought he was very brave even saying it. If Melbourne get away with us, the whole world will come down on him but they (Richmond) finished the season well (last year) and we have to judge him on what happens for the rest of the year really, don't we?
"I mean, sitting watching it I was like the rest of the crowd — I was furious, I was filthy. I left early and I came by train and people on the station started getting into me. I was copping it just being a Richmond person, but when you cool down it is a silly reaction to the first game of the year."
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