Richmond coach Terry Wallace keen for Tony Shaw role
Glenn McFarlane | June 01, 2009
TERRY Wallace is keen to coach out the season at Richmond. Wallace has offered to play a role similar to that Tony Shaw filled at Collingwood a decade ago.
Shaw developed the playing list in the final 10 rounds after he was told he would not be the coach next season.
Although Wallace conceded on Friday he would not be at Punt Rd next year, he said he was happy to continue coaching Richmond for as long as the club's board would have him.
"I will do what the Richmond Football Club needs me to do," Wallace said.
"You go back 10 years and Tony Shaw did a similar thing before Mick Malthouse took over at Collingwood, and that would be good.
"Richmond has been very good to me over the last five seasons. My role will come to an end at some stage. I just want to help them out and assist them as much as I can."
Wallace also expressed an interest in becoming a football manager at an AFL club next season, as former AFL coaches Neale Daniher and Chris Connolly have done with West Coast and Melbourne respectively.
While Wallace is keeping his options open in regard to life after Richmond, he maintains he still loves the game and wants somehow to stay involved when his Tigers' tenure inevitably ends this year.
"I have a real commitment to the game," Wallace said on SEN radio.
"I would like to stay in football in some capacity.
"There is a lot of football restructuring that I think needs to happen in Victoria. That's an interest to me.
"Club land is still an interest to me, the type of job that Neale Daniher and Chris Connolly are doing. If you align yourself with a young coach, you know all the pitfalls of the game, you know how the media operate.
"There are still a few things that I see myself doing, but I do see it as the next part of the journey."
Wallace, 50, conceded that coaching was a young man's game - "rightly or wrongly".
"This (Richmond) didn't work out how we wanted it to. That's the reality, and that's my lot this time around," he said.
Wallace said he desperately wanted his time at the Tigers to end well, which was not the case when he left the Western Bulldogs as coach before the last round in 2002.
"In footy, you have your ups and downs," he said. "But what I am trying to make sure is that the last eight weeks doesn't affect 32 years of what has been one hell of a role."
The Tigers meet the Bulldogs on Friday night.
In the Subiaco Oval rooms on Saturday night, Richmond president Gary March confirmed Wallace would definitely coach against the Dogs at Etihad Stadium.
"Terry will be coaching against the Bulldogs," March said. "Nothing's changed. It's business as usual."
March said he had been in constant communication with the coach in recent weeks and would continue to be. He said Saturday night's thrilling three-point win against Fremantle had been just reward for the hard work that the coach, players and staff had put in.
"We are absolutely over the moon," March said.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25564849-19742,00.html
