Richard Tambling to play his 100th game this weekend * Mark Robinson
* From: Herald Sun
* April 22, 2010 RICHARD Tambling plays his 100th game this weekend and has a message: He loves Buddy Franklin, too.
"He's a champion player," Tambling said.
"I love watching him play. I just admire the guy. He came into the AFL and turned it upside down. A bit like Naitanui is now. Imagine if I got compared with him?"
Tambling laughed hard when he mentioned Naitanui. He's self-effacing and he laughs plenty for someone who has been as maligned as any player in the past five years.
If the Luke Hodge, Chris Judd, Luke Ball draft of 2001 is the AFL's most famous, the Tambling, Franklin, Jarryd Roughead draft of 2004 is its most infamous - when Tambling was Richmond's No. 4 pick ahead of Buddy, who was taken with Hawthorn's No. 5 pick.
For the first four years of his career, Tambling was a messed-up footballer, so much so that he sought psychological counselling to deal with the whole Buddy thing: being constantly compared with Franklin, and failing; being criticised by the media; being attacked across various websites and on talkback by frustrated and furious Tigers fans.
"There has been good times and bad, ups and downs, and you're going to get that through your career, but mine has been pretty colourful and hopefully I come out the other end a better person and a better football player," Tambling said.
At only 23, he is finally coming out the other end.
"It has arrived, that comfortableness," he said.
"I can't control what Buddy does, or Deledio, or Griffen, or what Roughead does. I can only go out there and perform to the best I can and try to improve on a day-to-day basis.
"If it's not as good as them, it's not as good as them."
Tambling's journey from the Northern Territory to 100-game footballer for the Tigers has been a journey of intense scrutiny.
He grew up about halfway between Darwin and Kakadu and made his mark at Southern Districts in the NTFL.
As a boy, he played footy like everyone else, for fun, blind-turning mates and trying to slot bananas from the boundary line.
"Footy is supposed to be fun," Tambling says.
"That's why we all started playing footy. That's the main reason you play footy. But coming to an AFL club, everything changed for me. It's completely different to back home.
"Back home it was free-flowing, pretty much kick goals from everywhere, just go out and have fun with your mates week to week.
"But that changed. You've got tougher opponents, you have to be more defensive, you have got structures, everything is thrown at you and you practise different things day to day. It got to my head and was too much to take in all at once."
And riding shotgun was the Buddy thing.
The comparisons came more in the second year, and they immediately probed the dark matters of the mind that 18-year-olds don't understand themselves and rarely introduce to others.
"The first few years I let the outside world get to me more than I should have, the media," Tambling said.
"A kid coming from the bush ... I didn't know how to deal with it and I wasn't the type of person to show other people that it was actually affecting me. I didn't actually know it was actually affecting me until a year ago.
"I saw a psychologist in my third year and my fourth year and it didn't seem to work for me, and being the type of person I am, I thought I could fix it.
"I just thought it was a problem, like everyone else has a problem and it could get fixed somehow. Luckily I found that avenue last year."
At this stage of the conversation, Franklin had not been mentioned, but asked if the 2004 draft helped or hindered him, Tambling didn't duck the bouncer.
"You're talking about the Franklin thing, aren't you?" he said.
"That's what I mean by the media, the scrutiny that came over and I'm still under.
"I pick up the paper and if I haven't performed on the weekend, it's highlighted, you know. It used to get to me for the first four years until I saw the psychologist.
"I had to get my head around not trying to control what other people were doing, just control where I am at and how I can perform.
"I can't control how Buddy Franklin plays and we know he is a champion player, he's one of the best to play the game and he's going to play for another 10 years or something.
"I don't think there's going to be a player like Buddy ever again. He's just amazing.
"At the same time, I was the only one highlighted in that draft. It was always me and Buddy and not Buddy and the top five. It was a bit hurtful in a way that it was me and Buddy matched up against each other."
Tambling only once entered the unforgiving and sometimes uneducated world of the internet. He never returned.
"I went on Google and, yeah ... ," he started.
"It just, yeah, it just ... got me really angry, really angry, definitely. That was in my second year and I haven't been back since.
"I rarely read the papers any more, to be honest. I try to stay away from what the outside world has to say; just try to control the controllables."
The controllables start and end with his footy at a club he clearly loves.
He plays his 100th game against the Dockers on Sunday and hopes to add another 100 to that, perhaps 150.
"I'm genuinely excited about my 100th," he said.
"I actually had a dream last night about my young fella, Tyson, who's four, and dreamt he chucked the yellow and black on. It was a vivid sort of dream, an unreal dream, and hopefully that will happen one day."
The queries on Tambling the footballer are his inconsistent impact on games and what exactly his best position is.
In each season since his debut in 2005, Tambling has improved and last year was easily his best season.
He recorded his first 25-plus possession game against the Brisbane Lions in Round 17, 2008, and last year put together a super run of seven games from Round 10, against Fremantle, Western Bulldogs, West Coast, St Kilda, Adelaide, Carlton and North Melbourne with 28, 24, 28, 25, 31, 19 and 27 possessions.
"I didn't get too much comparisons last year," he said, laughing again.
But this season he is well below those numbers, though he has excuses.
He missed training before Christmas because of operations for compartment syndrome in each calf - he sports scars on both sides of his legs.
"It hasn't been too great this year," Tambling said.
"I started late, I've got a different role within the structures and I think I've taken a little while to catch up on things.
"And I had my operations on both legs in October and didn't start training with the boys pretty much until January."
As for his preferred position, he said it was as an attacking midfielder.
Last year he played half-back and half-forward, and in four games this year he has played defence, midfield and forward.
"If I had my way, it would be as an attacking midfielder that is allowed to roam free, but it never happens," he said.
"You have to play within the structures and play both ways."
New coach Damien Hardwick gave Tambling a leadership role and, at the same time, told him his future was at Richmond.
"He pretty much told me I was needed in the team and everything we were going to do within the next 12 months, however long it takes, was geared towards winning a premiership," he said.
"We are working on, how do I say this, we are working on winning behaviours. It doesn't matter how long it takes as long as it improves each other ... and we play as a team and win as a team."
Tambling's other role, which he took over from Andrew Krakouer, is as the club's indigenous leader for Relton Roberts, who is a cousin, Troy Taylor, rookie Alroy Gilligan and Shane Edwards.
He played with Taylor's older brother and his younger brother played with Taylor at Southern Districts, so the connection was already there.
"He (Taylor) is on the right track and he won't look backwards," he said.
Neither will Tambling. A father of two - Tyson and a daughter, Leah, who is one - and soon to be married to Amy, he has his life and his footy all before him.
"Everything is going well off-field. It couldn't be more perfect," he said.
"I have got two gorgeous kids and a fiancee and I'm lucky on that front. I just have to get my footy right."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/richard-tambling-to-play-his-100th-game-this-weekend/story-e6frf9ix-1225856575282
