The outgoing Richmond coach took the Tigers from a laughing stock to a colossus but his impact has reverberated much further afield“Let’s be honest,” Brendan Gale told author and journalist Konrad Marshall. “He inherited a piece of shit.” Even by Richmond standards, 2009 was a rough year. Terry Wallace’s final weeks as coach were particularly unedifying. The Herald Sun ran with the headline “Death Row”. He departed mid-season and retreated to his bolt hole, barricading himself in his home theatre.His replacement was a Kevin Sheedy man. Damian Hardwick had the Sheedy cunning, the Sheedy mongrel. He’d narrowly missed out on four senior coaching roles. He was pipped for the Essendon job after his computer short circuited during the interview. Continue...
Against a backdrop of complex issues named for a man of multiple talents, Essendon and Richmond’s contrasting styles delivered sweet pandemoniumFootball is constantly lurching from the sublime to the farcical and the execrable. The Sir Doug Nicholls Round was no exception. Like the man it honoured - a boxer, footballer, professional sprinter, Minister, social worker, Governor and leader of his people – the round contained multitudes. From the riveting (Collingwood), to the rickety (Carlton) and wretched (West Coast), this round had the lot.You have to suspend disbelief as a football fan sometimes. An hour after a coach who denies an accusation of pressuring an Aboriginal couple to terminate a pregnancy stepped down, the league endorsed a Voice to Parliament. A...
With the narrative focused on the impact on Clarkson and Fagan, the stories of First Nations families appear all but erasedOn 4 July 2018, Norm Smith medallist and three-time All-Australian Cyril Rioli announced his retirement from football, effective immediately.Rioli was an adornment to the game. One of a few who possessed the skill and joie de vivre you would pay money to see. At the time, the reporting on the reason for his sudden retirement leant towards his difficult season the year prior, during which his father, Cyril Snr, died from a heart attack. Continue reading...
After another terrible loss, Carlton is a club in tatters with the coach, captain and CEO staring down the barrel of frustrated fans and angry “assassins”When Brian Cook was CEO of Geelong, he had a folder on his computer for all the vicious emails he received from fans, coterie groups, and board members. He labelled it “Assassins”.It’s easy to forget just how dire things were at the Cats when he took over. The coach and captain walked out. The team was useless and the club had no money. Garry Hocking was forced to change his name by deed poll to ‘Whiskas’ to rustle up 100 grand. “The organisation had no structures, no layers,” Cook told writer James Button. “It was...
There’s no need to bemoan a sport gone soft, just reflect on what it means to an Indigenous footballerRichmond supporters will be waiting for Tom Stewart on Friday night. It’s been coming for nine months. He’ll be booed as vociferously as a footballer can be these days. He’s fair game, apparently. He’s a magnificent footballer and a big boy. He rearranged Dion Prestia’s face, and now it’s payback time. “Good, clean fandom,” broadcaster Gerard Whateley called it this week.But what happened at the MCG last Sunday was more complicated than good, clean fandom. It was a particularly spiteful beginning to the Magpies v Swans game and the Collingwood crowd was riled up. At first, the booing of Lance Franklin seemed...