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According to reports, Dustin Martin may be the latest big-name star to put contract talks on hold, ostensibly until the end of the 2017 season. The news will come as a bitter blow to many Richmond fans, who will be quick to read between the lines.
Neutral supporters will declare him ‘gone’, openly hoping that he will choose their club, baiting their Tiger mates in the process.
This is the song always sung when one of the game’s biggest names goes down this path. Many of them do leave. Chris Judd, Gary Ablett, Lance Franklin and Patrick Dangerfield – in the conversation as the biggest four names in the game over the last decade – all did.
Martin is indisputably one of the biggest midfield weapons in the AFL, and isn’t far below the echelon of the aforementioned names.
He’s finished seventh and third in the last two Brownlow medals, polling a combined 46 votes across the 2015-16 seasons. Last year saw him win his first All Australian jumper, after being previously nominated in 2014 and 2015.
In his seven seasons at Tigerland, Martin has only once finished worse than fourth in the best and fairest, and has five top-three finishes in the last six years. Consistency is the most underrated feature of his game. He won his first Jack Dyer medal in 2016.
While someone like Scott Pendlebury plays footy with the grace of a Roger Federer backhand, Dusty is the Rafael Nadal forehand: all muscle, grunt, power and penetration, laying waste to anything in the path between himself, the ball and the goals.
Richmond fans shouldn’t blame Martin for assessing his options though. Not one iota.
The Tigers played turgid, spiritless football last year. It couldn’t have been much fun to play. It sure as hell wasn’t much fun to watch.
In June last year, I wrote about the constipated coaching at Richmond, and how it was stifling the natural talents of a series of guns. It had been decades since the club had assembled such high-quality top-end talent, and their prime years were being wasted.
One of those guns, Brett Deledio, left the Tigers at the end of last season for pastures that don’t get much greener, those of the Giants. If you care to read about how good Greater Western Sydney are going to be this year, you can check out the first of what I’m sure will be many 2017 pieces on them from Ryan Buckland.
Was Deledio the start of an exodus from Punt Road, or can Damien Hardwick right the ship and release the shackles, allowing natural playmakers to enjoy their football and deliver a winning season?
Since the advent of free agency, and in fact well before it, AFL footballers have shown they will put success ahead of dollars in what they want to achieve from their career.
Most want to be the oft-quoted ‘one-club player’. But they want to be a one-club player that’s involved in premierships, or at least the realistic chance of them.
Dustin Martin has played three finals in his career, losing all of them. As he peeled off his best ever personal season in 2016, his team dropped eight spots on the ladder.
He wants to assess the club this year, to see which direction they’re headed? That is absolutely fair enough. If he is forced to endure another year in a side playing crap and nonsense, he is within every right to seek a brighter future elsewhere.