Kamdyn McIntosh appreciates the absurdity of it. If he played for another club, and not the most successful recent one, he probably would have been cut and never got to 150 games. Thus, he also knows he wouldn’t have two flags if he played for anyone else.
He’s so Richmond. He’s not the perfect player, but he is the ideal Richmond player.
Richmond player Kamdyn McIntosh and his wider family.Credit: Eddie Jim
In his words, it’s not only un-bloody-believable (one of his favourite terms) it’s a pisser (his other favourite).
“Ha it is, it’s un-bloody-believable. Yeah, it’s a pisser, I’d say to the boys. They are the two words I go with a fair bit,” McIntosh laughed.
Actually, it’s redundant to say McIntosh laughed, it’s all he does. His default position is to laugh, often at himself, as often at his teammates.
He is a funny 150-game player. He’s spent his years between winning flags in 2017 and 2020 in and out of the team and back in again. Throughout just kept turning up, smiling, laughing and doing what was asked of him.
Kamdyn McIntosh with teammate Jason Castagna last year.Credit: AFL Photos / Getty Images
It’s the tale of his career. He’s found a place on the wing, as the hard-running, rangy player doing jobs, running to the places the team needs him to be, keeping his game simple and trying to connect his teammates.
A player of limitations, he plays within those limitations. At another club he might not have survived, but at Richmond he fits the system and the role perfectly.
“I think about that as well. I have taken on a role on that wing that is so structured and team-orientated as opposed to individual. That’s my role in the side and I love it. I wouldn’t have it any other way, I love being the connector within the playing group,” McIntosh said.
“Early days in my career I got dropped a few times so, no, I’d never thought I’d get to 150 games, if I’m honest. I was wondering, ‘Am I going to get delisted?’ But then the 2017 grand final, 2018, then got dropped again in 2019 and I still had question marks whether I was going to get dropped again. But I dunno, I kept showing up and kept playing and all of a sudden it’s 150 games and it’s like, ‘Jesus, that went quick’, but it was a pretty tough route, too.”
“Early days in my career I got dropped a few times so, no, I’d never thought I’d get to 150 games, if I’m honest. I was wondering, ‘Am I going to get delisted?’”
Kamdyn McIntosh
On Thursday night 13 members of his family from rural West Australia arrived. The airfares stung, but COVID had blown out travel plans since 2019, so there was a buzz about the place with the tribe arriving. Kamdyn had set up blow-up mattresses and sleeping bags for them all over the house to fit them all in.
They’d come a fair way. His mum drives trucks on the mines in the Pilbara in northern WA and his dad owns the McDonald’s franchise in Karratha but is set to move south to Busselton.
“They were getting in at midnight (Thursday night) and coming over. I said ‘I’ll be asleep, but I’ll get up when you get here.’ The house is going to be full, blow up mattresses, sleeping bags. Reminds me as a kid going to the grandparents down on the farm and you’d bunk up for school holidays and that.”
A connector on the field, he connects the group off it.
When they were in the hub McIntosh was bored. For a fidgety bloke who likes to be busy, being idle was difficult. So he invented a card game. It’s doing well.
“Oleg (Markov), Grimesy, Jase Castagna and I had a heap of time on our hands and I ended up creating this card game based around real estate called ‘Build and Buy’. We are in talks now with Ray White Australia and Hodges real estate and others. It’s actually a pretty free-flowing game,” he said.
“I came up with the idea and the boys gave me a heap of feedback taking the piss. I have a manufacturer on board, graphic designer to do the images. It’s a full card game now up and running.”
The building part of it is because he is close to finishing his building licence and recently launched his company K Trades. Suffice to say its made him popular with his teammates.
“I reckon I have been to 15 of the blokes’ houses to help them out some way or another. The other week I was pouring a concrete slab at Kane Lambert’s. I did the whole landscaping at Jayden Short’s house; Jack Graham, I had to help him with a barbecue pergola area. Grimesy [Dylan Grimes] has had me out at Mount Macedon at his winery doing some gate work.
“Sam Frost at Hawthorn got stitched up by another tradesman and I helped him out, finishing a pergola and barbecue area. We are doing a steam room, sauna, and plunge pool at Mount Martha for a couple of jockeys. It’s good.”
TheN again, he has leant on his teammates to help him too. A few years ago he made a concrete and timber dining table. Mainly because Short said he couldn’t. The problem was it was so bloody heavy he couldn’t move it out of his garage where he built it. So he got his teammates over to lift it for him on the promise of a meal.
“I cooked them the good old spaghetti bolognaise and I was cooking that and I thought I had time to change the water over in my fish tank while I was cooking dinner so I was doing that when the boys rocked up. But then they wanted to move the table straight away so we started doing that and I forgot I had the garden hose filling the fish tank.
“It was in the living room, so the fish tank starts over flowing, it was there for about 10 minutes and it’s flooded the whole dining area and kitchen area and then my spaghetti bolognaise was burnt. It was a complete schemozzle.”
And he just laughs at the memory. He is laughing at a lot of memories – two premierships and now 150 games.
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