The calamitous conclusion to Richmond’s 2022 season means that the Tigers will not be left alone to prowl into football’s September oblivion to lick their wounds in private.
Dustin Martin was already destined to become an off-season headline act but the emergence of a grubby seven-year-old video featuring the famous footballer behaving disrespectfully towards a woman has ensured that both he and his club will remain in the spotlight.
Dustin Martin in action during Thursday night’s loss to the Lions.Credit:AFL Photos
The decision to leak and then publish the video on the eve of Richmond’s sudden-death final against the Brisbane Lions provided a perfect storm for the Tigers. Not because its existence will lead to any serious AFL sanction – because it won’t – but because it has exposed some Tigers players and notably Martin indulging in one of the dirty secrets of male team sport. Behaviour that was once but is no longer an acceptable if hidden part of football culture. And yet, to be frank, not truly deserving of some of the public outrage it immediately fuelled.
To hire two women as semi-naked entertainers in an upstairs room full of males at a pub, even if they are your friends, just seems creepy. On the scale of disregard towards women, Martin’s action falls well short of the Nathan Broad viral photograph scandal of 2017 but remains an unwelcome and disappointing task for outgoing president Peggy O’Neal in her last days.
Ditto club chief Brendon Gale, a champion of change whose club oversees an AFLW side that, like several others, did not always feel as welcome by the male football operation as it should have been as it moved into Tigerland. Compounding the pressure upon Gale is that he remains one of the game’s most respected leaders and is a contender for the top AFL job being vacated by Gillon McLachlan.
He needs to make adequate public sense of this vexed Martin issue in the wake of Thursday night’s shattering defeat at the Gabba. The club had its reasons but it didn’t help the club’s occasionally testy relationship with the AFL that the Tigers released only a holding statement on the video and its social implications on Thursday.
The head office view is that an investigation into Martin’s behaviour is not necessary beyond clarifying the relationship between Martin and the woman who has been unfairly exposed. The incident was not unlawful and the woman was well-known to Martin and made no complaint. That she has been the collateral damage in a cute piece of timing that led to an unofficial collusion between some twisted whistle-blower and the mainstream media, in tandem with a celebrity’s return to football, remains one of modern society’s more shameful realities.
Martin’s unusual public aura has always been shrouded by his unspoken “never complain, never explain” demeanour, which has proved more than workable in line with his lifestyle. So extracting some form of public response from him now will prove tricky, particularly given the incident took place in 2015.
Then comes the separate football question surrounding Martin’s future. Unable in 2022 to have any on-field impact for myriad reasons, which began with the sudden death of his exiled father Shane last December, there is no doubt the grieving Martin lost interest in the game and seems to have struggled all season to regain his sporting hunger. He looked underdone against Brisbane in a game that again exposed the Tigers’ leaky defence, and remains in the sights of Gold Coast.
Although it would be a great shame for Martin to end his career elsewhere, at some point Richmond will lose patience with Martin and his hefty pay packet should his loss of love for football linger. Particularly with talented younger and cheaper midfielders on the open market and despite the fact Damien Hardwick made it clear after the elimination-final loss that Martin remained a contracted and required player.
Whether Martin departs and whether Gale gets the AFL nod, the winds of change are sweeping through Richmond. The wildly successful O’Neal era will conclude with a seamless handover to popular president-in-waiting John O’Rourke, a respected seven-year Tiger director with a strong background in development and infrastructure management as the club begins the Punt Road rebuild.
Another senior assistant, Adam Kingsley, has been lost to a senior coaching role and two of the three-time premiership group have retired. Jack Riewoldt and Trent Cotchin look likely to play on and one small positive from a frustrating year punctuated by narrow defeats is that, of Richmond’s five debutants in 2022, three look set to immediately become regular senior players.
There will be more movement in football at Richmond as the dust from an ultimately unsuccessful season comes to a close but the decision on Martin’s future is crucial given the ramifications and must be resolved quickly.
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