Tom Lynch: The making of a Richmond star
After a desperate Collingwood list manager’s “bush run” to escape detection in a secret recruiting meeting at Tom Lynch’s parents’ home, the then-Sun chose Richmond. The rest is history. Jon Ralph on the making of a Tigers’ superstar.
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It is seven days after Nathan Buckley upset Tom Lynch by confirming their mid-season meeting and Collingwood is desperate for one final chance to woo the colt from the Gold Coast.
As three powerhouse clubs clamour for his services, Magpies list boss Ned Guy drives down the highway to the Blairgowrie home of Lynch’s parents.
It is July 30, 2018, and free agent Lynch is recovering from knee surgery.
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Gold Coast has already registered its fury that its captain is meeting rivals mid-year, yet Lynch’s manager Robbie D’Orazio is determined to gather enough information for his star client to decide.
“It was very funny. We went to his parents house with Ned and I remember going to meet Tom saying, ‘This is the last meeting, Ned wants to do a last-minute list presentation’,” Robbie D’Orazio tells the Herald Sun.
“He was going through the best 22, talking about who Tom would play with and I remember looking out the loungeroom window and out from a bush pops David Zita (from Footy Classified) with a cameraman.
“They had looked in Ned’s car and seen his Collingwood backpack with NG on it. I said to Ned, ‘I am allowed to be here, but you aren’t’.”
What follows is black comedy straight out of Fawlty Towers.
D’Orazio moves Guy’s car around a side entrance and Guy is so desperate to escape unseen that he reportedly jumps a fence to avoid those cameras.
“It wasn’t a fence jump, but it may have been a bush run,” D’Orazio says, laughing.
“It was funny, but it wasn’t a reason not to pick them. By then he had probably made up his mind.”
HOW PUNT RD WAS WON
Tom Lynch sits in a corner of the Richmond weights room 14 months after the Magpies raid and only five days before today’s Grand Final.
In one phenomenal season he has mocked his critics, vindicated his choice and re-emerged as one of footy’s most dominant stars.
Bedecked in Richmond colours today, there is no doubt this could have turned out so differently.
Hawthorn believed at one stage they had won his services as captain Jarryd Roughead and coach Alastair Clarkson made sustained pitches.
And the jumper he wore as a junior underlines what a seismic call it was to ignore Collingwood.
Tom Lynch grew up a Pies nuffy.
“I was a typical kid. Buckley’s jumper on my back, loved him, part of the Buckley Brigade as a kid growing up and went up to the family days at Victoria Park,” Lynch says with a laugh.
How do you knock back Bucks when he is sitting there pleading with you to come to his club?
“Well I met with three clubs, which has been publicised, and I walked away blown away by the three of them. Couldn’t be more impressed. I was so happy I decided on Richmond but when I was 15 or 16 to think that could happen, to be in a room talking to these guys, you never really dream of it. (Buckley) went through some of the spots I could play, where they saw me fitting in.”
Lynch can see the humour in being stalked by Nine’s cameras even if it was far from hilarious as it unfolded.
“Yeah, it was weird. I was cooped up in my house as well with my knee so I had a bit of cabin fever. And then yeah, I was like, ‘I am at my parents house and I don’t really want cameras’. I am trying to recover from my knee. I got a call from my manager saying, ‘It’s going to air’. I don’t watch it, I didn’t want to, but we can laugh about it now.”
Aware by the mid-year bye he would leave Gold Coast, he jammed in Round 14 knee surgery, meetings with three clubs, that Blairgowrie drama, a meeting with Suns chief executive Mark Evans to alert him he was leaving, and an August 2 flight back to his club to tell his teammates. He says all that pain was a necessary evil as he gradually became aware Richmond fitted him hand-in-glove.
“From outside looking in, it looked like a great group. They had something special,” Lynch said.
“Watching on that Friday night with Jack Higgins making everyone laugh at halftime (Round 15) and things like that, it just seemed like a great club to be part of.
“Just watching it on the couch, it wasn’t a light bulb moment — it was pretty cool.
“I just think at Richmond they had great stability across the board. The other clubs did as well, but Richmond stood out to me and Dimma as a coach.
“Playing alongside Jack (Riewoldt) too, I felt like I would fit in and it was almost a perfect job description to come in and learn off Jack. He has been awesome.”
It was a challenging and dramatic time for Lynch in which his loyalty and integrity was questioned and yet he would emerge mostly unscathed.
In hindsight the PCL surgery that he needed so desperately meant Gold Coast wanted an early decision on his future, but then grew frustrated when he actively met clubs to make that call.
Eventually after the meeting with Guy was publicised, Evans drove to meet the recuperating Lynch and ask him the tough questions.
Lynch had already told some officials and players of his intention to leave.
GOLD COAST’S FRUSTRATIONS
The Suns felt embarrassed that Buckley had outed himself as having met their co-captain when they had no idea he was even speaking to other clubs.
Lynch’s camp felt he had already made it clear he was leaving and was only picking a club early to give the Suns clarity over his future.
Despite all that, Evans said Lynch emerged with reputation preserved.
“These sorts of situations are never easy. They test friendships, because would have loved for Tom to continue his career at the Gold Coast Suns,” Evans said.
“But he is still a great person and a great player and he gave a great contribution to the Suns.”
Before he could move on, Lynch needed to tell his team face-to-face.
Touk Miller and Jack Bowes were particularly scathing of Lynch, despite his desire to be upfront.
“I could completely understand what the players felt because I had only told a couple of them,” Lynch said.
“Your captain is down in Melbourne and you are seeing on the news that he is meeting with this club and that club.
“I got off the plane and walked in and told them the news. It was one of those things you have to go through in life.
“It doesn’t matter what your workplace is, you are going to have some uncomfortable conversations.
“There was a sense that I tried to do the best thing I could in the situation, but at the end of it, if you weren’t privy to all the information you would be pretty frustrated by it.”
Eventually Richmond would be told of his intention to join them in preliminary final week.
They knew he was the perfect fit but wanted the news out before potentially winning a second flag.
If he were to arrive, they wanted it known he was coming for the right reasons, not like the NBA’s Kevin Durant, chasing premierships at a team that couldn’t seem to lose.
D’Orazio couldn’t admire his client or his high level of integrity any more.
“I am so proud of him the way he has handled everything. People jumped on him early in the year but he didn’t do a pre-season. He knew coming to Melbourne the pressure would come but he has handled it so well. Matty Lloyd went him (for his form) but he even went on (Lloyd’s) Sunday Footy Show afterwards. His ability to bounce back despite the pressure on him is a testament to him.
“He is a gentle giant off the field and just ruthless on the field.”
LYNCH’S MATE JOHN
Ask Shane McCarthy what he remembers of Tom Lynch growing up as a kid at the Sorrento footy club and he takes you back a generation.
Shane’s late son John McCarthy and Tom were separated by three years but shared a desperation to make a name for themselves on footy’s grand stage.
“My relationship with Tom goes back much further than Tom,” McCarthy said this week.
“I came down to Sorrento in 1976 and in 1977 his father Peter was only 15½ and he played on a wing for Sorrento against Mornington in a final.
“He was only a baby, but he would have been a champion. Within a month of that final I was visiting him in Fairfield in an iron lung. He had contracted polio.
“He never played much again.”
Tom’s mother Maria is a Delahunty from Murtoa, near Horsham in Victoria’s west.
Of her siblings, brother Hugh played 46 games for Essendon and became a Victorian politician, Mike played 42 games for Collingwood and Mary was an ABC journalist who also became a politician.
“So Tom has some good breeding in him,” McCarthy said of Lynch, whose sister Bethany plays AFLW for North Melbourne and shares a house with him in Richmond.
Maria is a nurse, while Peter works in Melbourne for Telstra and commutes daily.
The families shared camping trips up on the Murray River near Tocumwal and one magical AFL game when they gathered on the Gold Coast to watch the boys play against each other.
John would play 18 games over four years at Collingwood then 21 at Port Adelaide in 2012 before his tragic death in Las Vegas that year.
Tom Lynch will never forget his friend’s legacy.
“He was three years older than me, but we grew up together. We used to go camping on the river with him and it was awesome. Just tracking him and watching him play footy and I would chat to him and pick his brain on things.
“I remember I was flying to Spain and we found out the tragic news when we got to Dubai. It was obviously shattering for everyone, for his family and Kate and Shane. At the end of the day it’s just a game and there are so many bigger things in life.”
Says McCarthy of that Gold Coast game: “It was a great day on the Gold Coast in 2012. John playing for Port and Tom in his first year on the Gold Coast and thank God Port won. But it was so good for the families to be together.”
THE COMFORT OF DIMMA
Lynch feels at home on the field and in the comfort of the Richmond’s surrounds.
“A month ago I had my lean patch and was having some criticism and Dimma rang me up at Tuesday at 7pm. He said, ‘We love you and we are happy with how you are going and your best footy is in front of you’,” he said.
“It was just a small thing, but it summed him up, the care he has for players. You get worried straight away. Am I getting dropped this week?’ “He should be switching off but he thought it was important to ring me up.”
He will run through the banner today having realised a dream from those days in Sorrento and playing with his mates in the backyard at Blairgowrie.
“You dream but you never think you are going to get there as a kid. In the backyard like all kids you talk about who you are pretending to be. It’s not a reality, it’s a very big dream. So to play in the AFL Grand final, I can’t wait.”
Originally published as Tom Lynch: The making of a Richmond star
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