Footy villain: Sam Landsberger looks at why Richmond spearhead Tom Lynch has rubbed so many footy fans up the wrong way in 2020
Name a champion full-forward who played nice. It’s not easy, is it? So why is there so much anger directed at Richmond star Tom Lynch for this recent displays of aggression? Sam Landsberger takes a look at the Tiger.
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Name a champion full-forward who played nice.
It’s not easy, is it? “Nice” and “successful” are two qualities that don’t really mesh in the goalsquare.
Hulking Hawthorn legend Jason Dunstall rarely transgressed, but in football it is largely an oxymoron.
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“You’ve got to be aggressive,” said Cameron Mooney, who was colloquially known as the ‘Big, Hairy Cat’ in his Geelong heyday.
“They’ve all got a bit of mongrel in them – Browny, Duck, Derm. It’s a bit of hallmark.
“If you’re going to stand in the way or you’re going to stop me from leading or push me away from where I wanna go, I’m gonna hurt you.
“You can’t be nice. The only ‘nice’ key forward – and when I say nice he wasn’t punchy or getting suspended – was Nick Riewoldt.
“But ‘Rooey’ was one of the bravest blokes we’ve seen, so if you stood under the ball he’d run through you.”
Now try and name a brute of a goalkicker.
A big, burly, menacing forward who unloaded his aggression as routinely as the weekly shopping.
At a pinch, Barry Hall, Fraser Gehrig, Jonathan Brown, Wayne Carey and, this year, Charlie Dixon … the names flow like a game from the 1990s.
If mongrel is part of the job description, why is there so much outrage over cleanskin Tom Lynch?
Richmond has become the villain of the finals and its polite pin-up boy with boyish good looks is seemingly the antihero.
Is it partly because his petty misdemeanours don’t marry up with that charming and innocent exterior?
THE IMPACT
Lynch (hamstring) missed the qualifying final loss to Brisbane, and Richmond’s review zeroed in on Harris Andrews’ golden fist.
Andrews thumped a season-best 13 spoils, most spiked long and clean, which rendered the Tiger crumbers invisible.
When Lynch returned in the semi-final, St Kilda had no such luck.
“The way he jumps at packs is incredible,” coach Damien Hardwick said.
“We tend to focus on the 20 per cent and not the 80 per cent.
“We don’t look at him for smashing two blokes and getting the ball to ground for Shai Bolton to kick two or three goals, we look at the incident that’s minuscule.
“It’s what we do as society, we focus on the negative.”
Lynch has engaged in 72 one-on-one marking contests this year, and been outmarked twice – by Steven May (Melbourne) and Tom Clurey (Port Adelaide).
Remarkably, after 19 contests in finals he is yet to be outmarked.
It was a similar story in the 1970s, when Michael ‘Disco’ Roach remembers David Cloke splitting packs for the likes of Kevin Bartlett.
“He was a human wrecking ball,” Roach said.
Hardwick said Lynch was “by far the best player on the ground” in the semi-final, and that “aggression and exertion was part of it”.
Lynch polled five coaches votes, indicating they came from Hardwick and none from St Kilda coach Brett Ratten.
The gruesome sight of Saint Ben Paton leaving the field with blood gushing from his head served as a lesson.
“That’s what Tom brings,” Hardwick said.
“He brings aggression and if someone wants to take his space, good luck.”
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BORN ANGRY
That aggro is now in the spotlight, but it is nothing new.
When Lynch was 20 he flattened Jake Melksham in a sickening collision that left both players sprawled across the Docklands turf.
“Classic example where a bloke (Melksham) dropped into his leading lane and he’s just come crashing out and created a contest, but in doing so hurt the PCL in his knee for the first time,” former teammate Campbell Brown recalled.
“I reckon a lot of other forwards would’ve been happy just to man the mark and not put that body on.
“It was a great contest, and it showed me that was a guy that was prepared to put his body on the line and crash packs.”
Brown tried to tease the white-line fever out of Lynch when he was drafted in 2010 by reinforcing that strength.
“If you want to be a really consistent, successful forward you just have to have that presence,” Brown said.
“That’s what we see from Lynchy, and that’s what we saw early days from Jeremy Cameron, and I reckon he’s gone away from that in that 12-18 months.
“That’s been Charlie Dixon’s biggest improvement this year, he’ getting to so many contests that if he’s not marking them he’s bringing it to ground and not getting outmarked.”
PARKING TICKETS
The Paton and Melksham contests fall into the universally admired “80 per cent” of what Lynch does.
But Hardwick’s “20 per cent” refers to his five charges this year – two for misconduct and three for striking – and outgoing assistant Justin Leppitsch wasn’t as forgiving.
“He’s got lucky again, Lynchy, hasn’t he?” Leppitsch said on breakfast radio this week.
“He treads a fine line … it just doesn’t look good, does it?”
But stacked up against his brethren and Lynch almost grows a halo and some wings.
Tony ‘Plugger’ Lockett and Dermott Brereton were wiped out for a combined 46 matches from 33 charges, while Gary Ablett Senior was reported 16 times.
In 2004 the tribunal handed retiring Brisbane Lions forward Alastair Lynch a 10-game ban and $15,000 fine for a Grand Final punch on.
Even Matthew Lloyd, known as the Velvet Sledgehammer, finished his career by rearranging Brad Sewell’s face.
Like Lloyd, Mooney’s final game ended in suspension – his 18th game from 16 charges.
But in Lynch’s 10 years he has been rubbed out for a grand total of one match, courtesy of a pre-season rough conduct charge five years ago.
When Lynch booted Richmond into last year’s Grand Final with five goals, opposing spearhead Tom Hawkins sat in the stands as he missed his sixth game through suspension in four years.
For all of this year’s headlines, Lynch has paid $3250 in fines this season and hasn’t been suspended.
As Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said, they are merely “parking tickets”.
CAN YOU HAVE BOTH?
In 2017 the Tigers met Josh Schache before going cold and turning their attention to free agent Lynch.
They wanted intimidating over highly-touted and this year Western Bulldogs dropped Schache after just two games because Chris Grant said he lacked physicality.
The Dogs love Aaron Naughton because of his swagger while the unproductive Josh Bruce even received a tick at times for smashing packs.
On a scale of, say, Schache to Barry Hall, where does Lynch fit?
“You could argue he’s got the aggression right, because he hasn’t been rubbed out,” Brown said.
“He’s a competitor, he’s pushed it to the edge – and gone over a couple of times – but he hasn’t been rubbed out.”
Jonathan Brown described the response to Lynch’s knee to Dougal Howard as “one of the great overreactions”.
The question is, can you keep the 80 per cent and ditch the 20 per cent?
Can you have that killer instinct without occasionally taking it half a step too far? Or is the ugly simply a by-product of that nastily good?
“I love it. I love the way he plays. I love watching him play, I love his aggression,” Mooney said.
“I’ll guarantee you Lynchy has seen a lot of players take a couple of short steps over the last couple of years thinking, ‘Is he coming? Where is he?’
“I saw a lot of players do that in my time. It’s OK as long as you’re not overstepping the line and being ridiculous, and there were times when I was.
“The old days of a couple of cheap shots are so hard now, there’s too many cameras around.
“When I started you’d get away with a lot more.
“The little drop of a knee – it wouldn’t have bruised a grape, he’s just letting the guy know he’s there – but on another day you might misjudge it and all of a sudden you’re missing a prelim.”
Campbell Brown was hoping for a Richmond-Brisbane Grand Final after Lion Mitch Robinson called Lynch a “wanker” this year.
“I’ve got a huge opinion of Tommy Lynch and I’m sort of hoping it’s a Richmond-Brisbane Grand Final and he might be able to put Robbo and some of those Brisbane boys back in their box,” Brown said.
Tell us how you really feel Mitch! 😲https://t.co/DFB7MynKQP pic.twitter.com/sbIubTg6oN
— SuperFooty (AFL) (@superfooty) August 18, 2020
THE FOX FOOTY JURY
THE QUESTION: Does Tom Lynch need to change his behaviour, or are his indiscretions being overblown?
BRAD JOHNSON: I don’t think we’re overblowing them at all because they’re there for us to see. He probably does need to change some aspects of his game. Even giving away the 50m penalty against St Kilda, he just has to move on from that. You can still be aggressive and strong and all those things that he is, but just take away that second layer that isn’t required.
JORDAN LEWIS: I think they’ve been overblown. I quite like the way that he plays. I would rather an aggressive type of player over a placid player any day. I think it permeates through your team, that you’ve got someone that’s willing to fight for the club and fight for the jumper as hard as possible. So I wouldn’t be changing the way he plays. Over many years, every side that has won a premiership has had some element of aggression or some player in their side that is the aggressive type.
THE QUOTE – HAMISH HARTLETT
“He obviously gets caught up in the emotions of the game probably a bit more frequently than others do. I think there’d be plenty of people out there who would like to see his season come to an end … I’ll leave it at that.”
Originally published as Footy villain: Sam Landsberger looks at why Richmond spearhead Tom Lynch has rubbed so many footy fans up the wrong way in 2020