Eastern league: Noble Park champion Kyle Martin to play 150th senior game

He’s widely accepted as the best in local footy. Second-best? Daylight. Here’s what makes the champion midfielder so special.

Bulls champion Kyle Martin will play his 150th senior game on Saturday.

Watching replays of Noble Park matches from the past four or five years and cutting vision of Kyle Martin, Bulls coach Steve Hughes noticed something.

He came to know exactly when Martin had gone off the ground for a breather.

They were the only times he was missing from the play.

“I did what you call coding of the video. You flick through the game and hit a button every time Kyle touches the ball or does something reasonably impressive,’’ Hughes was saying on Tuesday.

“It was very obvious when he’d gone to the bench. That was the three or four-minute patch every quarter where he wasn’t involved.

“You’d think, ‘Yeah, Marto’s off the ground here because I haven’t seen him for 30 seconds’.

“And to me that shows what he does best: he knows what’s going to happen before anybody else does and he wills himself to that many contests. It’s not luck that he gets 50s and 45s (possession counts).

“It’s a by-product of his intelligence and intuition in what will happen next in the game, combined with work rate. That’s why Kyle is a special player.’’

Kyle Martin and Bulls assistant coach Andrew Sharp after a victory.

Hughes noticed something else in the dozen or so matches he coded: how Martin “senses the key moments and delivers in tight games’’.

The coach has been collecting footage of his champion midfielder ahead of his 150th senior match for the club.

The milestone comes this Saturday in a top-of-the-table clash against Vermont at Terrara Rd.

It will be another accolade for a player widely accepted as one of the best in local football.

Last year Leader named its top 50 players in suburban football, an exercise that was always bound to provoke great discussion and debate.

Martin came in at No 1 – and there was hardly a voice of dissent.

His record is remarkable: he’s won the best and fairest in 11 of his past 12 years of football, seven awards at Noble, three in the VFL (one at Frankston, two at Collingwood) and one at Haileybury College.

Kyle Martin collects a kick against Norwood.

His Collingwood best and fairests came in 2013 and ’14. At the end of the 2014 season, and after playing six AFL matches, he walked away from the Magpies, saying he was no longer enjoying football.

He returned to Noble Park. He’s topped the vote count every year since.

And as club president Grant Connolly sees it, he’s lifted a heavy load.

Connolly started at Noble Park in the early 1980s.

He’s seen some great players at Moodemere St: Neville Esler, Craig Whitehead, Sandy Cameron, Peter Reece and, through the Eastern league years, Denis Knight, Peter O’Brien and Daniel Donati.

He is reluctant to put them in any order.

“I don’t think it’s fair to put any one on them on top of the others,’’ Connolly said. “It’s too hard anyway, trying to compare the different eras.’’

But he made one point about Martin.

“He’s gone through a period where we haven’t had much success for a while and he’s held the side together,’’ Connolly said.

“He’s had to carry the load way too much, him and ‘Sketchy’ (Jackson Sketcher).

“There’s been that pressure on him, internally and externally. You go back to those sides with ‘Knighter’ (Knight) and ‘Nutsy’ (Donati) and ‘OB’ (O’Brien), there was always six or seven blokes that the opposition could put work into it.

“In this era it’s been just Kyle. So that makes him stand out more so than the others, that he’s always been the No 1 target and he’s had to cope with that. The other blokes I’ve mentioned, they had teammates around them in support, to take some pressure off. Kyle hasn’t had that luxury.’’

Hughes is in his first year as senior coach of the Bulls. But he goes back with Martin longer than most people at Noble Park: Hughes coached him in the Under 13s.

Of course, he won the best and fairest that year. The league medal and goalkicking came to him in the Under 15s.

From under-age Bulls teams he went to the Sandringham Dragons, playing for Vic Metro in 2008. Then he returned to Noble Park, having an immediate impact: he won the 2009 senior best and fairest from Dean Kelly and O’Brien.

Kyle Martin takes a kick for the Bulls in his first senior season, 2009.

In 2010 Martin played in mighty Mick Fogarty’s premiership team. In 2011 he played in another flag and shared the best and fairest with Craig Anderson.

That year he was also runner-up in the league award. In the years since he’s polled nowhere as well as he should have; his tendency to needle the umpires has no doubt kept him off their vote cards.

Martin has played most of his football for Noble under Fogarty, who regards him as “easily’’ the best player he’s seen at local level.

And the second-best? Daylight, he said.

He marvelled at Martin’s ability to set aside any off-field issues – a bad week at work, say – and niggling injuries to play exceptional football.

Fogarty encouraged Martin to go to Frankston VFL and try to get drafted. Twelve months later he was a Collingwood rookie.

Kyle Martin in the middle of a Magpies celebration.

Kyle Martin marking at the MCG.

Hughes was thrilled when his former Under 13 player became an AFL Magpie, believing the talent he first recognised in the Under 13s had found a rightful home at the highest level.

Not for a minute was he disappointed when Martin left the Pies.

“It’s not for everyone, the AFL,’’ he said.

“You do what you want to do in life. There’s no doubt he would have made it (as an AFL player) but it wasn’t for Kyle. You’ve got to be happy with whatever you’re doing. He is now.’’

Under Fogarty, Martin assumed the captaincy from Sam Monaghan ahead of the 2018 season. The Bulls had suffered an exodus of players. There was even pre-season talk they might be relegation candidates.

They finished 8-10. The skipper won another best and fairest.

“He’s demanding of his teammates, because he sets such a high standard himself for those to follow,’’ Hughes said of Martin’s approach to the captaincy.

“He’s one of the more intelligent footy brains that I’ve coached and he passes that on really well. Being in elite systems since basically he was a kid, he’s picked up a lot things. He’s an additional coach for us I guess.’’

Kyle Martin in 2015, the year he returned to the Bulls.

Hughes called Martin “as intense a footballer as I’ve coached’’.

When he took over from Fogarty, he told his champion player he wanted him to enjoy the game and try to “de-stress’’.

Noble Park coach Steve Hughes.

Others had suggested that Martin, with a keen sense of the Noble Park history, had felt the pressure to perform well and maintain the club’s high standing.

“He takes his footy very seriously but there’s also the fun element,’’ Hughes said.

“It’s not his responsibility to carry the club.’’

Martin isn’t one for the spotlight – he ducks it like a moccasin does a puddle – and Hughes said his skipper would shy away from the accolades ahead of his milestone.

“I know he’s going to get the shits with me for doing the video thing, but that’s all right, we’ll make him squirm a bit,’’ he said with a laugh.