Inside story behind Matthew Richardson’s move to the wing and his amazing 2008 season

After being blindsided by a left field idea from coach Terry Wallace, star forward Matthew Richardson left Punt Rd thinking, ‘S***, this might be the end of me’. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Terry Wallace was the brains behind Matthew Richardson’s big move.

Terry Wallace came to his Monday morning meeting with Matthew Richardson armed with both the carrot and the stick.

It was Monday April 7, 2008, and in Wallace’s fourth season his Tigers were going nowhere.

Beaten by Collingwood the previous day after a three-win 2007 season, Richmond was 1-2 and headed down its familiar path – mediocrity.

Five months later Wallace was being hailed as a coaching genius as Richardson’s 48-goal season saw him poll 22 Brownlow votes in one of the count’s most electric contests.

But on that Monday morning at Punt Road, he knew he would need all of his persuasive powers to convince his reigning best-and-fairest winner to move up onto the wing.

If he couldn’t flatter one of footy’s great full forwards, he could certainly paint a bleak picture of where he might be playing his football the following Saturday.

“I had probably been tossing it around for a month,” Wallace told the Herald Sun this week.

“We had a young forward line, particularly with Jack Riewoldt, and we wanted to fast-track them as quickly as we could.

Relive classic AFL matches from the 60s to today on KAYO SPORTS. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >

Matthew Richardson with a young Jack Riewoldt during his stunning 2008 season.

“When we played with someone with that big a personality, every time we got the ball we kicked it to Richo. We just weren’t getting better. And the flip side was that he was just getting more and more frustrated down there.

“I called him in and he absolutely thought I was taking the mickey. He was looking for the camera in the room. He didn’t take it seriously. Then clearly he realised by my demeanour that it was very serious. And I just said to him, ‘Look, we are going to go with this. So the choice is putting a line through your career which we shouldn’t, or you take it as a new challenge’. It was literally the week before we were playing Fremantle.”

Richardson this week admitted he truly feared for his career given the strength of Wallace’s message, delivered only weeks after he had kicked 5.2 as the Tigers beat Carlton in the season opener.

“I remember walking into the club on the Monday morning having lost the game on the weekend and ‘Plough’ said, ‘Can you come into my office, I need to ask you a favour.’.

“He said, ‘What do you think about playing on a wing?’ That was basically how it started.

“I remember saying to him, ‘Why don’t I go back to the goalsquare, Jack can do the lead-up work inside 50, what do you think?’

“And he said. ‘Then you can go and play for Coburg …’

“I said, ‘I love the wing, get me up there.’

“I remember driving out of the club and thought, ‘S***, this might be the end of me’.

“I remember ringing Wayne Campbell on my way home and we had a chat. The first thing he said was, ‘I think it’s a great idea’.

THE FORMER TEAMMATE

Richmond Hall of Famer Campbell was in his second year as a Western Bulldogs assistant coach when he took good mate Richardson’s call.

“We caught up in a cafe in Elwood,” Campbell recalls.

“I was coaching at the Dogs but I only lived around the corner and he said, ‘Plough has this idea’.

“There were a couple of things that came to mind. I could see what Plough was trying to do because as a player who had the ball in the midfield and looked forward, when Matthew was there you kicked the ball to him even when you shouldn’t have.

“But secondly he had the athleticism to play on the wing and he runs unbelievably well and he could get back and take marks in defence and get his opposition wingman in one-on-one contests and mark over there. The over-riding thing I said to him was just go in with an open mind and give it go and see where this goes.”

THE FIRST GAME

Having secured Richardson’s buy-in the Tigers needed to at least give him a practice session before flying to Perth to take on Mark Harvey’s Dockers.

“At the time we were quite nomadic with training and we were at Victoria Park and had a lockout session with Richo on the wing and it worked out pretty well,” Wallace said.

“So we threw him on a wing against Freo and he killed it. You could look at the stats but he had something like 25 possessions and three goals.”

A Fremantle side that had knocked off rival West Coast was smacked by the Tigers in a 64-point drubbing.

Richardson would kick three of his four goals in the first half and finish with those 25 possessions, 15 marks, five contested marks, 10 contested possessions and two hit-outs to boot.

“I remember lining up on the wing on David Mundy who was only a young player at the time,” Richardson says.

“I remember those first two touches, there was just so much space. I didn’t have someone up my backside the whole time and still pushed forward a fair bit. I got a few early touches on the wing and it just took the pressure off. I think it just released the pressure valve, when you played forward you had someone up your ginger every time.”

Matthew Richardson was dominant as soon as he moved to the wing. Picture: Jackson Flindell

THE SECOND-HALF SURGE

Richmond would pour on 37 scoring shots in that victory over Fremantle, and while they kept on scoring in subsequent weeks the wins evaporated for the next two months.

A draw in Round 5 against the Western Bulldogs and a Round 9 victory over Essendon were all they could salvage as they hit mid-June with three victories and a draw from 11 games.

Richardson was flying – five goals and 22 possessions against St Kilda, four and 27 against Hawthorn – but Riewoldt only had five goals and Jay Schultz six goals to Round 12.

Then the Tigers caught fire, starting with a Round 12 win over battling Melbourne as Richardson kicked five goals from 21 possessions.

By then everyone had caught up with Richo fever, including Melbourne coach Dean Bailey.

Richmond poured on eight goals in 15 minutes as Wallace labelled Richardson “The Marksman” after his five straight goals.

Bailey had no doubts Richardson could win the Brownlow.

“Yes, he is all that. He is unpredictable but he’s very exciting,” Bailey said.

“He has got some special qualities, no doubt about that. He kicked five in the game, and how he played, running all over the ground, he is well on the way (to the Brownlow Medal).

“He took one mark where he ran from half-back and almost launched himself lateral to the ground, running inside 50.”

Herald Sun chief football writer Mike Sheahan was just as entranced.

“No wonder they love him,” he wrote on Monday morning.

“Matthew Richardson got Richmond home again last night, this time in a game critical to the immediate future of so many at Punt Rd.”

“Brett Deledio had another big game with 29 possessions and plenty of run, while Mitch Morton and Trent Cotchin have a welcome splash of class about their work, and Richard Tambling looked comfortable in defence.”

Even now Richardson believes he has had better seasons – and at Richmond few will ever surpass Dustin Martin’s 2017 Norm Smith/Brownlow/best-and-fairest/premiership quartet.

But Richmond was the perfect story, Richardson in charge as the Tigers roared home with eight wins from their last 11 games, missing September by just two premiership points.

“From the moment he played there we looked more dangerous and damaging,” says Wallace now.

“We weren’t a strong side. That is the reality. But we looked more likely to get through up forward, we just weren’t as one-dimensional. He was still kicking his fours and fives on a wing but he was setting up as many goals and he involved the other forwards. It couldn’t have gone any better.”

By round 18 Richmond was only half a game outside the eight and while the Pies kept them at bay with late-season wins the Tigers closed with a trio of outstanding performances.

They knocked over Hawthorn, Fremantle and Melbourne again to close out the year with Richardson padding the stats sheet against the Hawks (29 possessions and a goal) and Fremantle (18 touches, two goals).

It would be Wallace’s most successful year in charge – 11 and a half wins – as Richardson poured on 48.30 as well as hauling in 222 marks (46 contested) and 364 possessions.

There was no stopping Richo in 2008.

None at all!

THE BROWNLOW MEDAL

There have been greater votes tallies and more dramatic victories, but has there ever been a more enjoyable night than the 2008 Brownlow Medal count?

At the end of voting in Round 20, Richardson was a single vote behind Brisbane’s Simon Black and one ahead of Adam Cooney with two Richmond victories to finish the year.

A player with rock star idols had become footy’s version, playing up to the crowd after polling votes and chugging Crown Lagers as a typically staid count turned into his own playground.

Richardson was surely home in one of footy’s great turn-ups.

Except he and Wallace knew what everyone in the room didn’t – that an injury he had been carrying since May meant he was never going to poll in those final two rounds.

“We won those last two games by 10 goals and people in the room were looking at the form guide thinking I was going to get votes in those last two games,” Richardson said.

“I knew sitting there they were my worst two games. We had played that Dream Team game (The AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match) and I had hurt my knee and I was getting my knee jabbed every game by the end. By Round 21 I was just cooked. My knee was cooked, I had tendinitis in my hammy and I had nothing left. I had played pretty poorly and it all added to the excitement but I knew I wasn’t going to win.

“Chris Newman was my date that night. I was single at the time and Newey hadn’t been and when we got to the last round of votes he got three and was sitting next to me. I turned and said, “My date has stolen my Brownlow …”

Matthew Richardson just missed the 2008 Brownlow Medal.

THE AFTERMATH

Wallace knew at the time that Riewoldt had something special about him and while Jay Schulz would thrive at Port Adelaide, he was vindicated on Coleman Medallist Riewoldt.

In a disastrous 2009 season, where Wallace would be sacked mid-year and the Tigers eked out only five wins, Riewoldt kicked 32 goals but exploded with 78.39 in 2010.

Richardson remembers thinking he would play forever after finishing that 2008 season with a new string to his bow.

He would play only six more games in a career spanning 282 games for exactly 800 goals.

“I had a bit of tendinitis in my hammy but still had a pretty good off-season and in the last training run before Round 1 we trained at Craigieburn. I remember getting out of the car and thought, “Gee my hammy feels a bit sore and in the next five or six weeks it got worse and worse.

MORE AFL

The MCG is gaining support as a potential quarantine hub as several hubs could be introduced in Victoria

AFLPA to ask its full player body of 840 players on the merits of playing in quarantine hubs

Western Bulldogs suspend Lachie Hunter for four AFL games and fine him $5000

“In Round 6 I snapped my hammy off the bone and in the end my career finished really quickly. Coming off 2008 I had thought I could play until I was 40.

“I had the surgery and the aim was to get back but I played for Coburg in Round 20 to test it out and lasted 10 minutes and partially tore it off the bone again. I did the next pre-season under Damien Hardwick and saw Julian Feller who said I needed more surgery and in my own mind I was cooked. I didn’t want to take a spot on the list so that was it.”

Originally published as Inside story behind Matthew Richardson’s move to the wing and his amazing 2008 season