Dustin Martin is keen to play at the Suns next year. And the Suns are keen to have him. But both are still asking themselves questions.
The conversation has now largely shifted from whether Dustin Martin wants to play next year at Gold Coast to how much Gold Coast want Dusty to play for the Suns. Or rather, what version of Dusty would they be getting?
Dustin Martin farewelled the Richmond faithful at the MCG earlier this year.Credit: AFL Photos
This has been a movable feast for 18 months, but all things being equal at the moment, the ball is slightly more in the Suns’ court. And it appears highly likely to happen, with the sun not having set on Martin’s career.
Once, teams asking themselves if they wanted Dustin Martin would have been a rhetorical question. It is not now. Anyone who saw Martin play this year would know there is a serious risk of hiring a name, not a player.
The most over-riding question for the Suns is how much of how Martin played this year was the physical wearing on the body of a 33-year-old former champion and how much of it was mental? Certainly, he was slower, looked to struggle with his back and getting ground balls and lacked power in his game, which is to be expected when an elite footballer is on the wrong side of 30.
Clearly he is a physically different and reduced player to what he was, but how much of his decline over the last couple of years was the dimming of passion and drive that sapped his normally fastidious preparation?
What impact was there from watching his premiership coach leave, along with his close friends and teammates retiring as he endured a bleak year at Punt Road knowing that yet more players also planned to go at season’s end? How much was it about managing the ongoing grief of dealing with the sudden death of his father in late 2021?
Was it the accumulated frustrations of living in Melbourne and just wanting to be anywhere but the fishbowl? Was it all of these things, and would any of that be significantly different in Queensland?
These are the almost unanswerable questions the Gold Coast will be – and are – asking themselves.
No one would be expecting Martin, an unrestricted free agent who gave his sayonara from Richmond and the game late in the year at the MCG, to be anything akin to the player he was three years ago, let alone five to seven years ago.
Martin was a premiership hero for Richmond in 2017.Credit: Getty Images
But what could you be getting? A former star who knows his game, is invigorated by a late second coming in a supporting actor role and still able to turn a game? A player able to offer class and grit to a flaky team?
Or a worn-out player who does not want to confront life after football? A player who is unsure what comes next so runs to the security of what he knows – and gets a bump to his superannuation in the meantime?
These too are questions Gold Coast will ask.
Will a fit Martin stand in the way of developing players and deny them game time? Or will he foster that callow talent by showing them how elite players prepare and perform? The Suns thought they were getting that with Gary Ablett as captain, and it didn’t work out that way.
Bailey Humphrey is the most obvious player whose game time might be blocked by Martin. But to date, Humphrey has been an unrealised talent and the Suns will wonder if Martin is someone holding the keys to unlocking that game.
Suns coach Damien Hardwick knows Martin as well as anyone in football and he and Martin have kept in semi-regular contact since Hardwick left the Tigers. There is nothing untoward in that; they are friends and Hardwick, as his long-term coach, has been a life mentor and support to Martin.
Hardwick is not considering the potential recruitment as a charitable gesture for a friend. He is a coach and wonders if Martin could still help him. Hardwick has had some very confronting conversations with a range of Suns players after his first season in charge and is determined to be bold in attacking a culture he wants to change.
Martin is not seen as the panacea, but can he help? That is the question. At 33 is there football life left in him? Is there value in him as an athlete? Is he like Adelaide’s Taylor Walker, Port Adelaide’s Travis Boak and Geelong’s Tom Hawkins, who all looked physically gone at late stages of their careers only to go on to play high-quality football?
The pragmatic answer to these questions is money. It only happens if he is cheap enough.
From the time the idea started to get serious traction, Martin was aware that he was not going to be paid anything like what he had been. He earned seven figures this year. Next year, if he played, it would be for about a third of that.
All indications are that he was content with that arrangement – he has earned well from the game – so that brought the conversation to the point we are now.
The Suns have to ask: what then is the risk? If it is $300,000-$400,000, what is the downside?
Richmond people will hate seeing Martin run out in the Suns jumper (though few players look good in a uniform that looks like it carries the logo for a superannuation firm) but the Tiger fans do not begrudge their three time Norm Smith medallist anything. Like watching the line of premiership players wanting moves this off-season, they can cradle the three recent cups and look ahead to the next generation, not wistfully at the last.
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