By Jake Niall
Dustin Martin was the AFL’s premier impact footballer, the player whose talents most shaped the outcome of games and premierships since the advent of the millennium.
Without Martin, the Tigers would not have that glorious treble of flags. Without him, Damien Hardwick wouldn’t be a feted triple-premiership coach and Trent Cotchin would not have “three-time premiership skipper” adorning his resume.
The faces of Dusty: After the 2019 grand final, the 2020 decider and the 2017 grand final.Credit: Archives
Careers were made and unmade by Martin’s astonishing combination of brute power – evident in his deployment of the signature fend-off – and his genius as an architect with the ball in his hands. Not since Wayne Carey, a key-forward nonpareil, has a player been such a decisive weapon in his peak years (2017-2020).
His teammates knew, as fellow 300-gamer Shane Edwards explained, that they merely had to “hang in there” and stay close in big games. In Martin, the Tigers had what Edwards called their “security blanket” who could deliver the knockout blows when the contest was in the balance.
“There was some element to hanging in there as a team, making the game as even as possible knowing we’ve got this guy in our front half that can take us over the line and lifts in the biggest moments,” Edwards told this masthead in a special gathering of Richmond’s five living 300-gamers at Punt Road, in the days preceding Dusty’s 300th.
We must assume that Martin has genuinely reached the end and that there will be no encore up on the Gold Coast, no retirees’ remorse and Tony Lockett-like comeback for a champ who has nothing left to achieve and seemingly little left to give.
For untold thousands of Richmond people – indeed, for much of the non-Richmond football public – it is to be hoped that Dusty keeps the boots hung up, remaining yellow and black from beginning to end.
His retirement is hardly a surprise, given the apparent loss of hunger, the absences from games and training. The fire had gone out.
We must assume that Dustin Martin has genuinely reached the end and that there will be no encore up on the Gold Coast, no retirees’ remorse and Tony Lockett-like comeback for a champ who has nothing left to achieve and seemingly little left to give.
Martin’s footballing feats were remarkable, more so for the fact that they were given full expression in the cauldron of finals and grand finals, as the only player with three Norm Smith Medals. In 2017, he dominated for a season and finals series, taking the Brownlow Medal and his first flag. In 2019, as he slew the Lions (six goals), then Geelong and Greater Western Sydney (grand final), he was still the One in September.
By 2020, as the pandemic wrought a truncated season and finals in exile in Queensland, Dusty arguably had been supplanted, on a weekly basis, as the AFL’s premier player. The man with whom he shared a retirement on Tuesday, Geelong’s Tom Hawkins, was among one or two who might have eclipsed him. At least in the home-and-away games.
But, in the shadows of half-time in the grand final, as the Tigers stared down at defeat at the Gabba to Geelong, it was Dusty who abruptly turned the game on its head, with a trademark stunning snap; by the final siren, he’d booted four and the Tigers had cantered home.
Dusty’s mystique, compared to other champions, lay in his reclusive silence. His reticence meant he retained the mystery that nearly all AFL players forfeit once they’re drafted. He was even less forthcoming than Lance Franklin, Tony Lockett and Gary Ablett senior. Fittingly, Dusty’s retirement announcement to teammates wasn’t filmed by the club.
The fend-off, more colloquially known as the “don’t argue”, became a well-worn metaphor for his attitude to media incursions into his fenced-off private self. It mattered not that he defied the AFL’s conventions - and the media engine that drove the footy economy. A special player was afforded special concessions.
Richmond worked closely with Martin’s long-time agent Ralph Carr in the knowledge that the reticent champion had to be handled differently.
Raised in Castlemaine in challenging circumstances, Dusty had left high school in year nine and spent time working in Sydney with his colourful father Shane, who would be deported to New Zealand and was, to Martin’s chagrin, the subject of much media attention during his exile from his son.
It was a measure of the father-son relationship that sage Richmond football boss Neil Balme flew to New Zealand to importune Shane Martin on the eve of the 2017 finals as part of the club’s successful pitch to secure Dustin - who had a heftier offer from North Melbourne - on a seven-year mega deal.
Shane was the centre of Dusty’s universe, as Richmond officials put it, and his father’s death in December 2021 had a visible impact on the son, who took a turn towards melancholy. The heroics of 2017-2020 were only reprised sporadically thereafter, as the toll of injury and age rendered him less commanding, albeit his best was still imposing. His commitment - previously unconditional - waned from 2022.
Martin was not a player, such as Scott Pendlebury or Joel Selwood, whose fire would burn from day one until his mid-30s. The measure of his career was not in numbers – remarkable as they were – but in what he produced in key moments, repeatedly, for a club that, partly through his powers, enjoyed a four-year reign over the competition.
Richmond were blessed to call out his name at pick No. 3 in that storied draft of 2009, before which he had presciently told the draft camp interviewers that he would “play straight away” and be a positive force at whichever club chose him.
The Tigers – and the game – were also fortunate to have him for this long.
“He just loves winning,” said Richmond’s exiting chief executive Brendon Gale, whose stint as CEO coincided with Martin’s entire career. Having scaled the mountain three times and descended together, the football relationship between Dustin Martin and Richmond had no reason to endure.
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