The problem with writing about Dustin Martin is there’s no-one to compare him to. There’s no obvious reference point. People throw around names like Millane and Ricciuto, mainly because they had similar physiques, similar struts, similar locomotion. But they were completely different footballers. Martin is unprecedented. For columnists, for opposition coaches and for defenders marooned one-on-one with him in an open forward line, it makes him almost impossible to get a handle on.
There’s a bit of Gary Ablett Snr about him – the shyness, the distant stare, the brute power, the legs that could prop up a jetty, the titanic talent. Certainly, of all the footballers I’ve seen, only Martin draws your eye the way Ablett did. But Ablett was a different proposition altogether. Watching him as a kid, my default reaction was often laughter. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. When they flash to the crowd during his highlights packages, the fans are invariably pissing themselves.
He often gave the impression that he didn’t comprehend how good he was. He tottered around like he didn’t know what day it was. Everything about him operated anticlockwise. He was never at one with the rhythm of a game. He’d boot 14 goals and his side would still lose. Silly as it sounds, there was something almost apologetic about his game. He sometimes looked like a man who’d rather be back in Drouin, trapping rabbits.
Like Ablett, Martin was a rough-hewn kid from country Victoria. Like Ablett, he had physical traits that about one in every million of us are gifted. And like Ablett, he operated on instinct. Unlike him however, he’s always been fully present on the football field. His body, and his game, is fully functional. He senses, or processes, the tempo of a game. Like many of the great tennis players, he has an innate sense of risk and reward, of when to turn up the wick, of when to grab a match by the balls.
Perhaps most importantly, he has evolved. He has reined in the more lairy aspects of his game. And he has submitted himself to the team. In a side that plays an unusual brand of football – a brand that requires 100% buy-in from all 22 players to succeed – he fits in perfectly. The entire side isn’t constructed around him the way Wayne Carey’s North Melbourne was. Instead, he complements it. He’s their exclamation mark. As Jay Croucher observed following the 2017 grand final, the Tigers’ on-field operation isn’t hierarchical. “Martin inevitably possesses a certain aura and football gravitas – around his teammates and all other life forms – but other Tigers never seem to defer to him out of necessity or responsibility.”
He has certainly done it the hard way. Last November, just under a quarter of the draftees came via Victoria’s Associated Public Schools competition. They play on beautifully curated grounds and get every leg up imaginable. Martin left school in year nine. His dad is a ferocious looking individual, a bikie, a deportee and now, astonishingly, a published author. Dusty could easily have been lost to the game. If he had been drafted to the Gold Coast, or to one of the more poorly resourced Victorian clubs, they may well have put him in the too hard basket. He could have been a flickering talent, a cautionary tale.
But Richmond believed in him. They invested heavily in him. They smoothed out some of his rougher edges, stood up for him when he courted strife and shooed away some of the more colourful influences in his life. They taught him how to meditate, how to eat properly, how to be an adult. It’s the sort of support Ablett Snr never had, or never wanted.
Last year was especially challenging. For months, the Tigers seemed to be purring towards back-to-back premierships. They were considered unbeatable at the MCG. But Martin never really looked happy. And when it mattered most, he was hobbled. I watched him train prior to last year’s preliminary final. He was like one of those superstar thoroughbreds that can’t go a yard in the mud. His gait was all out of whack. He’d been shrivelled to mortal proportions. Ninety seconds into that game, it was obvious that he, and his side, were in all sorts of trouble.
“Shit happens,” Damian Hardwick told them several days later. But really, Mason Cox happened. No sane person could have seen it coming. He was a third tier college basketballer. He sleeps diagonally on his bed. He’s done bugger-all since. But he sunk Richmond. He embarrassed them. Twelve months on, it’s still hard to believe it happened.
For a few months this year, it seemed as though their ship had sailed. For the first time in ages, they were ravaged by injuries. They couldn’t win at the Docklands. They were pummelled by Geelong. They were 6-5 going into the bye. But come July, which their coach calls “big boy month”, the storm began to gather. They welcomed their champions back. They ticked off the wins. Martin looked conspicuously bigger and stronger every week. He was desperately unlucky not to be selected in the All-Australian team. In the qualifying final, he sliced and skewered Brisbane, booting six goals from just nine kicks. They tried everything. Opponents of every shape and size were sent to him – lambs to the slaughter the lot of them.
On Friday afternoon, more than 50,000 Victorians are expected to attend a climate change rally in the Treasury Gardens. A few hours later, and a few hundred metres up the road, the Tiger Army will converge on the MCG as Richmond and Geelong vie for a place in the grand final.
When he was drafted, Martin told recruiters he was born to play football. And he was born for occasions like this. At various stages on Friday night, he’ll swagger down to the forward line. His teammates will clear the space around him. It will be Dusty’s own personal swamp. His crocodilian menace will draw every eye in the arena. 100,000 pairs of eyes and just one question: how the hell is anyone supposed to stop him?
