Terry Wallace

[KUNG FU]

That'd be why his Tigers beat an invincible Adelaide with avant garde tactics at the Dome in 2006, the Premiers-elect towards the end of last year by 5 goals, and he had the wood on Lethal's Lions (4-0-1, 2005-8) - a side known for no-nonsense tough accountable footy?

What's also conveniently forgotten is he even got this year's shoddy vintage up in Round 2 to be level-pegging with Geelong at 3QT at Kardinia Park, something not seen since Port won there in 2007.

It's fashionable to bash Terry Wallace, but there's far too much fiction passed off as fact in the process.

He used his chip to chip strategy to avoid any contested ball at all costs by retaining possession. Works once in a while to pull off an unfathomable win, but it is not a winning formula in the long run and his abysmal record at Richmond has been testament to that. Did he need a 10-year contract to pull off his uncontested, chess-game genius plan? When Geelong took to them in the last quarter that had no plan-B, they had no way to compete with their intensity and its only a matter of time until a team does that. On or two odd games don't illustrate a correlation.

Wallace's best is up there with the top 2 or 3 football minds in the game today, in terms of the big picture. He showed that in those games you mention and he has pulled some amazing moves in his time at the Dogs. I'll give him the credit in terms of certain abilities, but he is a seriously flawed individual by the same token. He's an ego-maniac who was given too much power at Richmond to mould that team how he wanted without anyone every pulling him up on it. It was his vanity experiment. He has run that team into the ground, they will be nowhere near a premiership until Deledio is in his senior years. For him to spend his entire presser without recognizing his flaws whilst pumping up his 32 years is disgraceful. Pump his tyres as much as you want, I'll nod and say yes, but his performance in that press conference was disgusting and for someone to start an off-topic thread praising it is pure insanity.

 

[crowsup]

I would like to know if CM is now going to run a campaign to get the AFC to sack NG and hire TW.

 

[jackster83]

Richmond managed to beat us during our unbeatable patch in 2006. Sure they used horrible time wasting tactics but what matters is that they came away with the 4 points. Craig had an absolute shocker in the coaches box that day.

Wallace has been a bit unlucky this year with Cousins, Richo (medical staff to blame), Johnson and Cotchin spending most of the year on the injury list. Richmond should have beaten Melbourne and Port, and had they done so, they would have been 4-6 and not out of finals contention yet.

Overall his stint was not exactly a success, but it will be interesting to see how the players he has drafted go under a new coach.

 

[crowsarethebest]

Wallce could've still been coach of Richmond next year if a few results fell his way. He hasn't really been smashed all year except against Carlton. They have been ahead multiple times at 3 qtr time only to get run over by a bit. He could've easily been 5-5 and still have his job.

 

[Campbell's Chunky]

Wallce could've still been coach of Richmond next year if a few results fell his way. He hasn't really been smashed all year except against Carlton. They have been ahead multiple times at 3 qtr time only to get run over by a bit. He could've easily been 5-5 and still have his job.

Would that be the old wallpaper over the cracks trick tho?

 

[KUNG FU]

Richmond managed to beat us during our unbeatable patch in 2006. Sure they used horrible time wasting tactics but what matters is that they came away with the 4 points. Craig had an absolute shocker in the coaches box that day.

Wallace has been a bit unlucky this year with Cousins, Richo (medical staff to blame), Johnson and Cotchin spending most of the year on the injury list. Richmond should have beaten Melbourne and Port, and had they done so, they would have been 4-6 and not out of finals contention yet.

Overall his stint was not exactly a success, but it will be interesting to see how the players he has drafted go under a new coach.

This week they only 3 players on their injury list and on the whole they've had a much better run than anyone else.

In any case you know you're in trouble when you're tying your year's hopes on:
* a former drug addict who had been out of the game for 18 months with hamstrings torn to shreds
* the oldest player in the league
* a 31 year old who has only played 1 full season in his career

Yeah, good plan, good excuse. The real reason Richmond haven't come is his failure to develop the players who have been brought to the club under his reign. I do recognize that he has little or no say over the picks, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. The 2004 & 2005 drafts, his first two crops of fresh youngsters and a deep draw of kids high up on the list is particularly damning.

2004: #1 Deledio, #4 Tambling, #12 Meyer, #16 Pattison, #20 Polo, #36 McGuane, #52 Limbach, #65 Mark Graham, PS#1 Knobel
2005: #8 JON, #24 Hughes, #40 Casserly, trading #56 for Patrick Bowden

Really average for the picks they used and you can't help but feel the best is yet to come out of a lot of those players who are left.

Then these last 2 years they top up with McMahon, Morton, Cousins, Thomson and Hislop and they go nowhere again.

 

[Crow-mo]

As for the playing group at the Tigers, wasn't he on record as saying they had a better squad than Hawthorn at the time he took the reigns? Hawthorn were also looking for a new coach at the time.

this isn't a thread about wallace's record, but about his leaving speech.

however, I would say it's worth pondering what would have happened if Hawthorn and Richmond had swapped drafts in 2004.

 

[Crow-mo]

The bloke is delusional. Mentions "32 years" over and over. Doesn't take any responsibility whatsoever for what he's done to that club. How can he site his management of Richardson as a smart move? He basically rode him and Cousins into the ground as a last grasp hope of staying on. Talks about this exciting new group of players, but next to none of them have come as you'd have hoped. His team is soft, his game plan is weak. They can only bleed out games against bottom 8 sides but never take the game up to a quality opposition and his defeatist anyone-but-me mindset has ruined the club.

why is it, that a thread looking at a classy farewell speech illicits such classless responses from some people.

buggered if I know.

 

[Crow-mo]

I would like to know if CM is now going to run a campaign to get the AFC to sack NG and hire TW.

another idiot.

 

[twentydollarnote]

why is it, that a thread looking at a classy farewell speech illicits such classless responses from some people.

buggered if I know.

its because everyone can see through the bullshit apart from you. Hes a media performer always has been.

 

[Crow-mo]

another couple of good articles, seems a few others think similarly

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/78007/default.aspx

A dignified departure

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Signing off: Terry Wallace departs Monday's press conference



By Mic Cullen 7:24 AM Tue 02 June, 2009
IN TERMS of sheer numbers, it probably wasn’t as large as the ‘Richmond drafts Ben Cousins’ media conference, but that was in the off-season and wasn’t competing with actual football.

But the ‘Terry Wallace parts ways with Richmond’ media conference was still the biggest this year – 40-plus journalists, 15 TV/video cameras, six or seven still photographers. Big indeed.

Not that the news gatherers were the only people there. Not by a long shot.

Wallace’s emotional wife Kerryn was in the room, wiping away a tear.

Tigers skipper Chris Newman – who Wallace was defending strongly just over a week ago against claims that he had led a palace coup to oust the coach – was there, along with veteran Joel Bowden.

Paul Armstrong, for so long Wallace’s right-hand man at the Tigers as football manager and now working with former Tigers coach Danny Frawley at the AFL Coaches Association, stood quietly off to the side.

Tony Greenberg – long-time Richmond media manager – was standing up the back, as was Wallace’s manager, former Magpies player Craig Kelly.

Wallace walked across the ground to the social club with president Gary March, CEO Steven Wright and a variety of other Richmond people, and they were laughing and joking as they headed for the venue.

Once inside, and past the barrage of flashes and cameramen in his face, Wallace seated himself and March made the announcement.

Wallace then launched into his initial speech and took questions – it was a reflection of his relationship with the media that it remained cordial and well-mannered throughout.

Then just under half an hour in, Richmond media manager Judith Donnelly stepped in and brought it to a close.

A round of applause, a few handshakes, and Wallace was out the door en route to discuss this week’s medical report, with just one game left to plan for – fittingly against the Western Bulldogs this Friday night.

 

[Crow-mo]

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25572429-19742,00.html


Tiger coach Terry Wallace goes with amazing grace

Patrick Carlyon | June 02, 2009 12:00am
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• A TIGERS flag hangs above the entrance to the Richmond Social Club at Punt Rd.

The flag is tattered and faded and ripped.
It droops at half-mast - whether through design or disrepair is unclear. Both theories are equally plausible.
Inside, in a room where club legend Jack Dyer's wake was held, in a building that will soon be demolished for redevelopment, Terry Wallace announces he will no longer coach the club.
Richmond coaches are routinely pushed, sometimes with the handles of two or three knives poking from their backs.
Yet unlike his bloodied predecessors, and despite almost as much scrutiny as a North Korean nuclear test, Wallace contrives to leave the club with grace.
This amounts to a triumph, of sorts, if also an anti-climax.
Two weeks earlier, given the club's leaks and an excitable media, everyone had assumed that Wallace was already gone.
That clamour served as a trial run for the inevitable fall.
Wallace, in a black pin-striped suit befitting a funeral, offers a far-ranging resignation speech -- without notes - that encapsulates his 32 years in football.
Only the occasional swallow of the throat belies the "confusion" he later concedes he feels within.
For 13 uninterrupted minutes, he speaks of a "mutual" decision between a club, players and coach. There is no anger, he says, despite the circus his tenure had generated.
Without rancour or shows of self-pity, Wallace explains his job had become "almost untenable".
Coaching is a "young man's game", he says, that he is unlikely to explore again.
Among the mistakes was his departure from Western Bulldogs. For that, seven years later, he apologises.
Wallace then thanks everyone he can think of.
When he gets to his family, he looks to his wife Kerryn, who stands behind a pillar. They have caught one another's eye again and again through the press conference.
"You can't do this job without having real stability on the home front, and I have been very, very lucky and fortunate in that way," he says.
Her eyes are wet, her mouth set, her arms crossed. Wallace later says he feels no relief. Yet his wife looks very pleased that this protracted drama - starting with Richmond's thrashing by Carlton in round one - has ended.
As an example of corporate spin, Wallace appears to have set a benchmark for all football clubs -- and the heads of all institutions - in how to leave a failed position with dignity.
Wallace keeps up the open smile as he kisses Kerryn moments after his press conference finishes. Their hands blindly reach for one another.
He leaves through a door marked "Exit".

 

[Crow-mo]

its because everyone can see through the bullshit apart from you. Hes a media performer always has been.

once again, there is no fooling you.

when will I learn.

 

[twentydollarnote]

I dont think you'll ever learn, you are the one associating t wallace and class remember.

 

[King Elvis]

Good to see this part of Wallace's speech. It was surprising but had a bit of quality about it.

Yea and no - could've and should've been done a long time ago, not sure why he needed to wait until his departure speech from Richmond, but I guess a nice gesture none the less.

Problem with Terry is, I struggle to take anything he says at face value; comments about watching players dominate, that he drafted for the Western Bulldogs just doesn't sit that sincerely with me.

Regardless, while I think he's insincere and selfish in some respects, I've got no doubt he's a decent, very intelligent man - and would bring a lot of insightful comments to the media, if he ends up there.

 

[Crow-mo]

Problem with Terry is, I struggle to take anything he says at face value; comments about watching players dominate, that he drafted for the Western Bulldogs just doesn't sit that sincerely with me.

pretty obviously its an olive branch to the bulldogs, talking about how still follows their fortunes and a reminder that players are people. I am sure he was genuinely thrilled to see Cooney win last years brownlow for example.

 

[Vader]

The problem is working out where the spin ends and the genuine heartfelt comments begin. He's been spinning things for so long that people have stopped listening. Now, when the game is over, people don't know what's true and what's not.

He's been a divisive character since his playing days, with a dramatic departure from Hawthorn which offended a lot of fans. His coaching career has been similarly polarising - he was highly successful as coach of Footscray, yet destroyed his reputation with the manner of his departure. At Richmond he's been spinning like a top, but sadly the team's deeds have rarely matched his words.

Most of what he's had to say in his media interviews have been calculated to make himself look good. This interview is no different. The problem is that some of it's fact, some of it's been fictionalised to match his view of the world. Where facts end and fiction begins... you be the judge.

 

[crowsup]

another idiot.

Most of us are idiots, at least according to you!

You, on the other hand, are very clever in believing that that speech makes him a great man.

At first, the idiot that I am, thought it was a good speech. Until I realized that it was the most egotistical speech I have ever read. Not once does he even suggest that he may have been wrong at any time. He may be sorry that things did not go the way he would have liked, but never that he may have had something to do with things going wrong.

That speech is nothing more than an application for a new job. Not that I think there is anything wrong with that. Good luck to him.

But I do understand that you would feel a some sympathy for Terry. After all, his ego almost matches yours.

By the way, that bit about you only wanting comments on the quality of the speech, is a very poor, (especially for you), attempt at camouflaging the fact that you expected posters to state what a great man Terry must be, to make such a speech. The fact that not too many agree with you, has hurt you. Hasn't it?

 

[jenny61_99]

The problem is working out where the spin ends and the genuine heartfelt comments begin. He's been spinning things for so long that people have stopped listening. Now, when the game is over, people don't know what's true and what's not.

He's been a divisive character since his playing days, with a dramatic departure from Hawthorn which offended a lot of fans. His coaching career has been similarly polarising - he was highly successful as coach of Footscray, yet destroyed his reputation with the manner of his departure. At Richmond he's been spinning like a top, but sadly the team's deeds have rarely matched his words.

Most of what he's had to say in his media interviews have been calculated to make himself look good. This interview is no different. The problem is that some of it's fact, some of it's been fictionalised to match his view of the world. Where facts end and fiction begins... you be the judge.

Absolutely spot on Vader. On face value, his parting words "appear" genuine and sincere, but based on our past knowledge of how he "handles" the media, it is VERY hard to accept these words at face value. All I see is further manipulation and self adulation. Perhaps a case of the boy who cried wolf?

C-M, you are an obvious admirer of Wallace, perhaps this admiration blinds you somewhat? Perhaps my dislike of the man blinds me as well? More likely, somewhere in the middle we'll find the truth.

 

[Moonwatcher]

that 2006 loss was interesting, had the crows kicked with a 48% accuracy they would have won!(not including Scott Thompsons? OOF), their performance wasn't that great.

 

[Crow-mo]

Most of us are idiots, at least according to you!

actually just a very specific, and consistent handful.

You, on the other hand, are very clever in believing that that speech makes him a great man.

how is that strawman working out for you?

you've been doing that a lot recently. any reason?

At first, the idiot that I am, thought it was a good speech. Until I realized that it was the most egotistical speech I have ever read. Not once does he even suggest that he may have been wrong at any time. He may be sorry that things did not go the way he would have liked, but never that he may have had something to do with things going wrong.

That speech is nothing more than an application for a new job. Not that I think there is anything wrong with that. Good luck to him.

I am glad you can see the truth, it must have been difficult to keep your focus and not get drawn in by the apologies, the statements about coaching being a young man's game, and how he doesn't think he'll coach again.

By the way, that bit about you only wanting comments on the quality of the speech, is a very poor, (especially for you), attempt at camouflaging the fact that you expected posters to state what a great man Terry must be, to make such a speech. The fact that not too many agree with you, has hurt you. Hasn't it?

actually, I think its quite interesting the profile and numbers of the posters on each side of the ledger.

 

[KUNG FU]

Seriously C-M what was so classy about this speech?

Blames everyone but himself, talks almost exclusively about his own life, doesn't give any explanation or sign of regret for a single thing he did to Richmond.

 

[RocknRoll]

how is that strawman working out for you?

is that anything like ad homonum? just what do you have against gays anyway?

 

[Docker Clint]

give any explanation or sign of regret for a single thing he did to Richmond.

You make it sound like Richmond was like some stately home that he burned to the ground. The situation at Richmond over the past three decades is hardly his fault.

On Saturday night I had the privilege of working alongside the support staff of the Richmond FC and the things that people say about Wallace didn't ring true while witnessing the bloke in action. He was all class in my opinion.

Of course the speech was going to be mainly about him. He was the one leaving.

I was impressed by his point about making decisions (and potentially ending) on the future careers of young blokes when he isn't going to be there. That's something a few old bastards at the end of their careers in the corporate world could take heed of.

What makes a great coach? Had Liberatore put a lid on things in 1997, Wallace would have been hailed a genius and a hero at Footscray. Instead it became a defining moment in the Adelaide Football Club. There's just too many variables that mean the difference between success and failure.

 

[KUNG FU]

You make it sound like Richmond was like some stately home that he burned to the ground. The situation at Richmond over the past three decades is hardly his fault.

On Saturday night I had the privilege of working alongside the support staff of the Richmond FC and the things that people say about Wallace didn't ring true while witnessing the bloke in action. He was all class in my opinion.

Of course the speech was going to be mainly about him. He was the one leaving.

I was impressed by his point about making decisions (and potentially ending) on the future careers of young blokes when he isn't going to be there. That's something a few old bastards at the end of their careers in the corporate world could take heed of.

What makes a great coach? Had Liberatore put a lid on things in 1997, Wallace would have been hailed a genius and a hero at Footscray. Instead it became a defining moment in the Adelaide Football Club. There's just too many variables that mean the difference between success and failure.

Again, missing the point of my posting in this thread. I all but said he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I recognise his abilities and achievements. However, this thread was started to celebrate his speech, which I thought was rubbish and exhibited the worst of what he displayed at Richmond. Sure they were an abomination when he got there but he had 4 and a half years to fix it up and I would argue he made it worse. He had the opportunity to turn that list around and he stuffed it, putting them back a fair way. Even worse is the timing of the thing - 2009's weak draft followed by 2 years of GC & WS concessions. That's why I think Craig McRae should take the job at least in the interim. They need to develop the squad they have before they even start thinking about finals again.