Dustin Martin holds up his end of the bargain as the AFL’s silent superstar

If you sit close enough to the fence at Richmond games, you’ll hear him. On the interchange bench, he’ll scream at the runner; “Get me on!” When he calls for the ball, you’ll hear the slap of his hands; “Here!” Mostly it’s an unintelligible but unarguable demand. He roars, they give, and then he strikes.

Off the field however, we’ve never really heard much from Dustin Martin. He’s never let us in. In Konrad Marshall’s books chronicling Richmond’s premierships, he was a mostly silent presence. Those who love him – his family, his junior coaches, his mentors and his teammates – always mention his shyness. In interviews, the impression has always been of a man looking for exits.

As he approaches his 300th game, and rumours over his playing future swirl, that reticence is increasingly newsworthy. As per the AFL and AFLPA’s collective bargaining agreement, there is pressure on him to do a press conference, to feed the chooks, to give us something, anything.

“He has an obligation to the game,” SEN boss Craig Hutchison said on his Sounding Board podcast this week. “He’s part of the entertainment product. I had the same view when ‘Buddy’ retired, where he didn’t pay the football public the respect it deserved. The AFL need to say ‘hey, listen, I don’t care if you’re comfortable or not, this is what we expect of you that week.’”

Hutchison has a business to run, bills to pay, content to fill and a long-standing frustration that our local stars aren’t as verbose and accessible as the champions of the NFL and NBA. That’s not to say footballers don’t have interesting things to say. There’s still excellent profiles, whether from journalists or increasingly from the clubs themselves. But when a footballer is wheeled out against their will, they invariably end up saying nothing. Three quarters of the population seem to speak like that now – bankers at Royal Commissions, local councillors, The Bachelor contestants and contested ball beasts. It’s the murder of words, and of meaning.

Compared to America, the relationship between our superstars and the media is a little more strained and conditional. There are rules. Don’t criticise the opposition, your teammates, the umpires, the game plan, the media. Don’t smile after losses. Don’t adjust your headband. Don’t speak honestly after a few beers at the best and fairest. Don’t go on holiday at the end of the season. For players like Martin and Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin, it’s often easier to opt out altogether.

That’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes a little mystery, and a lot of silence, only adds to your appreciation of an athlete. Carlton champion Bruce Doull spoke only in emergencies. His football, teammate Brent Croswell later wrote, had “a moral purity about it.” His football said everything that needed to be said.

On the flipside, and everything about him was on the flipside, there was Gary Ablett Snr. Gary perfected the art of saying absolutely nothing, yet still leaving the questioner open mouthed. I once saw him interviewed by Sam Newman, not a man easily impressed or awestruck. As Ablett trotted out his banalities, Newman was like a giddy schoolboy.

Towards the end of his career, he started a newspaper column. He could surf the crest of a pack, prop, pivot, and slot a goal on his wrong foot with the ease of a man tying a shoelace. But he was no W.C Heinz. His column was a bust. He had one of our best sportswriters ghost-writing it, but Ablett was too guarded and too difficult to say anything remotely interesting. And every time that column was published, a little bit of the magic faded.

Martin clearly isn’t the player he once was. After such a good run with injuries, his body’s accountants have started to redress the ledger. But he can still buckle his swash. On Saturday night, he had a full house, a game with weight, and a lot of people writing him off. His first quarter goal – the way he didn’t buckle at the spine, the shrug, the rapid steps, the predatory air that he projects like no other footballer I’ve seen – was a snapshot of everything that has made him great.

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His performance said so much. What would dragging him kicking and screaming to a press conference, under the threat of a fine, actually achieve or reveal? The journalists would trundle in and he’d flick them down to fine leg. Would it satisfy what Hutchison called “an obligation to game”?

Instead, whenever I watch him, I think of something Brendon Gale told Marshall in his book Yellow and Black. “You look at images of footballers and you know how they’ve got that startled, panicked look? You look at Dustin’s eyes in those moments and they reveal nothing. He’s like a shark. Like a great white, just cruising through the water. And then he strikes.”

That’s the Dustin Martin I’ll always remember. That’s him holding up his end of the bargain. Those eyes, that voice, that moment he goes for the kill – the Dusty that says more than any interview or press conference ever could.