http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...012432,00.html

Terry Wallace's coaching career of tinkering with 112 wins from 246 games

RICHMOND president Gary March meant well yesterday, when he described Terry Wallace as an innovative football coach.

His participation in a well received documentary a decade ago, his enthusiastic co-operation with the media, his ability to pluck a tactical rabbit from his hat on occasion, March said, allowed Wallace that much.

It was a Wallace-coached Western Bulldogs side that engineered Essendon's sole defeat in 2000 and a Wallace-coached Richmond 22 that confounded Adelaide in 2006, the president pointed out.

What March declined to say, of course, was that Essendon won the flag with a 24-1 record nine years ago and Adelaide, befuddled for a day, got to within two kicks of a grand final in 2006 when the Tigers again finished ninth. That those sides were concerned with winning wars, not battles.

And so, as well intentioned as he sought to be, March only reinforced the view that, ultimately, Wallace's career as a coach has been superficial. That his achievements, such as they are, have been peripheral, amounted to little more than tinkering.

When Wallace finishes up this Friday night, against the Bulldogs, he will have coached for the best part of 12 seasons. In the last seven of those - two with the Dogs and five with Richmond - finals have eluded his teams.

It could, therefore, be argued that one of his finest achievements was to coach for so long without ever taking a team to a grand final. He got close with consecutive preliminary finals in 1997 and 1998, but was never a contender again. His overall record of 112 wins from 246 matches screams of mediocrity.

His Richmond years will be his last. It is worth remembering that Wallace preferred the post at Punt Rd over the same position at Hawthorn in 2004 because, as he said at the time, the Tigers' list was better.

Richmond has not played finals since and, at 2-8, seems certain to finish in the bottom four for the second time in three years.

The Hawks, admittedly a far more disciplined and financially able club, have already won another premiership and seem set to contend throughout the coming years, when the draft system that would ordinarily give the Tigers a helping hand will instead serve to establish new teams on the Gold Coast and in western Sydney.

Understandably, Wallace doesn't agree with the view that by taking the Tigers all the way from 16th to 15th in five years the club is in no better shape now than it was when he took over from Danny Frawley.

And yet, apart from Trent Cotchin and Brett Deledio, Richmond's best players are their oldest, players such as Matthew Richardson and Joel Bowden, who were principals for Frawley.

Wallace said that losing close games and not having his elite troupe available often enough this year had brought the club to its knees, and to yesterday's announcement. Of the four players he mentioned in that regard, only Cotchin is younger than 30. Richardson, Nathan Brown and Ben Cousins were the others he spoke of, all of whom could be gone by the season's end. What future then?

Wisely, Wallace made no mention of the recruiting pattern established on his watch that began with Mark Graham in 2004, built with Patrick Bowden in 2005, Graham Polak in 2006 and Kent Kingsley in 2007, and culminated in Cousins' arrival last December.

Even so, Wallace described the second chance granted to Cousins by Richmond as a proud moment, one of two that came to mind yesterday. The other was the decision to shift a 33-year-old Richardson to the wing last year, thereby giving the champion and veteran some respite from his key forward responsibilities in his twilight years.

"You only had to go to the Brownlow Medal last year ... the whole of the public and footy people got to see what a magnificent athlete Matthew is," Wallace said.

A little later he added: "Earlier this year, I said that if the last decision I made in football was to give a champion of our game one last opportunity, that would be something that I would live with very comfortably. To give Ben Cousins another opportunity to play the game was, I felt, the right thing."

It was at this point that a comparison made by Wallace himself to former St Kilda coach Grant Thomas made complete sense. Thomas, who gave rotating captains and managerial jargon to the lexicon of the game, didn't win a grand final or get any closer to one than a preliminary final, either.

Success eluded them both.

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Excellent article from Stephen Rielly in today's Australian. He has nailed Teflon's coaching career as well as any journalist has in the last 12 years, in particular the bolded sections.