Author of three Richmond premiership books Konrad Marshall spoke to Kamdyn McIntosh for a long-form feature on the recently-turned 29-year-old wingman ahead of his 150th game against the Western Bulldogs at the MCG on Saturday.

The next time the ball is bounced in the centre of the ground, take your eyes out to the wing where Kamdyn McIntosh is standing.

The big guy with ropey limbs wearing the number 33 guernsey will be standing with both fists balled, brought together in front of his eyes, knuckles touching knuckles, almost as if in prayer. He’ll hold them up that way, then turn to face the backs, then the forwards, until a few mates from each line reciprocate.

“See the shape it makes?” he says, holding his mitts together and smiling. “We’re sending a little love heart to one another. It’s my favourite thing, to stand on my wing and engage and connect with the guys.”

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He turns toward the midfielders next, reaching out with his voice. McIntosh has a deep knowledge of what each player in the guts does when they’re playing their best, and he wants to remind them. The non-negotiable for Toby Nankervis is following up after ruck contests. With Trent Cotchin, it’s keeping his eyes lowered and feet dancing. With Dion Prestia, it’s work rate and moving to outnumber. “Let’s go Nank, second efforts!” McIntosh roars. “Cotchy, hunt that ball! Dion, contest to contest!”

“I’m telling them where they find their best footy. I love doing that,” McIntosh says, chatting in the Graeme Richmond Room after training, on his 29th birthday, in the week approaching his 150th game of football for this Club. “If I’m not doing that then I’m thinking of myself, instead of considering the whole team’s purpose.”

It would be laughable to accuse the stalwart Sandgroper of that. McIntosh has won two flags with the Tigers, but more importantly, has put a profound and lasting stamp on the football department (more on that later), whilst building a laudable career out of playing his role, and playing it incredibly well.

But what exactly is his role, out there on a lonely wing, the footy universe equivalent of deep space? Richmond fans know. He creates space with his engine, running unending 150-metre stride patterns up and down the ground. He uses that same endurance to work back and across defensively, too. He uses his height and discipline to chop out in the air on spoils.

He uses his physicality, too, including a unique habit of running parallel to an opponent, both chasing the loose ball, and not so much sidebumping as giving an almighty two-handed shove while sprinting full tilt.

The umpires came up to him before a game once to warn him about his signature move. Alright Kamdyn, they said, We’re just letting you know that we’re watching you off the ball today. “Oh yeah,” he replied, “Why’s that?” Because the last two rounds you’ve been … pushing blokes out of position. “What are you talking about?” he replied, laughing. “I was just giving them a nudge!” 

When the team is attacking, he adds, his job is to explode - dashing out wide and making the ground big. “I need to draw the eyes of my opposition - Damn, he’s gonna get the ball - so they’ll come with me, and that creates space for someone else,” McIntosh says. “If I don’t run with intent and effort and purpose, then that defender doesn’t think he has to worry about me, doesn’t come with me, and he closes out one of our options instead. If he follows me I might not get a touch, but I can watch the ball transition down the field and know my running helped get it there.”

Communication is another of his big key performance indicators. McIntosh likes to know every bit of the game plan, so he can capitalise on the wide-angle vantage point he gets from the wing. “I’m on the outside - I can see everything that’s happening,” he says. “If you watch me near the goals, I’ve constantly got my arms out, directing players to come up the field because they’re too far away, or pushing them back because they’re too close to me.”

“When you’re out in that intense, pressured environment, you need players who are looking at structures and set-ups and plays, and talking about it all the time,” he says. “Because if the game’s not going your way and you’re down by a few points, you might start thinking you need to do something special to win, when in reality you probably just need some small things.”

It’s hard not to wonder whether McIntosh dreams of a little more freedom. The chance to show some flair. After all, he knows how to run riot. Three goals against Hawthorn in a wet 2018 qualifying final comes to mind. As does his debut back in 2015, when he gathered 23 touches and kicked a goal on the run, burning off none other than Chris Judd to put it through. 

“Every player wants to be the best in the competition,” he says. “But you’ve gotta put that ego to the side, and realise that sometimes you’re just more impactful without the ball. Honestly, when the whole team is tackling and smothering and spoiling, and I’m sprinting all night and taking up space and covering the ground, and we walk away with a win and I’ve only had 14 touches, I still walk off the ground going ‘Wow, that was a sick game’. Maybe you can’t be the best player, but you can be the best at your role. That’s what I tell myself: There’s no one else in the side that can play my role better than me.”

Tim Livingstone, General Manager of Football Performance, says this is what his coaches celebrate in meetings. But he’s more than what he does on the oval every weekend, of course, his influence extending well beyond the field. “He’s a ‘glue guy’ around this place - the connector,” says Livingstone. “Ask him about his blanket.”

McIntosh laughs at the mention of the blanket, but strolls through the story anyway. The Tigers have been big on adopting winning mantras and maxims from sports organisations all over the world, including the New Zealand All Blacks’ famous guiding principle - Sweep the Sheds - their reminder to take care of the small and the big, paying attention to everyone and everything in your competitive environment. “It’s about the little things,” explains McIntosh. “Picking up rubbish. Looking after your space, your mates - and yourself.” 

McIntosh says he was on his phone one day on the Wish app - which is like eBay - when he saw a throw blanket that he thought would look good on his bed at home, so he bought it, but there was a catch. “I didn’t read the terms and conditions, and when it got to my house it was six bags of wool!” he says, laughing. He wondered what he could do with it all, and thought “Bugger it - I’m gonna make the rug.” He jumped on YouTube, taught himself to knit, and made a big grey woolen rug. He stands up, walks over to the auditorium cupboard, and grabs it, grinning. Teammates saw his little project on Instagram, and came up with a new guiding concept: Knit It.

“All these big bits of thread are the fabric of the Club, the individual strands,” says McIntosh, “and if you do something unlike a Richmond Man, like not turning up on time, or not cleaning up after yourself, you’re pulling at a thread, opening up gaps, and the fabric is weaker. And the opposite is true, too. If a teammate is looking a bit down and you take him out for a coffee, that’s just tightening everything up. That’s ‘Knit It’.”

Richmond’s Leadership facilitator, Shane McCurry, is unsurprisingly full of praise for our tall winger. “He’s almost like a living breathing version of authenticity,” says McCurry. “And he cares deeply about standards. You don’t have to do the stuff he does, but he does it,” says McCurry. “They’re the people who make your environment better, and his teammates love him for it.” 

He’s been doing this stuff a while, of course. It started for him at home out west, in the tiny farming town of Pinjarra, 90 minutes south of Perth and 30 minutes inland from Mandurah. 

McIntosh has a family tree with many sprawling branches - filled with stepdads and stepmums and siblings and half siblings - but there was a clearly formative stint in his teens. His parents were long separated - his Dad living 17 hours drive away in Karratha, and his Mum doing week-on, week-off shifts as a FIFO worker, driving trucks in the mines of Western Australia - while young McIntosh was at home in “Pinny” with three baby sisters whom he called “the three little pigs”. 

A nanny would come by at night to cook dinner and check on the four of them, but then it was just McIntosh, alone in charge of the little ones. He would get up early each morning and run laps around the neighbourhood, training to pursue a footy career that still seemed a faraway dream. (The soccer convert didn’t start playing the game until he was 15.) Then he would wake his sisters, make their sandwiches, get them on the school bus and begin his own day, which ended with work at a local green grocer, then training.

There’s a funny video on the Club website about a scheme where McIntosh tried to import a few dozen scooters from overseas, for himself but also players and coaches, and how it all went awry. It’s a crazy tale reminiscent of the very best “Chronicles of Kamdyn” stories from the Talking Tigers podcast. When senior coach Damien Hardwick bought a record for every player as a way of communicating their personality, there’s a reason he chose “I Am the Walrus” for McIntosh. He’s an individual, to be sure. But the story of his first scooter was far more earnest.

It was a little 50CC Vespa he bought when he was 16, so that he could run household errands and get to work and training and games by himself. “I wouldn’t be here without that scooter,” McIntosh says. “I reckon it had a top speed of 60 kms an hour, but it got me where I needed to go. There was one time I drove an hour to get to a Peel Thunder game.”

List managers and scouts were watching. Matthew Clarke, National Recruiting Manager for the Club, described McIntosh at the time as close checking and disciplined, able to play on all sizes. He was more defender than wingman then, but showcased an ability to generate drive, with athleticism and closing speed. A great competitor one-on-one, Clarke surmised, and ideally suited to the modern game. “He can go all day. He’s just one of those guys you can give a role to and he will complete it . . . no fuss, he gets the job done. Sometimes … that’s all you need.”

McIntosh was taken with pick 31 in the 2012 draft, and experienced an abrupt change of life that the average Associated Public School graduate in Victoria just doesn’t face when moving from a big private school to a big Melbourne club. “I reflected on that not long ago, when we did an exercise here in this room. We had to get up and thank someone from our lives, and I mentioned my Mum, because when I got drafted, within two or three days I was in Melbourne. There was just all this adrenalin from moving across the country - This is so exciting! - and I didn’t really thank my Mum for all her help, and letting me go. I’ve been here 11 years, and I haven’t been home very much - I’ve just been taken away from my whole family - so I reckon she deserves some thanks.” 

He landed in Melbourne and within days had a nickname. Correction: he had probably the single worst nickname at the Club. “It’s the dumbest story,” he says, wincing. “So stupid.”

Former ruckman Tom Derickx was in the spa one morning before training, and flicking through his phone, and McIntosh heard this big chuckle echoing through the rooms. He popped his head in and asked “What the hell are you laughing at?”

Derickx was looking at a meme about West Coast midfielder Tom Swift, in which Swift was rattling off a cooking recipe, but couldn’t pronounce capsicum correctly. Swift kept saying “capsum” by mistake. “Then Tom looked at me and was like, ‘You’re a capsum kind of bloke!’ And then we’re on the field training, and he starts calling out ‘Capsum! Capsum!’ And then Tross (Alex Rance) and Swoop (David Astbury) start in with it, too. And this is my first week at the footy club. Now I just get called ‘Caps’. How bad is that for a nickname? Bloody terrible.”

Life as a first year player was confusing. He was thrown into a home with three other fresh faces: Papua New Guinea project player Gideon Simon, Cobram rookie Cadeyn Williams, and South Australian utility Matt McDonough. “We didn’t know each other, and had to fend for ourselves,” McIntosh says. “It’s so daunting when you come here, because you want to go out there and explore, but you’re pretty vulnerable. I felt like I couldn’t go to the older guys and talk to them. The team was a bit divided back then, and I don’t want it to be that way ever again.”

Settling players from interstate is done differently now. Host homes are common, and the Club’s induction program is first rate. Still, McIntosh took it upon himself to make things even better again for new recruits. With guys like David Astbury and Jack Riewoldt, he organised a 2019 camp away from the Club for first-year players, only a few weeks into their journey at Richmond. They rented an Airbnb in the Grampians, with bunk beds and a barbecue. “We just sat around the fire telling stories and looking up at the stars,” he says. “It changes every year, but we get a handful of questions for each guy to answer - ‘Who’s a role model in your life?’ - so you can start a conversation and watch it snowball. You just interact, and you’re intrigued with each other.”

The older guys tell a few stories about the side, too, highlighting what’s important about their culture, and how these new kids - or even new guns like Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper - now have a chance to put their stamp on that. But McIntosh was the driver, running it year after year, even through the logistical challenges of the pandemic. 

What’s perhaps most impressive about the initiative was the timing. McIntosh started all this not when he was flying on field, but when he was struggling. In 2018 he dropped out of the senior side and trialed as a midfielder at VFL level. In 2019 he started strongly but fell out of favour again, and spent the back end of the season at the lower level, culminating in him missing the 2019 premiership. “It was one of the hardest things that ever happened to me, not playing in that grand final,” he says. “But it was the off-season, so I was able to go away and think and work.”

He went to Utah, to meet up with an old teammate now playing American college football, Ben Lennon. He did solo training, hiking and running in the snow. “I was desperate to get back into the side. That was the individual bit, because you do have moments where you think, ‘I just want to work on my own craft’.”

A player like that - perhaps sensing his career at a crossroads - would be entitled to turn inward and focus on himself. Instead, he looked to others, building that induction camp for first-year players as soon as he returned from overseas. “I just found that my best attribute is being a connector, and helping the group come together,” he says. “I knew that as long as I was doing that, I was going to be a better teammate and player.”

He could have gone elsewhere, too. Pundits at the time pointed out that he could probably earn more money and security at another club, and should consider those offers. And if he didn’t, said Dermott Brereton, then they should build the guy a statue at Punt Road, because he would have solid claims to being “the best clubman in the AFL”.

McIntosh doesn’t know about that. “The thing I love is how good this football club has been at letting me be who I want to be. That was huge for me,” he says. “Coming back, knowing everyone had my back, helped me believe it again. And you do want to be a one-club man. Everyone does. This footy club is all I know.”

The thought of leaving is difficult, but he also knows that it’s coming, one day. He’s seen enough tearful retirement speeches. But he’s not without plans either. Just a few weeks ago he registered his own building company. “K Trades” has already done a barbecue and pergola area for Hawthorn defender Sam Frost, and is working on a steam room and plunge pool complex for champion jockeys Ben Melham and Jamie Kah. He’s building three units on a block of land he owns in Rosebud, and four units on another block of his in Safety Beach. He already has his Cert III and Cert IV, and when he finishes those builds - hopefully before he retires at Richmond - his full building license will be complete.

“If I didn’t have this stuff going on outside of football, I’d start overthinking the way I play - I’d start reflecting on it too much,” he says. “Early days I was like that, because when you’re first in the system the learning is so steep. You need it, to get brought up from scratch to standard. But once you’re there, if you let it all be about footy, it’s too all consuming. You’ve gotta look for that life balance.”

McIntosh wants to play as long as he can. And he wants people to tell him when he’s done. “I just love coming in here every day,” he says. “My biggest fear, about life after footy, is not knowing how it will pan out. Will all this building and construction be successful? Will it be a flop? I don’t know, but right now I’m a full-time football player, so I’ll focus on that.”

He has his own extras and goals and areas of growth. Decision making is the big one he wants to refine. It’s hard to imagine how you train such a thing. McIntosh points to mindfulness. “If I only get the ball 15 times, I wanna make sure I’m making the right decision,” he says. “And to make the right decision, I have to be thinking in the right way about everything leading up to getting that ball.”

He can’t be distracted by his own mind. He can’t be disappointed because he missed a touch. Or worried about a poor kick. Or concerned by the scoreboard. Or annoyed because a teammate didn’t use him. “I have to have a laser focus,” he says. “And that’s like anything in life: I need to be in the moment.”

Konrad Marshall is the author of Richmond premiership books Yellow & Black (2017), Stronger & Bolder (2019) and The Hard Way (2020), and a senior writer for Good Weekend Magazine.