Dual Richmond premiership star Liam Baker, who will reach the AFL 100-game milestone in Saturday night’s match against Fremantle at Optus Stadium, is one of the great success stories of the competition’s rookie draft system.
After missing out on several drafts, Baker was taken by the Tigers with their first pick (No. 18 overall) in the November 2017 rookie draft.
The Tiger talent scouts had liked what they had seen of Baker throughout his 2017 season at WAFL club Subiaco, where he’d played as a small forward with the occasional stint as a midfielder.
He made his senior debut for Richmond in Round 18 of the 2018 season against Collingwood at the MCG, aged 20 years, 182 days, and showed some promising signs, picking up 12 disposals and scoring two behinds.
Baker played two more home-and-away games that season but was not part of the Tigers’ 2018 finals campaign.
The following year, with an on-field positional change, Baker’s AFL career really took off.
He was moved into defence midway through the 2019 season and went on to play a pivotal role in the Tigers’ premiership triumph that year.
It was the same in 2020, when Richmond made it back-to-back flags, with Baker maintaining a high level of performance across the team’s backline.
Since then, Baker has continued to be a key member of the Tigers’ line-up in defence, as well as up forward and through the midfield.
The 173cm, 72kg pocket rocket is Richmond’s Mr Fixit – the player triple premiership coach Damien Hardwick would invariably turn to when the Tigers needed a lift . . . and ‘Bakes’ never let him down.
Richmond great Matthew Richardson, when asked about Baker’s playing attributes on this week’s episode of the Club’s podcast Talking Tigers, had this to say:
“The first thing that comes to mind is his courage.
“There’s been a lot of courageous players at this club, but I don’t think there could be any more than what Bakes has shown in his career.
“And are there any more desperate? There’s been plenty of desperate players, but you can’t be more desperate than what Bakes is with his efforts out there.
“He can play anywhere. There’s not a lot of guys that can play everywhere. He can go forward, kick goals, can play midfield.
“His ability to mop up down back, his ability to win ground balls down back, is as good as anyone that I played with in his first hundred games.
“Then there’s his ability in the air for a player his size. When the ball is in the air, and he’s under it, I’m expecting that he’s going to take it one grab, which he does.
“And he’s got poise with ball in hand. He makes the right decisions.
“I don’t want to overplay it, but his skill set is pretty complete.
“As a coach, you just want to know you’re going to get the same effort out of a player every week. And I reckon ‘Dimma’ over his time, and now ‘Mini’ (Andrew McQualter) would go, ‘yeah, I know what I’m going to get out of Bakes. He’s going to give great effort every single week’.”
Baker was rewarded for his tremendous courage with the AFL Players Association’s annual Robert Rose Award (as the competition’s most courageous player) in 2022.
He was equal-fourth in Richmond’s Best and Fairest last year after finishing runner-up in 2021.
