Star Richmond premiership key defender Alex Rance has provided a quirky description of teammate Dustin Martin’s outstanding 2017 season.
Martin became the first player in league football history to win the Brownlow Medal, Norm Smith Medal plus a premiership in the same season, and he also took out the Tigers’ Best and Fairest award, the Jack Dyer Medal for a second successive year.
As a result of his consistent brilliance throughout the season, Martin is now widely acknowledged as the competition’s most dominant player.
“The best way I can explain Dusty is, it’s like an under 18’s kid playing in under 12’s,” Rance said on SEN.
“It was like he was just taking the p..s. He was just running around, kicking and hitting targets, where you’d be thinking, okay, yep, I know that only you can do that.
“He has probably had the most unstoppable year of any player that I’ve ever seen.
“I remember commentary around ‘Gaz’ [Gary Ablett junior], when he was flying around, that he is the ‘untackleable’ man, you just need to corral him. You can’t even corral Dusty, because if you try to corral him, he will push you into next week. He is on another level.”
Rance revealed that Richmond coach Damien Hardwick had offered a prize to any of Martin’s teammates who could overcome his trademark, dynamic, ‘don’t argue’ fend-off and pin him in a tackle. Such an occurrence, however, was a rarity.
“There is no tactic. It’s luck if you get through it (the don’t argue),” he said.
“There were a couple of times at training, where we were doing some handball games, and ‘Dimma’ would say, 10 bucks if you can tackle Dusty. He hasn’t had to pay up too often.”