Konrad Marshall sat down with exciting talented Tiger Liam Baker late last month for the next edition of his series of long-form features on current Tigers from the author of Yellow & Black - A Season with Richmond.
All throughout the 2018 season - just as in the triumphant 2017 season - Richmond senior coach Damien Hardwick told stories. He found folk tales, and parables, and life lessons wrapped up in sport, and he shared them at the club in meetings, and out on the track, but most memorably before each match. Last season was perhaps a little different though, insofar as he augmented his narratives with a new weekly device: a gift.
Depending on the story Hardwick told his players, his gifts to them could be seemingly anything. One week, in each of their gameday lockers, the team might return to find a Star Wars figurine, or a Rubix cube. Another week, a hockey puck, or an American pigskin. A pair of socks this round, a DeWalt hammer the next, each one tied to the story of the match.
And sometimes the gifts were personalised, in the form of books, or T-shirts, or other things, as was the case in Round 19, Saturday July 2018, at the MCG against Collingwood. That day, Hardwick’s pre-game address concerned music, and so each player absorbed the message, then returned to their locker, where a vintage vinyl pressing of an album was waiting for them, hand picked by the coach.
Jumping Jack Riewoldt was given a copy of Jumping Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones. The legendary Dylan Grimes received Legend, by Bob Marley. Dimma thought NWA’s Straight Outta Compton was perfect for Dustin Martin, but with Greville Records’ guidance, Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy seemed a more subtle fit.
WHAT'S YOUR FINAL 5? Attend any five of our last seven games at the 'G
The request list is a lovely one, by turns funny and thoughtful. Take Brandon Ellis (“Anything by Blondie”) or Alex Rance (“Anything by The Boss”). For Shane Edwards? Star Time by James Brown. For Kane Lambert? Street Tough by Ben E. King. For Shaun Grigg there were a couple of options: The Voice by Frank Sinatra (because Grigga never stops yapping) or Tell Me How You Really Feel by Courtney Barnett (for the same reason). There was seemingly only one option for the utterly unique Kamdyn McIntosh: I Am The Walrus by The Beatles. It fits.
And then there was Liam Baker, at the time only 20, and about to play his first senior AFL game in front of 88,180 people. Baker, who has since shown exactly what he is capable of within the 2019 senior side as a damaging, lively and wide-ranging mid-forward, was given an LP by the rapper known as Eminem - and also a note.
Hardwick had, in truth, considered giving Baker an album by The Eagles (The New Kid in Town) or, riffing on the same debutant theme, anything by New Kids on the Block. Instead - as the personalised letter from Hardwick explained - the coach chose a song by an artist who embodied what he saw in Baker as a footballer. He was underrated at first, disparaged by many - a short kid who’d been ignored, but taken his chance and succeeded. (The song’s first lyrics: “Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?”)
Baker played the song later, not on his own record player (because he doesn’t have one), but on the player of his then host family. And he re-read that note from Hardwick, too, which detailed how the rapper had been through adversity in his life, but had overcome it all, and shone through sheer perseverance.
"I guess it was in reference to me missing out on getting drafted, and being a smaller type," Baker tells me now, nearly a year later. "It was pretty special - to receive a gift from my head coach, and have it be so personal. It's something I've got stashed away. I know I'll have it for a long time."
Baker talks to me where he lives, in Northcote. The house is somewhat bare, because it’s lived in by boys - the 21-year-old Baker and his landlord, running defender Jayden Short, 23. (As we speak, the homeowner sits on a leather couch in front of an obscenely large TV screen, watching the cricket, Sri Lanka versus England.) Baker and I sit at a glass table in the backyard, or rather what might one day resemble a backyard. The house is a fixer-upper, and the area behind it is a mixture of decrepit sheds, uneven bricks, piles of lifted pavers, and a few thin garden beds, each one sprouting tufts of native grasses. (This is still Northcote, after all.)
It’s freezing outside but Baker wears shorts, and no shoes either. It’s a no shoes household. Shorty likes to keep things clean. “He’s a bit OCD, actually,” says Baker. “He doesn’t let me clean the plates at night because he says I do it wrong. He's on me to keep my room clean, too. I try to help out, but sometimes I go to vacuum and he's always done it the day before.”
I ask if this rear courtyard area, with the ladders and the fallen fence, and the big dirt patch where Dan Butler and Jack Graham helped them yank out a dead tree, is where the magic happens? And it is. As a recent article by Short suggested, Baker does indeed step outside and cut his own hair at home, right here, with cordless clippers. Over there is the mirror he uses, leaning against a paling fence, not far from a beautiful motorbike, the latte-coloured Cafe Racer SWM Gran Milano of Kamdyn McIntosh. It’s dumped here because Short is good enough to let people use his place for storage.
Baker has been living here six months, and loves it, but he misses home. He’s from Pingaring, population 140, three hours drive east of Perth. A wheat and cattle farm, right? "Nah, no cattle. That's been going around for a while, the cattle thing, and Dad's been pretty filthy about that. It’s wheat and sheep - Merino and cross-breeds, for wool and meat. They're going pretty good.”
The family has around 10,000 acres of rolling, semi-arid country. “And we've got a lot of rocks around our farm. That was pretty fun growing up. We had motorbikes, and went camping out there in the boulders. I did that when I was home actually - went out there just to hang out and cook up a lunch.”
Baker’s only just returned from his mid-season trip back to Western Australia. It’s a Friday afternoon in bye week when we chat. He flew to Perth directly after the Round 13 loss to Adelaide - the first time he’s been back to see mum and dad since before Christmas.
"I miss it, definitely. Coming back east always sucks, but when you're playing footy and training as much as we are during the week, it takes your mind off it,” he says. “I just miss the farm lifestyle. I want to work back there when I'm older. I love the way dad runs his own show - he works hard, and the harder you work the more money you make.”
Just to orient you a little more, his patch is 50 kms north of Lake Grace. People now call that “Nat Fyfe country”, but Baker doesn’t. He was a West Coast fan growing up, a mad Eagle. “I loved Daniel Kerr, number one. Then Ben Cousins and Chris Judd. They were the ones. More modern guys I looked up to were Sam Mitchell and Buddy Franklin. Buddy’s a WA boy, too.”
He did Auskick there, then juniors - starting in under 12s - and then he went away to school in Perth. He grew up outdoors, and that’s where he goes whenever he comes home, like the fortnight he spends with family and friends on Molloy Island every January. Every summer since he was a kid they’ve gotten a crew of around two dozen people together and headed to that spot to camp, and fish, and motor out onto the Blackwood River in ski boats, or go to the nearby beaches, or visit the wineries. “They’ve got a brilliant bakery,” he says. “It’s just what I’ve done since I was born.”
Playing footy as a kid, he was a midfielder mostly, and perhaps considered medium then (rather than small now), but he played all over. Sometimes even at centre half back. He was skilled, and sparky, and good in traffic. He thought he would be drafted. “I was the same as every other 18-year-old,” he says, “reading everything on the internet about who's gonna get drafted to where. No one really knew who I was, which I liked at the time.”
He had played at West Perth with Josh Rotham, eventually taken by West Coast. In his state team were the likes of Zac Fisher (Carlton), Griffin Logue (Fremantle) and Matt Guelfi (Essendon). A group of 12 of them went to the combine together, actually, but Baker and Guelfi were the only two not to have their name called out on draft day.
"I’d thought I was a good chance, but it just shows you an invite to the combine isn’t some definite way into footy. My sprint stuff was pretty bad - I was maybe second last in the repeat sprints. I only beat a ruckman. My kicking let me down a lot in that year, too. They're things I worked on later, but when I missed out it was hard. It was really tough. But what do you do? I went home and stopped training for a while, and that's when I decided to change clubs, to Subiaco, and that worked out really well.”
He excelled in the WAFL, and worked on his shortcomings. I wonder though, how do you improve something like kicking - a skill that’s largely dependent on a style established (and often firmly set) over a lifetime?
"You can’t really change your kicking style. It's just trying to narrow down areas of error. Maybe the drop is too high. Maybe you're swinging too wide. So a lot of concentration goes into it, and tiny adjustments. I got better, but if I switch off now and have a lapse in concentration, I can still spray 'em. It's a work in progress. You keep improving."
Eventually taken with Pick 18 in the 2018 rookie draft, he found himself in Richmond under the tutelage of Tigers VFL coach Craig McRae, who saw a talented young player - but one without an obvious position.
"I struggled early days to see where Bakes fit,” McRae says now, inside his office at Punt Road. He saw a midfielder, and covering the ground wasn't a problem - his transition running and contest-to-contest workrate was elite - but Baker was clearly also not the prototypical big, strong AFL onballer. And as a small forward, he was fast - but not quite an electric run-tackle pressure applicator like Daniel Rioli or Dan Butler or Jason Castagna.
“Is he one or the other?” McRae asks, lifting his left hand then right. “What I quickly realised was that he's actually just a great, genuine footballer. He built trust really quickly, too, and he's become a bit of a hybrid. He has that flexibility. He played halfback for a quarter earlier in the year and got nine possessions, and I know that at match committee that versatility helps."
Early on, if there was an area Baker needed to work on, it was understanding the game plan. He was suffering from information overload, wondering where he needed to be standing from a structural perspective. “Do I need to be here, or there? One metre over? What should I do now? What's my role in this situation?” says McRae. “And it meant he was playing the game in his head, and not on the field - it took him away from his instincts.”
It took time to adapt. As with most young players, McRae’s strategy is to do tactical work early in the week, so that match day becomes all about playing the game, not worrying about Xs and Os. "You watch his best games and he'll start at a centre bounce, then get to the forward flank and influence that contest, and then he gets to the next contest and he's there setting something up. He finds a way, and that's partly his endurance capability but also his game smarts. He just gets there, where others might be wondering 'Can I get there?' or 'Do I need to get there?' not realising that they can and should."
Andrew McQualter, the forwards coach this season, thinks Baker is a great story. “He came in older. Being small was always going to work against him. But he's so clean, and smart, and works hard, which is a pretty good formula.”
McQualter, speaking inside the forwards room off the main players’ lounge at Tigerland, says what stood out over the pre-season to all coaches was how far above the VFL level Baker had risen in between seasons. Not just for the aforementioned reasons, but also his ability to see the game. “His hands in traffic, and ability to create, to get people on the outside - that’s a weapon. It’s a bit slippery out there on the track this morning, but he won't fumble. He's probably one of the cleanest players at the club.”
McQualter acknowledges that Baker showed most of these traits last season, too. That’s why he was selected to debut against Collingwood in a dominant team, and why he held his spot to play against Geelong the following week. He didn’t quite bring his strengths those days, however, which is not uncommon. “You come into the AFL team and you're a bit intimidated, and it's harder and faster, and he probably got a little bit overawed.”
He didn’t gather as many touches or get to as many contests, and missed goals he would ordinarily kick, and so only played one more game in 2018.
One year on, however, and he is more than comfortable at the level. After a stunning Round 10 performance in the annual Dreamtime at the ‘G game (24 possessions, 12 of them contested, along with a game high nine tackles, a goal and a JLT Mark of the Year contender) he was nominated for the NAB Rising Star Award. People began to see him then, taking note of his position atop a few KPI leaderboards at Richmond, for chasing, and corrals. As of right now, he sits second at the Tigers for tackles, too.
“Clearly in our team as a small forward you've got to have those pressure points - that’s your job,” says McQualter. “And he would admit that wasn’t his greatest strength once. He was good at it, but not the best, and we've been keeping a running tally on the wall over there, and he's been consistently at the top.”
Baker himself knows that he has the GPS numbers to apply pressure, and do the negative running to close down space. It was never about ability but consistency. “It's about not hesitating,” he says, back in Northcote. “My downside was holding back, or waiting for the next one. For me it's about being fast in those first few steps. Being half a second off can lead to a lot of things you don’t want in a game."
None of this success surprised his coaches, incidentally. McQualter notes that he’s always been stamped as a hard worker. The injuries suffered by the team this season have been a blessing in that way, giving a player like Baker an extended opportunity to show what he can do, and what he can add to the team, in so many ways.
"He just makes you feel a sense of ... engagement,” adds McRae. “If the mood or the moment needs something, you can always go to him - 'What do you think Bakes?' - and he'll say something quick-witted just to bring you up."
The only thing that brings Baker down in footy, he says, is not exactly the scrutiny or pressure or social media minefield but the recognition in public. He may have a self-inflicted pseudo-mullet, but he enjoys his anonymity. “People knowing who you are - I don’t mind it at times, but there are moments I just wish no one knew who I was. It's ok on the street, when people just say ‘Good game’, or ‘How's it going mate?’ And in cafes when you're with a few of the boys and little kids come up to you and ask for a photo - we love that side of it,” he says. “It’s mainly when older guys come over, and you're on a night out, and they want to grab you - not exactly hassle you - but bar you up and talk footy. And you just want to be a normal bloke.”
I wonder if Baker is developing a Western Australian crew at the club. After all, there are more than a few of them. There’s a veritable Sandgroper mafia building at Richmond. Counting him, plus Nathan Broad, Kamdyn McIntosh, Alex Rance, Sydney Stack, Shai Bolton, Ben Miller, Luke English and now mid-season draft pick Marlion Pickett, there’s nine of them - almost a quarter of the list hails from the west. But it turns out he’s probably tightest with Short, Graham, Butler and Patrick Naish. “I play a bit of golf with Broady,” he says. “But you have different gags with so many boys at the club, and it’s been said before but there just aren’t that many little groups within the team. If anything, you might have dinner with a few boys more often just because they live in the north.”
He goes to TAFE in Williamstown on his rostered day off, incidentally, with Graham and Toby Nankervis, where they’re studying carpentry. “We're framing up walls right now, and then ripping them down,” he says. “We've been doing a bit of book work, too, because it's been so cold. It’s not really for a career though. Honestly, I'd just like to be able to have those skills. Hopefully footy can go as long as possible, but I’d like to be able to do a few things to my own place one day, back on the farm. That's something I want.”
And as for the Eminem album, maybe he’ll find a record player upon which to give it the occasional spin, but for the most part, as meaningful as the gesture of senior coach was on the day, and in the days afterward, the game itself - a 43 point victory against an arch rival - is what will stick in the mind most of all.
“It’s the biggest crowd I've played in. So loud. I was bloody nervous, of course, and probably just thinking about it too much. But I made sure to savour it a bit, too,” he says,smiling. “The last five minutes, I just looked around and tried to take it all in. It was an awesome moment for me. Awesome."
Konrad Marshall is the author of Yellow & Black - A Season with Richmond, and a writer for Good Weekend Magazine.
