Author of Yellow & Black and Stronger & Bolder, Konrad Marshall checked in with dual premiership-winning Richmond forward Jason Castagna to reboot the 2020 version of long-form features on current Tigers.
I spoke to Jason Castagna when this long lockdown had only just begun, back before hubs and masks and mass social distancing, in that strange early era of panic-bought pasta and toilet paper hoarding. (Don’t worry folks, Castagna had enough of both). This was several weeks ago, when the word Zoom was more commonly spelled with a lower case “z” - when instead of referring to a timetabled digital meeting, it more closely aligned with the untrammelled way in which the 23-year-old forward we know as "Georgie" plays football. Zooming is what he does.
He told me at the time how saddened he was by the standing down of the vast majority of the Richmond Football Club, not just assistant coaches and footy department staff but those in administration and marketing and membership - the people with whom, at this most unified organisation, he often shares a coffee. He was unsure when they would return, when football would return - indeed if football would return at all. He was trying to make the most of holing up in his flat in Alphington, and, like most of us, he was getting by.
But this is not a pandemic story. This is a Roar Feature about a unique player, one with an enviable zig and a baffling zag - who is custom built for speed. Growing up, Castagna was that boy in the playground known by a prized five-word title: the fastest kid in school. At least he was in his primary years. Once his peers began to shoot up into their adolescent height, they became more difficult to match. “I didn’t grow a whole lot from grade two onwards. I always remember being small,” he says. “The guys with the big strides began to catch me over 100 metres.”
When he was 13 though, he found a solution, finding another gear by way of finding a running coach. “I remember him saying to me that I was at an age where you can actually get quicker. Those early teen years are an age where you can train yourself, and get faster by building muscle, but mostly by sharpening technique.”
It will surprise no one who has seen Castagna charge madly through the wide forward flanks of the Melbourne Cricket Ground that he was devoted in high school to gathering more and more velocity. “I actually picked up pro running,” he says. “It sounds impressive because of the ‘pro’ bit, but it just means there’s money involved, and handicaps.”
Castagna would enter foot races all over Victoria, and one year drove to the feet of the Grampians to compete in the junior event at the annual Stawell Gift, where he was pitted against other fast twitch teenagers, and handicapped accordingly. “I’d love to say that I started 10 metres behind everyone else and mowed them all down, but I think I was in the middle of the pack. I wasn’t quite to the level. But I competed, and came third when I was 16.”
He loved the act - warming up, striding to the line, gathering in a crouch and waiting for the gun. “It’s so good. I was almost ready to take a year off footy and just run, because it was so much fun. But it’s also pretty straightforward. It can wear thin.” Sprinting was a great expression of freedom, but it was also solitary, unlike a game of footy, or even kick to kick.”
Castagna grew up near Eltham or rather “past Research, beyond Warrandyte”, in the most excellently named suburb of Kangaroo Ground, with a general store and a primary school and tennis club, and not much more. But he had family, and a great patch. “We were on a good 14-acre block,” he says. “Land. A lot of weedy trees. Bushy. Hilly.”
He has four siblings - three brothers and a younger sister, the baby, who’s in year 10 at school. Castagna is the second eldest. The third brother is a landscaper, while the first and fourth work with their father in the family business, Castagna Steel - Fabrication, Supply, Erection - and will one day take it over. The company started with his dad’s dad, his Nonno, who came to Melbourne when he was 18. “They had a factory in Brunswick. And he worked away there. And dad had to take that over when he was 18. And he’s had it since then. Mum’s always in there, helping with all the books.”
Castagna grew up dreaming of a career in the AFL, and assumed if that didn’t work out he would turn to a trade. “I was a shocking student. I just didn’t enjoy it.” But he did enjoy art. This has been mentioned to me before. Castagna will often sit in idle moments sketching in lead pencil or charcoal, faithfully rendering the people and places he sees. “I just like the idea of it,” he says. “At the moment I’m renovating a house and trying to design what the house will look like, and I’ve drawn heaps of facades, and versions of the bathroom. Any excuse to draw, I will.”
He played school footy with Marcellin, and TAC Cup footy with the Northern Knights. He was a precocious talent as a junior, and played all over the field. He relished competition, too, loving the chance to tag and blanket top ten picks like Jarrod Pickett and Paul Ahern. For sheer entertainment, it is worth digging out his teenage highlights reel on YouTube.
Each sequence is frenetic. Completely unbottled. His moves always begin with a surge of high knees, and then fall into a full-tilt runaway rhythm, and they often end in chaos - out of bounds or bombed forward or turned over - as his speed gets him into trouble and out of trouble and back into trouble again. National Recruiting Manager Matt Clarke focused more on the dash than the finish. He saw pure energy and wondered, could it be harnessed - controlled then channelled?
He remembers meeting his recruiting staff in the office one morning, to show them a specific film edit of George from the weekend prior: “Boys,” he said, “just sit down and look at this.” It was Castanga, playing for the Knights against the Bendigo Pioneers. “It was just run, carry, bounce, handball, receive, run, carry, bounce, bounce, dodge, dodge, fumble, recover, run. He must have gone the length of the field. I just thought, if we can get him to slow down a bit, be a little more composed, this kid has it. He fits our mould.”
He certainly did. In his draft year, Castagna ran the 20 metres in 2.99 seconds, plus a 10 minute, 28 second three-kilometre time trial, and a 15.2 beep test. He was part of an overall recruiting philosophy based not so much on speed as “running power”, in all its forms, whether straight line quickness like Connor Menadue, lightning repeat coverage like Daniel Rioli, or relentless striding pace over distance like Kamdyn McIntosh.
Coming into the 2014 draft, Castagna was told by his manager that he would probably get picked late, and if not then, definitely in the rookie draft. “I could deal with that,” he says. “I invited over probably 10 or so mates to my family’s house. We had the idea that if I get drafted, it’ll be awesome, I can celebrate with them, and if not, at least I’ve got my mates there if I’m flat for not getting picked up. I was definitely flat … but I had a ripper night with my mates - a wake for not getting drafted.”
The next day they all left for Schoolies Week in Queensland, and he stayed home, because the rookie draft was almost a week away. “That was a grim time for me. I watched the rookie draft on the computer, with mum. Refreshing the screen, again, again, again. Pick 29. It was just me and mum, and it was a massive relief, and a great moment to share with her.”
Richmond rate their players in their internal database on various skills - from marking and kicking to competitiveness and coachability - ranking them on each category from dark brown (bad) to dark green (good). Castagna is dark green for speed, repeat speed, run and carry, and, most of all, agility. “Other clubs have said this to me: ‘You’ve got the most agile player in the AFL’,” says Clarke. “His lateral movement is astonishing. He has a goose step like David Campese.”
Castagna says this is the part of the game he enjoys most. It’s not about opening the throttle and hurtling in one direction like a drag racer - he loves the wrong foot slides and right angle jags his opponents won’t expect. “I find it fun trying to weave. Using a sidestep to give me a bit more edge, make me look faster, give me more separation.”
Within minutes the welfare officer at the club contacted him: Pack your stuff for camp, you’ve gotta come up today, we’re in Townsville. He was on a plane that afternoon, with fellow rookie draft selections - now premiership players - Jayden Short (pick 11) and Kane Lambert (pick 46). They got to the camp around 10pm, and were straight into training the next morning at sunrise. Castagna is not exaggerating when he says that camp was the hardest thing he has ever experienced.
“Physically, mentally,” he says, sighing. “No joke, I remember seriously reassessing if I wanted to be a footballer, because it was so hard. I thought ‘If this is what it takes to play AFL, I don’t know if I want to do it’. Hill rides, rowing, running - I was so, so far behind the other boys, so far off it. But now it makes sense - the boys still speak about it now as the toughest camp ever. That was - conveniently,” he laughs, “my first few days at the club.”
He made fast friends with Dan Butler, who had been taken in that draft. Butler had moved down to Melbourne from Ballarat, and was always looking for something to do. “He had this table tennis table and we would play flat out. That’s how we bonded and became good mates. We ended up moving in together at the end of 2016, in this dingy old place in Kew.”
They lived together until midway through 2019. Butler was headed to St Kilda in the post season. It was hard watching his mate leave, but Castagna knew it could happen, given Butler wasn’t being selected at senior level last year, and his contract talks with Richmond weren’t moving forward either. “He was getting a bit anxious and thought he might have to move on. But he got to a point that year where he knew he was going to move on. It did suck, but he found a good spot.”
I want to pan back now, to the off-season between 2016 and 2017, and what Castagna saw change the most. “The biggest difference was Dimma. He just went from being this guy who, when something didn’t go right, asked ‘What can we do from here?’ - rather than spraying us for the bad stuff. It’s a growth mindset now.”
Castagna became a crucial cog, of course, in that famous flag forward line, with just one tall - Jack Riewoldt - plus a mid-sized target in Josh Caddy, a defensive wrecking ball in Jacob Townsend, and three small and incredibly fast forwards in Castagna, Butler, and Daniel Rioli. He was part of the “mosquito fleet” in the “accidental forward line”, and his 2017 season was actually more immense than many realise: he was the number one player at the club for score involvements that year.
“I feel pretty lucky to be a part of that. Both me and Buts hadn’t played much AFL at all. He hadn’t played a game, and I’d played five. We didn’t think it would be possible for us both to play as well as Daniel, but Dimma wanted this emphasis on pressure. And so he gave us a crack, and it seemed to work.”
His role is naturally pressure, and running to consume space - to cut off exits. But it’s also to present as a target. After Jack Riewoldt and Tom Lynch, Castagna is the most targeted Tiger inside 50, because he runs up and down the lead lanes, surging and cutting, presenting himself as an option. Then he marks and has to convert, and yes, Richmond fans, he does work incredibly hard on his goal kicking. All players choose their own “extras” to do once their regular training session is done, whether weights or running or footwork. Castagna takes set shots on goal.
With that in mind, let’s fast forward to his remarkable performance in the 2019 Grand Final. Throughout the year, Castagna had averaged a solid 14 disposals, but importantly 4 marks, 3 tackles, a goal a game, and 263 metres gained per match, which is impressive for a small forward. In the 2019 finals series, however, that average ratcheted up to 400 metres gained, a number put in the shade by his phenomenal premiership performance: in which he gathered 20 touches for 586 metres gained. His run and carry and chaos was everything Clarke remembered from that teenage edit. Had he been a little straighter, a Norm Smith Medal was not unlikely. And yet, it does feel, all these many months later, that Castagna will be remembered for his radar - or rather lack of a radar - when shooting for goal that day.
“Honestly, I’m pretty ok with it,” he says, laughing. “If we’d lost, it would have been a different story. But I joke to my mates that no one will remember the guy who kicked 3 goals 1, but everyone remembers the guy who kicked five points and one out on the full. And I was pretty happy with how I played.”
And he should be happy. His ability to stream forward and cut through the seams of packs, to zip this way and that, around opponents and through the field, was a feature of the day as much as a Marlion Pickett spin or a Jack Riewlodt bomb. He was deeply involved in that match. “Usually in games you’re pretty flat when you miss goals, but I really just felt like I was in the game, and then you win, and you get to celebrate. With the Grand Final, it’s the last game, so you have everything to lose but also nothing to lose. There’s no next week, you’re not getting dropped - so you play to your strengths. And that made me feel like I could take on the game.”
I ask him what’s changed at the club in 2020. What are the new themes? I’ve been told there is renewed focus on maintaining that all important and precarious balance between selflessness and ego - between sacrificing for the team and expressing yourself with flair.
“The main themes we have at the club are in place - playing to strengths, celebrating, being connected and loving one another’s company - and those will stick around. We fine tune a few things every year but the non-negotiable - the thing we’re always reminded about - is our team defence. Be creative and do what you’re good at, but your intent to defend is a must. It doesn’t take any skill - just commitment.”
So what can fans expect when the season resumes? Castagna’s answer, taken the wrong way, could sound like a boast, but to me it sounds more like a promise, or a pact. The Tiger Army, he says, should expect to see what they’ve become accustomed to seeing these past few years.
“Defense that’s manic, and attack that’s at times chaotic. Blokes doing what they do best, and having the courage to do that, like Stacky taking a speccy over Toby Greene,” he says, recalling a pre-season game highlight that now seems an era ago. “For myself, I’ll be trying to use my speed. I’ll go for my marks, go for my goals, and probably kick a lot of points. But probably be fun to watch, too.”
