Nice one Tames.
Looks like that is over the past half dozen years and not career. Be interested to see the latter if easy to get.
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Kane Lambert
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Nice one Tames.
Looks like that is over the past half dozen years and not career. Be interested to see the latter if easy to get.
Full article.
www.richmondfc.com.au
Most valuable Tigers' importance underlined
A statistical analysis highlights the importance of Kane Lambert and Ivan Soldo's availability to Richmond's form.
Love this bloke. So humble and unassuming. Absolutely a champion of our club.
The Grigg tap to him for that goal in the 2017 GF... tearing up just typing this.
All the best Lamblett, Richmond royalty.
The Grigg tap to him for that goal in the 2017 GF... tearing up just typing this.
All the best Lamblett, Richmond royalty.
Kane Lambert took an unconventional road to Tigerland
By Peter Hanlon
September 12, 2015 — 7.17pmKane Lambert got his driver's licence the morning he turned 18, but the afternoon failed to deliver the second leg of his boyhood dreams. He didn't get drafted, but he had a plan.
"There was method to my madness," he says of a decision that's made him a worthy member of the AFL's ever-expanding unconventional-road-to-the-top club. "I fed off people telling me I was doing the wrong thing. But if I'd pushed myself and gone through the motions, I don't know that I'd be playing footy at all now."
And so Lambert spent his 19th year standing at the end of a factory production line lifting cans off the belt and stacking them onto pallets, from 7am till 3.30pm every day. Then he'd go to the gym, determined to put some meat on a 65kg frame. He didn't play football, but trained harder than ever.
"I made the decision that I wanted to have basically a 12-month pre-season, get myself into a position where I could play senior footy," he says. "I'd trained at a few different (VFL) clubs but I was just going through the motions – I wasn't training to be better, I was just training to train. And that's not me."
During his self-imposed separation from the game in 2010, Lambert grew not only physically (putting on 10kg) but in his understanding of himself and the world. Adrian Marcon, the engineering manager at NCI (National Can Industries) Packaging who already knew Lambert through his friendship with his son Adam, remembers a disillusioned young man carrying the heartache of fresh football rejection walking into his office. He left a year later ready to tackle anything.
"Kane was here day-in, day-out, working alongside people of all ages from all different walks of life and all parts of the world," Marcon says, noting that many of the staff of 100 are migrants from Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Italy and elsewhere in Europe. "He just got on with everyone.
"A lot of people follow him now on the back of the year he worked here – and the fact that he was such a likeable young man."
The work wasn't overly physical, but Lambert will never forget the mental test of focusing on mundane tasks for hours on end. Communication was challenging in an environment of many languages; regardless, the constant noise demanded workers wear earmuffs.
He struck up a friendship with the man next to him at the end of the line, Philip Papamihail, a Macedonian who Marcon says is nudging 70, remains fit and strong and interested more in carrying on working than easing into well-earned retirement. "He was good fun – I'd play tricks on him and he'd play them back," Lambert says. "He taught me a few different words that I shouldn't say."
Marcon remembers something deeper between two very different people stacking 20-litre paint cans, something that resonates with Lambert's football story. "Philip gave Kane a few lessons in life, from a traditional Macedonian chap, telling him what it means to persevere."
Grit is a quality Lambert could never be accused of lacking. The can factory was a good fit because it's in Preston, where he grew up in a house that backed onto the train line. The Cramer St oval was a stone's throw away, but he liked kicking with his dad next to the tracks. "Over the back fence and you were there. The grass was long, and every now and then a train came whizzing past."
He and his mates knew the streets well, the graffiti on walls, factories closed and fallen into disrepair. "I suppose it was a bit rough, but it was just normal, where I grew up." He admits it's probably helped him in the long run.
Lambert reckons he was a good kid who didn't have the best grades "but wasn't a muck-up". He went to a "knockabout" school that closed not long after he left, didn't get suspended although plenty of others did. "I suppose I had a bit of a hard edge about me."
He followed Essendon, but was such a passionate local his early ambition was to play for the Northern Bullants. Matthew Penn was his idol ("he had number one on his back, I wore number one too"), and Saturdays were spent climbing the sponsorship boards on the Cramer St terrace and collecting autographs in the rooms.
George Wakim first encountered Lambert as a four-year-old Auskicker, and has coached and mentored him ever since. He reckons the stories he could tell highlighting his determination and persistence are limited only by how much time you've got.
A favourite centres around a training camp at Forrest, in the Otways, at the end of the season Lambert stood out of. He'd trained all year, his feet getting so itchy he played the last couple of under 19 games with mates at the Northern Blues in the amateurs, and was ready to fly.
"We had interval training lined up for the day, but Kane wanted to go for a run in the morning," Wakim says, recalling setting out on hilly tracks and roads at 7am on his bike with Lambert running at his side. "He was like a machine. We did 10ks through the Otways, and if I'd kept riding the bike for 40ks he'd have kept going beside me."
Wakim is a former international level canoeist who used an Olympic analogy to encourage Lambert that standing out of football wasn't going to cruel his football prospects. "I say to Kane, 'Olympians train 12 months a year for four years for one event that might take two minutes.' I didn't think it was a big deal for him to take a year off and just train."
Football's capacity for cruelty had first struck him at 16, when a broken collarbone cost him a premiership just after he'd lost his grandmother. "I remember thinking how hard things were." Countless setbacks have added perspective; even after sitting out a year his return was stalled by foot stress fractures, and on debut in round two this year he copped another shoulder injury that needed surgery.
He feels indebted to the clubs he's played for – Preston juniors, the Northern Knights, Bullants and Blues. A move to Williamstown last year was hard to make, but Adam Marcon and other mates were on board and he hoped a change would open a hitherto air-tight AFL door.
Adrian Marcon notes that the boys have shared the games ups and downs – breaking shoulders one after the other, winning Northern Knights best and fairests in consecutive years, even both winning the VFL's Fothergill-Round Medal for best young talent. Marcon was better fancied to be drafted last year but missed out; when Lambert dropped around after hearing his own good news, his Carlton-supporting mate was out the front wearing a Richmond jumper.
Lambert dearly hopes their twinned fortunes continue. He was drafted soon after winning the Fothergill-Round Medal in 2014; Marcon recently won the 2015 award.
As a kid Lambert went to Richmond games with family friends and couldn't help but be caught up in the theme song, roaring "yellow and black!" like he'd been born to it. He didn't take long to love the place from the inside, cherishes its tradition, and has developed a bond with fellow recruit Anthony Miles. "We respect each other a lot, and I think we both play on the edge as well."
Wakim remembers discussing Lambert with recruiters and being asked, "What's his weapon?" He's never been big and isn't overly quick, but the narrowness irked the long-time coach, who reckons the number of Kane Lamberts making their mark on the AFL should have banished the blinkers by now.
"He's a smart and clever footballer, and he's got amazing durability and persistence," Wakim says. "If they're not weapons, I dunno what is."
That’s almost my favourite tiger moment of all time. It happened right in front of me… the bloke I was with was (who wasn’t a Tiger supporter) I remember him shaking me and saying - “mate ur going to win the ‘expletives’ premiership!!!”…. It was at that moment for the first time I believed we were going to climb the mountain in my life time!
What period does this cover? Lambert has played 135 games. Grimes has missed way more than 8
Bit late watching the video, but geez he speaks well.
Champion player who was so important to our success.
Role model for any young player trying to get into the AFL and proof you don't need to be drafted at 18 to be a success.
Thanks for everything Kane, a future in coaching beckons for sure, hopefully at Tigerland
Champion player who was so important to our success.
Role model for any young player trying to get into the AFL and proof you don't need to be drafted at 18 to be a success.
Thanks for everything Kane, a future in coaching beckons for sure, hopefully at Tigerland
Another great article - those who know his value his worth and contribution.
https://www.theroar.com.au/2022/07/30/why-richmond-will-miss-kane-the-rug-lambert/
https://www.theroar.com.au/2022/07/30/why-richmond-will-miss-kane-the-rug-lambert/
Thanks for sharing
I just loved.................."In those premiership years you’d generally see Martin start on the ball. As the ball drifted backwards, Dusty would drift forward where he could petrify defenders just by striding in their general direction.
"But to make up for that it was Lambert who doubled back and did the defensive running that Dusty would otherwise have been responsible for. It’s maybe the best example of consistently selfless football that we have seen in recent years.
Truly it is fitting that when Richmond kicked that first goal against GWS in that 2017 preliminary final that had the MCG register a higher decibel reading than an F-18 it was Martin that handed the ball to Lambert for the easiest of goals. That moment, with the benefit of hindsight, was symbolic. A doth of the cap from a player putting together the best season in the history of football, to the player that made it all possible.
A genuine gun footballer who got his start late, Kane Lambert will be irreplaceable for the Tigers for years to come. They are trying with Judson Clarke, who was immediately tabbed as filling the ‘Kane Lambert role’, but Clarke is not yet the unique force that Lambert was.
One thing that I do know is that The Rug was invaluable. It tied the whole room together."
Why Richmond will miss Kane 'The Rug' Lambert
In the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece The Big Lebowski, the Dude was perturbed when he was attacked in his home by two enforcers who had…
www.theroar.com.au
Correct. But I was pleased to see he was there after retiring during the week.
Anyone listen to Tom Lynch On The Couch last night? yet another player extolling 'the Lambert Effect' now off-field.
So i have already heard multiple players attribute their development to Lambo most notably Shai, (going through tapes with him after every game), this year schooling Juddy, (there have been others this year too but their names elude me
).
Anyway back to On The Couch the panel members asked Tom Lynch what they did on their first day back from the bye and Lynch said something like we sat down as a group and discussed what needs to be done now we have made the finals as we have been there before Garry Lyon then asks who drives that meeting? Dimma? Lynch say's no, Kane Lambert, he has been awesome around the club since he retired.
**Surely Kane stay's in footy but usually retired players look to other clubs to expand their knowledge, (e.g. Grigg), all must be done to keep him involved with us, he will have many many suitors i should think.
So i have already heard multiple players attribute their development to Lambo most notably Shai, (going through tapes with him after every game), this year schooling Juddy, (there have been others this year too but their names elude me
).Anyway back to On The Couch the panel members asked Tom Lynch what they did on their first day back from the bye and Lynch said something like we sat down as a group and discussed what needs to be done now we have made the finals as we have been there before Garry Lyon then asks who drives that meeting? Dimma? Lynch say's no, Kane Lambert, he has been awesome around the club since he retired.
**Surely Kane stay's in footy but usually retired players look to other clubs to expand their knowledge, (e.g. Grigg), all must be done to keep him involved with us, he will have many many suitors i should think.
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I hear it and my first thought was that we must keep him on board. I get players like to look at other clubs for more experience but why would you want to leave the best club in the land?Anyone listen to Tom Lynch On The Couch last night? yet another player extolling 'the Lambert Effect' now off-field.
So i have already heard multiple players attribute their development to Lambo most notably Shai, (going through tapes with him after every game), this year schooling Juddy, (there have been others this year too but their names elude me
Anyway back to On The Couch the panel members asked Tom Lynch what they did on their first day back from the bye and Lynch said something like we sat down as a group and discussed what needs to be done now we have made the finals as we have been there before Garry Lyon then asks who drives that meeting? Dimma" Lynch say's no Kane Lambert, he has been awesome around the club since he retired.
**Surely Kane stay's in footy but usually retired players look to other clubs to expand their knowledge, (e.g. Grigg), all must be done to keep him involved with us, he will have many many suitors i should think.
Lambert will be a senior coach - no doubt. Maybe he is the perfect guy to be part of our transition once Hardwick decides he has had enough?
Same here Smoko. Heard Lynchy on OTC.....who was eager to get out towards the end. Lambo could be the greatest ever.
I would hazard a guess if Lambert is going to be a senior coach he will go to another club as an assistant at some point. I dont think too many tick with 1 club from playing to assistant coach to senior coach. Buckley (ignoring his 1 year at Brissie), Hird, Voss the 1st time around? Probably a theme there of "club legends" whose ego got in the way of good process.
I don't think Kane has the ego issues of the other three you mention.
yep, i reckon that will lead him to knowing he needs to broaden his experience by going elsewhere at some point.
