Liam Baker is sort of a strange player. He is simultaneously perfectly suited to the modern game, but also a throwback footballer of the highest order.
On Saturday night Baker played his 100th game in front of his friends and family in his native WA and it was every bit a Liam Baker game. He scrapped and clawed his way to 20 disposals, 12 contested as well as two tackles inside 50 and four score involvements.
But the numbers never do Liam Baker justice. He is an aggressive, lionhearted footballer who has never done anything by half. The fact that he has played upwards of 19 games in every year since 2019 is a credit to his professionalism and his dedication to recovery, given the way he flings himself at opponents and at the ball. He’s like an AFL Ja Morant, at least as far as his reckless disregard for his own body goes (that is where the comparison ends, both as far as pure athletic ability and addiction to guns in strip clubs).
Even on Saturday night, I counted three separate occasions where Baker threw his entire body across an opponent’s foot attempting to get to a smother. Even when he’s not there in time, he is affecting the opponent’s kick. For his career, he averages about 15 pressure acts per game. Not one of them would have been anything other than a full sprint, and a desperate lunge across an ever more fretful opponent. Those moments are the backbone of his game.
Baker is an energiser bunny who does not run out of battery, even when a game is lost. He is Jake Stringer’s opposite.
But beyond those moments, it’s the edge he brings when the team needs a lift. As Fremantle were beginning to mount their comeback, Liam Baker was flung to the ground by the significant bigger Alex Pearce after a tackle. Naturally, Richmond did not get the free kick because the umpires aren’t paying Richmond free kicks this season, but whatever. We move on.
Baker got up like his knees were spring-loaded and went right into Pearce’s chest and looked up at him with a smile so maniacal you’d almost have mistaken him for a mulleted Joker.
Pearce might very well have 30 centimetres and 30 kgs on Baker, but it would be a brave man to bet against the Richmond number 7. If Nick Cummins and Daniel Ricciardo, two of the best examples of “athlete funny” to ever walk the earth, hadn’t run the Honey Badger nickname into the ground you could pretty easily apply that name to Baker. Honey Baker? Not sure. Moving on.
(What is athlete funny? Finding athletes funny only because they are athletes who show a hint of personality, not because they are funny. The term is a cousin of “serial killer handsome”. Ted Bundy is only referred to as handsome and charming because he’s being compared to people with faces like smashed crabs. Ted Bundy is like a 6 at absolute best, judging just his looks.)
But this piece to date has focused on everything that Baker does without the ball. The things that make him a throwback footballer. The way he tries, the way he sets a physical tone despite being a physically slight man, the way he doesn’t take a backwards step.
But what about the way he plays with ball in hand?
Baker is a Mr. Fix It for the Tigers at this point in his career. You wish you had three of him so he could play on the ball, but also play in a back pocket and a forward pocket. He is one of the game’s most effective intercept players, sitting fourteenth in the competition in total intercepts and averaging 6.5 intercept possessions per game. But beyond that number, what makes him extraordinary is just how well-rounded his game is.
The man does nothing poorly.
For the 2023 season he goes at 75% disposal efficiency, averages a tick under 3 inside 50s per game and a tick over 3.5 rebound 50s per game. He effectively splits contested and uncontested ball, with about 35% of his 20 touches per game being contested. He wins his own ball as well, with 6 ground ball gets a game. And beyond all of that he involves himself in scoring, going at 5 score involvements per game which makes Baker involved in just over 20% of Richmond’s scores.
He’s got a touch of the Jeff Daniels to him. Equally adept playing Atticus Finch on Broadway, the news anchor on that terrible Aaron Sorkin show The Newsroom, but he can also be Harry in Dumb and Dumber. He’s the total package. Not elite anywhere, but can do anything at above replacement level.
Players like Baker and Jack Graham have a significant role to play in the future of the Richmond football club. They are both excellent gut runners and constructive link players. They are the bridge between defence and midfield, and midfield and forward.
But they are also the bridge between eras. They have four premierships between them, but they are also young enough to be in that next contending Richmond side (though I won’t lie if we beat St Kilda next week, I might start getting reckless with my thoughts about this year). The Tigers are relatively young across the board this year and there is emerging talent coming through, Judson Clarke perhaps the best of the bunch so far.
That transition has been anxiety inducing, especially this year. But with players like Liam Baker, I truly do think that we will be okay. And if we aren’t, he’ll bust his gut trying to make it right.
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