Tom Lynch played his 100th game for Richmond after leaving Gold Coast after the 2018 season.
He played an anonymous role for a team that went two hours of real time without kicking a goal.
But his irrelevance on Saturday arvo, and his generally quiet season as he has contended with three opponents like he’s Jackie Chan if he lost every fight, belies the biggest sliding doors moment in the AFL over the last decade.
Lynch’s decision swung five potential premierships over four years.
Throughout 2018, whispers circled Lynch wanted to return to Victoria as a free agent.
A key forward heading into his age 27 season with multiple 40 goal seasons becoming a true free agent was and remains incredibly rare.
He was rightly viewed as a game changer and a premiership shaper.
Unsurprisingly, he was the bell of the ball among the Melbourne clubs who thirsted after him like a group of just-pubescent boys.
His two biggest suitors were Richmond and Collingwood.
I think Collingwood assumed he’d pick them over the Tigers just like Adam Treloar had done years earlier.
The Pies also had a bit of a “he has no choice” vibe to them—if we’re available, he’ll pick us, because of the implication.
“The Implication” joke in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hands down one of the best-written gags in the entire series.
pic.twitter.com/g9xsSzHez2 https://t.co/bvMB0N6XFf— cinesthetic. (@TheCinesthetic) June 4, 2025
The other option, though they weren’t in the Lynch sweepstakes, was Melbourne.
So, they’re the players in the game. Let’s look at the three possibilities.
What if Tom Lynch doesn’t pick Richmond?
I am a Richmond supporter, so this is bleak.
I remember showing up to a friend’s house after the 2017 Grand Final for a post-game party he was hosting, bleary-eyed and ecstatic.
I hugged one of the other Richmond supporters there and shook a few hands.
One of them, a Collingwood fan, said to me “that’s the worst team I’ve ever seen win the premiership”.
I responded by saying “that’s not the insult you think it is”, but he might have been right.
The 2017 Tigers rode a wave of momentum and were a Castro-style revolutionary force in football, but it wasn’t a stacked list before Lynch came to support Jack Riewoldt.
I think the 2018 prelim against Collingwood, where Dustin Martin played hurt, showed the Tigers that they were fragile.
In that game, they saw that if a forward-of-centre A-Grader got hurt they were cooked.
Without Lynch in 2019 – and with Riewoldt playing just 13 games – Richmond don’t win the premiership.
They certainly don’t win the prelim against Geelong, where Lynch dog-walked Harry Taylor, kicking five – including three in the second half – to steer the comeback.
The 2020 premiership is less clearcut, but even in shortened quarters Lynch kicked two goals a game and was a structural pillar in the weirdest season ever.
Without Lynch, Richmond’s 2017 flag is remembered the same way than West Coast’s 2018 flag is: lightning in a bottle.
What if Tom Lynch picks Collingwood?
If Lynch was available in 2018, I’m positive he makes more of a contest than Brody Mihocek did on the end of the Adam Treloar kick.
He certainly doesn’t let Jeremy McGovern launch the counter that led to the Dom Sheed goal.
But forgive my digression.
The premiership that got away for Collingwood was 2019.
Off the heartbreaker in 2018, the Pies finished fourth because of a dominant defence.
They were just eighth in scoring, with Mihocek leading their goal kicking with just 36.
Lynch kicked 63 that season.
Their lack of scoring power showed up in the finals. The Pies scored 61 points in the qualifying final win against Geelong, and 52 in their loss to GWS in the preliminary final.
Lynch made a career out of making chicken salad out of chicken shit in outnumbered aerial contests.
That was his job – don’t lose when the ball surged high inside 50.
Based on that, you just know that he’s jumping at Callum Brown’s kick to the spot with 1:15 to go, instead of Pendlebury and Hoskin-Elliott.
Maybe he even marks it. If he does, he goals and the Pies are in a Grand Final against probably Geelong who they already beat without Lynch.
Just quietly, Collingwood still hasn’t found a key forward in 2025.
If they don’t win this season, that might be why.
What if Melbourne got Tom Lynch?
There is no reporting that Melbourne was in the running for Lynch in the 2018 offseason, though they have been linked to him this year for a reason – they don’t have any key forwards.
They haven’t at all in their run of success which led to one premiership, but three top-4 finishes.
In the non-flag years (2022 and 2023), Melbourne was second and first inside 50 differential.
The issue was that they were astonishingly inefficient with their entries, sitting 14th for goals per entry in both years.
Melbourne lost their four finals by a combined 44 points over the two years, including losses by seven and two points in 2023 to Collingwood and Carlton.
What if they were just a bit better? Maybe with a key forward to get on the end of those dump kicks?
This is the hardest one to make the case for.
In the two years that Lynch might have swung Melbourne from a tale mostly of wasted potential to a dynasty after 2021, he played just eight games.
But how much of that was bad luck? Or maybe Richmond conservatism given those years were wasted before they began?
If Lynch is healthy, all the “Melbourne dynasty” talk post-2021 might’ve been reality.
Rarely has a missing piece been so glaringly obvious.
So, what’s the point of all this?
Five premierships touched, Richmond won two, the Pies might have salvaged 2019 amd Melbourne might have built a dynasty.
All because one guy said yes to Punt Road.
Thanks for picking Richmond, Tom.