Richmond superstar Dustin Martin continued his late-season form surge with another strong showing in last Saturday’s final home-and-away round match against the Western Bulldogs at the MCG.

Martin racked up a season-high 33 disposals, with a game-high 12 inside-50s, game-high nine clearances, game-high five goal assists, game-high 12 score involvements and game-high 634 metres gained.

It’s highly likely he again would have polled Brownlow Medal votes for the influence he exerted in the Tigers’ narrow win, further strengthening his claims to go back-to-back in the game’s most prestigious individual award.

Over the course of the last eight home-and-away games of the season, Martin averaged 27.6 disposals and 1.6 goals (13 in total) per match.

“He’s started to really, really play to that level of expectation he put on himself. He’s gradually been building and it’s good to see him start to reap some dividends of that,” Richmond coach Damien Hardwick declared in his post-match press conference last Saturday.

“He’s so important to the way we play.

“We’ve used him a little bit sparingly through the middle at stages, but we’re looking forward to getting him back where he plays his best footy . . .

“We like to see him forward.

“I still maintain that Dustin Martin out of the goal square is a really good look for us.

“We’ve played him a little bit more there the last three or four weeks than we have previously . . . It’s about trying to get guys through the middle a little bit more, a bit more experience to see how those guys go.

“But we’ll line up pretty stock standard, I think, going forward from here on in.”