Dugald

ends & beginnings (& all the stuff in between)

19/09/2019 By Dugald 3 Comments

Monday afternoon, I thought of Yeatesy. Wrote about him. Look me up if you”re on Facebook, have a read. This is football, this is life. See the comments. The crowd gathers around one of us. We’re all in this together.

Yesterday I did something I’d been meaning to do for the longest time. Published a website for my latest venture. It’s a work-in-progress, but it feels right, building other communities in other ways, doing something to try and make a difference. Many have helped along the way, and none of this is forgotten. I Posted about it also:

Hasn’t been easy since being de-listed from footy writing, but I’ve found a way. Have had to. Nobody likes being pushed, not when they think they’ve still got a few more words in them, a few more stories.

Endings are not always of our choice.

Last night, celebrating a new beginning by sorting-out loose ends, I came across a folded piece of paper that I’d long forgotten. A sting of words put down, an idea in the telling. Reminded of tomorrow night, of what a game of football might be; a series of contests, each of equal importance, needing to be halved or won for the ball to go the right way.

Straight from the jottings – and please excuse my scrawl – it reads like this:

31 seconds left in the third quarter

Richmond 7 points up

Dave Astbury mops up a loose ball in defence and on his right foot chips to the wing,

On the head of Dusty

4 against 44

“Now that’s a fifty-fifty maybe, Stewart vee Martin”

Dusty drops an overhead mark, Stewart leads the ball to the boundary, overruns it and it lands in Dusty’s lap.

Element of luck.

As Stewart doubles back, Dusty – our Dusty – clutching the ball in his right, hunched, turning, extends his left arm, pushes an off-balance Stewart on the shoulder and all the possibilities of the game open up.

Bruce goes guttural.

“Dusty, awww Dusty, that is classic Dusty.”

Two bounces in space, running up the outer wing, all us Richmond crowd roaring him on, a crescendo, a release – the game in the balance, a whole history of defeat and despair and loss to be cast aside – a single act, a dance, making space, a moment of the sublime – him, it had to be him, all power and grace in open terrain, thumping the ball into the ground with each bounce, his Geelong counterpart sprawled on the grass, outwitted, outplayed, outfoxed by our main man.

Jack Riewoldt cameo: spearing pass to Dion Prestia, unattended at the top of the goal square, and the crowd behind the posts at the Punt Road end are on their feet, erupting in untrammelled euphoria.

All the emotions, all that star-crossed history, is released and banished there and then.

We have Dusty. We have this football team. We have all the parts of a beautiful sum.

On this night, for this moment, we have the whole world at our feet.

A scribbled down idea, a beginning, an end.

Cleaning up the house this afternoon I came across a photograph of me, running. Soft golden light, the long shadows on a late Saturday winter’s afternoon. A last game for an old team of mine, the Cooma Cats. Snowy Oval, remember it well. A friend took the picture. She’s now back home, in Canada.

That’s me running from the backline, head up, maybe raising my voice, wanting to be heard.

We all get old.

Do it while you can, and do it for as long as you can. Run, run, run.

Playing days: me in the middle ground, a tiger wearing a cat’s clothes.

Our boys will win on Friday night, not because we are cocky, but because a fire of regret burns still inside. The lived experience of last year remains raw. What does not kill us, etc.. An opportunity lost, a season unfulfilled.

Our boys will win because enough of them are still hurting, and all the others are hungry, and because as a group they have confronted and overcome adversity. New players have been given an opportunity and all have risen to the occasion. Most of the older players are playing as well as they ever have, some even better.

Run, run, run,

New bonds have been forged. Respect and admiration is renewed, again and again. It comes from courage, and grace, and humility. It comes from each player playing for each other, as a team, which in turn means each of them plays for us.

Our boys will win, not because it is written in the stars, not because it is a right, because they are entitled, nor because many expect them to, but because they know every little moment matters and none of it can be wasted. Time runs out. Not a moment can be lost.

This Friday night, it will all be gained.

Short statement on Chris Rees’s sticker stocktake sale

26/07/2018 By Dugald 4 Comments

We have a problem. Demand has exceeded supply.

We’ve run out of stickers!

Chris has organised for a FINAL PRINT RUN of stickers: 300. Previously it cost him $357.50 to do 300, which he sold for $5 each. It was my idea to sell some at the ground, to share the love. He agreed, and set a ‘stocktake sale price’ of $3. Do the maths. He’s not making much money out of it. But money isn’t everything.

What price passion?

Blood brothers: our two beloved Grand Final blood nuts, arm-in-arm

Talking to Chris today, he said this is the last print run.

“There’s only so long we can continue celebrating a premiership.”

I politely disagreed. The beauty of this design is it’s such a muted ‘celebration’. There’s nothing ra-ra about it. As mentioned, it’s more a documentation, an acknowledgement, of a day and of a time in our lives, and of the ending of something, and beginning of something new.

It is Richmond togetherness.

And our togetherness is in trying to get this sticker to as many who might enjoy and appreciate it.

What we’ll do is this: all who have requested sticker payment and pick-up at the ground this Saturday (either under the elm, or in the cheer squad at half-time) will get their stickers. Haven’t done the final sums yet, but think there are enough to go around. Just.

All who have requested a sticker that needs to be posted, will receive stickers from this new batch (so the wait might be a week or two, depending on production). As advertised, these stickers will be sold for $3 each, plus $1 postage. But Chris has changed the design a little bit, with some of his branding. Hope you don’t mind.

See this link for a sneak preview:

bumper_2018RD_fa_v3

Orders have now closed.

All future sales of this last batch of stickers will be for $4 each (plus postage), until sold out.

I will be selling whatever is left over of this last batch of stickers at the ground at the season’s last home-and-away game, for $4 each (each slim profit goes to the artist).

Then I am done with stickers.

Unless we win another premiership….

(Which is what we all quietly want)

Stickers & friendships & togetherness

23/07/2018 By Dugald 22 Comments

The pillar of a premiership: the broad shoulders of no. 25.

Excuse me, the words are rusty.

Hard news first.

Before the bounce this Saturday I’m selling stickers on behalf of another. Three dollars each.

Like one, find me beneath an elm across from the Tigerland Superstore entrance, on the walking path from the railway station. I’ll be there from 12.30pm. To reserve a purchase (as many have done already via my Facebook page), please contact me. I’ll also be in the cheer squad at half-time, fulfilling orders.^

The stickers measure 200mm × 40mm.

They are the artwork of Chris Rees, whom many know from his creative football designs, all of which can be found and purchased via his http://www.reesdesign.com.au/ website. He is also the other half of this blog we created a few years back – and thank you Malcolm McKinnon for contributing a match report this week.

Chris is also a friend*.

Which is why I’m on a sticker-selling drive this Saturday. It’s also because this sticker gives me much joy and pride, and I cannot understand why every car in Melbourne driven by a Richmond fan doesn’t have one. I want to help make this happen.

Before the bounce: made Adelaide’s choreographed poses look juvenile.

Why a love these stickers? They’re understated, timeless, modest. They capture the essence of a day – of an experience – all of us might cherish until the end of our time. I don’t much fancy the Herald Sun’s cartoonish car sticker, emblazoned with ‘2017 Premiers’ and the caricature of a triumphant tiger. I find it a bit, well, boorish. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t go much for football chest-pumping, especially not once a deed is done.

Maybe it is all those years of yearning and frustrations.

Or maybe it’s just all those Hawthorn premiership stickers that’ve shouted in my face for so long.

Winners ought to be humble, respectful, modest.

This sticker is all those things. It has no date on it, no words, and none are needed. See this sticker, and all Richmond fans know exactly what it means, and all other football fans might only be envious, or quietly respectful.

Arm in arm: one common goal, one belief

It is a sticker that is about togetherness, unity, teamwork, family. In that line-up of numbers, in the shape and size and stance of those bodies, there is a documentation of a day, a season, a moment, that gave us unfettered joy. Still does.

We know our players – love them for what they have done, continue to do – and in their body language see so much of the personality they express through their on-field feats.

I’ve never had a sticker on our family car, until Chris produced this one.

It’s on the back window, and my heart still does a little skip when I see it.

Because I, we, us, were all part of it.

dugaldjellie@gmail.com

^If you’re not going to the game, or live in regional Victoria or interstate, I can arrange to post stickers with a $1 postage charge. Please contact other Richmond fans in your community, see if they would like any, and act as your region’s distributor. This is just another way these stickers might bring our Richmond crowd further together. Paul Frederickson, a Tiger in Queensland, for example, has ordered 20 of them, and will be distributing for fellow Richmond fans in his part of the world.

*Chris was going to give the rest of these stickers away, but I said no. I’m a big advocate of paying those in the creative industries (artists, writers, musicians, etc) what their wares deserve. All the money I collect from these sales will go to him, reimbursing his time, design and production costs.

Three dollars, for an eternal thrill.

Reflected glory: the back windscreen of our family car, where these stickers belong

Saturday afternoon Dusty dreaming

18/04/2018 By Dugald 5 Comments

Play on! Dustin Martin,
on the sweet September grass

Last Saturday at 3.18pm I was looking at Dusty. His left armed fend-off, tattooed limbs, ball tucked under his right arm. None could get close to him. Play on! gestured the umpire.

The game was about to go our way.

Dustin Martin was in the middle of the MCG running amok, mesmerising everyone – one man in the eye of a storm, time stopped, like a puppeteer pulling all the strings.

Last Saturday at 3.18pm I wasn’t at the game, but in a rear room of the Australian Galleries on Derby Street, Collingwood, looking at the art of Nick Howson, an oil on Belgian linen, titled Dusty premiers. It is beautiful, in its colours, its playfulness, in the long lope of Trent Cotchin in the foreground, in all the faces of the crowd, and is that Bachar on the bench?

Last Saturday at a gallery in Collingwood I called the artist and admonished him for not inviting me to the opening (he said he did, said there must have been a mix-up in the mail-out), and congratulated him on the show, and said his painting of last year’s Grand Final ought to be hanging at the MCG. I said I would contact the curator at the MCC on his behalf.

This is a painting of significant public importance. It is about place, social participation, culture, belonging.

Dusty premiers 2017-18, oil on Belgian linen, $12,500 (and priceless)

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We talked briefly about the theme of his new show, Suburbia, its muted colours, the patterned repetition, all those red hipped rooflines, quarter acre blocks, conformity. I said the motif reminded me a bit of Howard Arkley’s art, but without the day-glo vibrancy. This is more understated. Modest. Introverted.

Was it last year I was in his studio behind a shopfront on Swan Street in Richmond and saw these works progressing? Back then we talked about football, and place, and the visual cues of Richmond, and I remember him enthused about “all the red bricks, the red dirty bricks” of his neighbourhood. A redbrick Federation-era factory wall is an object of beauty. As are the suburban brick veneer dreams of Nick’s latest series.

I desire them.

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Last Saturday I was to ride my bicycle to Collingwood to the opening of a friend’s art exhibition on Cambridge Street, and then go and see Nick’s work, and then pop into the football. But a cloudburst, hailstones drumming on the roof, changed plans.

And I called-up a friend, Josh, an American, from Washington DC, a remarkable chess player, who was at a loose end. Said I’d pick him up in the car, by the Church Street Bridge. Let’s go see some art.

Nick Howson is a Collingwood fan who’s probably best known in Melbourne for the large mural he painted of a long-sleeved Richmond footballer, flying over all the petty squabbles and sawtooth factory rooves of old Struggletown, adorning a wall beside the main entrance to Richmond Station. It ought to be heritage-listed, preserved forevermore.

On Saturday afternoon we spoke about Collingwood’s fabulous win on the Friday night – they were inspired, did you see the Brodie Grundy goal, how far he ran? – and Nick asked if I’d seen the score in the Richmond game. I hadn’t. He said the Lions had yet to kick a goal.

I said it was time I better go.

Dusty’s door, Langridge St Collingwood: unbreakable.

Back to the car. Quick stop on Langridge Street to take a photo of Dusty’s No. 4 painted on the roller door of a mechanic’s garage. Right onto Hoddle Street. An awkward conversation with Josh (do you mind terribly if I dropped you off at Richmond Hill, etc). I had a game to be at.

Last Saturday afternoon I ran to the ground, got there huffing and puffing, stood under the concourse on a wing, took it all in, all the grass, the wide expanse of green, the players running here and there, and shafts of bright autumn light, then sheets of light rain, and saw Dylan Grimes running back with the flight of the ball to spoil a marking contest beside their goal square. The desperation. A quest. We hold no malice to the Brisbane Lions, old Fitzroy, but all of us at that ground on Saturday afternoon, seated sparsely in the open, huddled under the rooflines, wanted to keep them goalless.

This is what happens when yours is the best team.

You find other ways to set a challenge.

And on Saturday at the MCG, this afternoon like no other – I cannot remember another game like it – was punctuated with the exclamation mark of Dusty’s last goal.

A run, that chest of his puffed out, a sidestep, snapping on his left, the Punt Road end, the delirium of the crowd. Nothing thrills us so much as a player like him, running in space, with all his confidence and pomp.

MCG, Saturday afternoon, still life.

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This coming Saturday, Richmond are not playing. Nor on the Sunday.

It is the last weekend of Nick Howson’s exhibition, a last public viewing of his Dusty.
Get along, go! Go see the garage door on Langridge Street, also. If you know anyone with deep pockets, a love of art, and a love of Dusty, tell them they must see it. The price tag? $12,500.

I can only dream. But dreams can take you anywhere.

Go Tiges! Go Nick Howson, you beauty!

Nick Howson
Suburbia
Australian Galleries, 35 Derby Street Collingwood
Open daily 10am-6pm
Exhibition closes this Sunday.

Round 1 v Carlton, MCG – The Benny 2018

26/03/2018 By Dugald Leave a Comment

Eleven hand-picked Tigers carry the Premiership Flag to the MCG, with a lot of help. Photo by @aspeedingcar

Chris turns a few minutes before the game, asks if I can write a match report.
Borrow pen and paper, a season’s notetaking begins.

“You’re up Duges”. Chris, Michael and Marcus Rees. Michael seems to be tipping Tiges to win 4 in a row, like the Collingwood Machine. Audacious.

Q1.
Third goal to them. Is this what they call a ‘premiership hangover’.
“Have we hit a target with a foot pass yet,” asks one in the crowd.
Jarrod Garlett on debut kicks a fourth for them and our party, if not postponed, is delayed.
Wasn’t in the script, now five goals to none.
“When we gonna wake-up?”
Arms are crossed, lips pursed, among Richmond fans.
Jack gets us on the board. In in the push-and-shove, Jacob Townsend fights out of his weight division.
Jason Castagna’s first goal gets us out of our seats.
Dave Astbury (pencil him in for ‘All Australian’) backs into space – a defender’s burden – and our boys are taking no short steps. The game’s intensity is not shirked.
Picking fingernails.
Lovely night for it.
Autumn’s equinox.
Such a fast and expansive contest, this game of ours.
Townsend still has ‘the touch’. Whole careers are built on ‘the touch’.
A Dylan Grimes punch to the boundary line late in the first – all is as it should be.
What are the patches on the back of the Carlton shorts?
“Are you born ambidextrous,” asks a boy sitting with his father in seats behind

Cotch lines up for a shot that didn’t register. Photo by @aSpeedingCar

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The day after, I posted a tweet.
I’d be encouraged if I were a Blues supporter.* *the things you say when your team are white hot.^ ^not so Richmondy anymore.

Sir James (@JamieVtron62) replied:
I’ve found myself patronising Blues supporters too. So wrong in many ways.

JD (@JD_RFC_TIGER) added:
It was a different sensation being 5 goals down but still feeling we had this.

Sarah Brook (@Brook23Sarah) added:
Ran into an acquaintance on the way out wearing a Blues scarf – had to put on my magnanimous hat – an uncommon experience!

Jack Soward (@jacksoward) added:
I was uncomfortably comfortable. I laughed when we fell 5 goals behind just at the combination of free kicks / a bit of luck / Blues taking chances. I could tell we missed Houli, Prestia and co. but never felt like we would lose. 2018 is so strange!

The 2017 Flag is carried around before the faithful. Photo by @Jennee_wren.

…IN 2018 / THE TIGERS / HUNGER FOR MORE. Photo by @SatchSkippygirl.

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The votes

This season like no other begins as last year ended. With utter belief and confidence.

5 Dustin Martin – picked-up where he left off. Complacency? Nup.

4 Trent Cotchin – seven first-quarter possessions. Still hungry? Yep.

3 Jack Graham – thirteen tackles. Six AFL games for Richmond, how many has he won? All of them.

2 Alex Rance – because he is Alex Rance. Who is he? Alex Rance.

1 Jacob Townsend – votes could have gone to Jack, Kamdyn, Dan Butler, Josh Caddy, Castagna, almost anybody, but one of the night’s highlights (apart from seeing Reece Conca back in it, and Shai Bolton’s standing leap) was the hard-at-it intensity of this bloke. Four goals caught the eye, but it was also him crashing into the contest, knocking blokes out of the way, opening spaces for others to run into. The fairytale continues.
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Leaderboard

5: Martin
4: Cotchin

3: Graham
2: Rance

1: Townsend

Blair Hartley Appreciation Award: for players who have joined Richmond from another club
(Eligible 2018: Caddy, Grigg, Hampson, Houli, Nankervis, Miles, Prestia and Townsend.)
1: Townsend

Anthony Banik Best First Year Player: for anyone who was yet to debut before round 1
(Eligible 2018:Liam Baker, Noah Balta, Callum Coleman-Jones, Ryan Garthwaite, Jack Higgins, Ben Miller, Patrick Naish)

No votes yet.

Joel Bowden’s Golden Left Boot: for left footers
(Eligible 2018: Batchelor, Chol, Corey Ellis, Grigg, Nankervis and Houli).
No votes yet.

Greg Tivendale Rookie List Medal:
upgraded from the rookie list during the current season
Potentially eligible 2018: Baker, Chol, Eggmolesse-Smith, Moore, Stengle
No votes yet.

Maurice Rioli Grip of Death Trophy:
For the Tiges top tackler

13: Graham
7: Conca, Butler
5: Nankervis
4: Castagna, Edwards, C Ellis, Cotchin

The Flag is put away. Richmond 0.0.0 Carlton 0.0.0. We all start equal on the ladder. We’ve got to do it all again. Photo by @Lozzemarine.

The winning bit (& bumper stickers & The Tigers’ Almanac)

11/12/2017 By Dugald 10 Comments

The balloons came down, withered, the streamers and signs put away. The cans of Richmond Draught have been drunk (a fine drop, a sweet aftertaste long on the palette). Suppose we need to make room around the house, in the fridge, for Christmas. Suppose. Premiership hangover? The party for us fans, it’s hardly over.

In quiet moments, we catch ourselves remembering what happened.

We won! They did it, which means by proxy, we did it! We are premiers!

We don’t want to let go, at least not until mid-March next year. We are proud, so proud, of ‘our boys’, of what they have done, have achieved. They rightfully ought to be proud also, for they are the best football team in all the code for all this year. It was remarkable, in so many ways. Thirteenth to premiers. No centre-half-forward. An emphatic win. Such a miserly defence. Highlights across the park. Messing with the whole concept of a ‘ruckman’. Beautiful stories about us, about our players, wherever you look.

Jack Graham and his five games, and three finals wins, and two goals in a granny, and a premiership, and how young is he?

Jacob Townsend and his late-season inclusion (five wins from five games, 16 goals from 32 kicks) in a new role up forward, and the public telling of his speech impediment, and he goes and wins the JJ Liston Trophy, and all his fears are realised, and his speech is wonderful, and we’ll all remember his tackle on Matt Crouch in the biggest game of our lives, and he is one of us and we are all the richer for it.

A Brownlow.

A ‘Dusty’ speech.

His name, in ancient Germanic languages, means ‘brave’ or ‘valiant fighter’, and in a few weeks of football he came out of his shell, looking more comfortable with all he is.

We love him.

We love them all.

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It is true, I have been drunk on the winning. And maybe just a little hungover. There have been invitations to lunch (thankyou Ray and Tony Wilson), three courses, seated beside Michael Green and Peggy, clipped conversations about football, about what it all might mean, the Coodabeen Champions entertaining a full dining room at the top of Collins Street. A B&F. Photographs with the silverware. A lunch date with Valy Crowe at Caulfield, for a Tommy Hafey Club function. More beer and bubbles.

Never has my one suit had such a workout. And never has a man had to Google ‘windsor knot’ so often in two weeks.

Lunch with ‘Tommo’ and Skip at the London Tavern on Lennox Street on the Saturday after ‘the game’ (and Andy Fuller swung-by for a coffee) was more my style. I bought ‘Tommo’ lunch and his drinks (as recompense for his generosity on another matter). He bought me and Skip a takeaway six-pack each of the finest: Richmond Draught.

‘Tommo’ was flying back to Kenya on Saturday night. The bloke came from east Africa to be at the game, standing at the Punt Road end with his daughter, Emily. The bloke needs a round of applause.

Before he left, I took him to a laneway end by the railway, took his pic in front of Nick Howson’s latest addition to his prowling, straight-backed tiger: a cup.

Gab Turner, related to Jack Dyer, sent a photo of the stained-glass window at St Ignatius Church, on Richmond Hill. It is said to be a young ‘Captain Blood’.

“My kids and I went into St Ig’s during our ramblings around Richmond on GF night,” she writes.

“Lit a candle to say thanks to the guardian angels and had our usual coo on that wondrous piece of stained glass.”

All these months later and I’m yet to fully watch the replay. I’ve seen snippets, watched a quarter here and there of the other two finals, but yet to sit down and see the whole thing, alone, viewing with intent. Something for February’s to-do list.

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Put a Richmond sticker on the car rear windscreen this morning. First time I’ve ever done that. I like to fly the colours, yellow and black, but I’ve been reticent to do it so overtly outside of football. A little part of me finds those premiership car stickers too boastful. I blame Hawthorn.

Looking for a Richmond-themed Christmas gift? Two options.

First is from co-TTBB conspirator, Chris Rees, and his post-premiership celebratory graphic image. Have you seen it? Have you read his considerations behind it?

I like to call it ‘togetherness’. All the players linking arms, shoulder to shoulder, the luminous yellow, an intimacy. It captures a moment in time, and a bond, we will never forget. It also captures the bodies of these players we know so well. The relaxed stance of Dave Astbury. The broad shoulders of Nank. The poised stance of Nick Vlastuin. Jack, always at the end.

In a perfect world, our football club backs Chris Rees, commissions him to do a design, puts it on some merchandise, stocks it online and in the Superstore, we all buy it. Our club needs to keep reinventing itself. It needs to keep trying new things. It needs to stand apart from the pack.

In the meantime, look-up Chris Rees’s website. The image can be reproduced on T-shirts, phone covers, tote bags, wall prints, almost anything. It’s guaranteed to bring happiness. And a greater sense of togetherness.

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The Benny votes. (And apologies I’ve been so tardy).

[NOTE: the full list of final Benny votes and other prize winners is here.]

Drumroll, please…

Embed from Getty Images
No. 1, Alex Rance. From where I watched (the Cherry Tree Hotel in south Richmond for the first half, see explanation below) he was everywhere, and impenetrable, and a rock around which all Adelaide’s forward line needed to shape itself. At the other end, Jack imposed himself on the game in the very opening stages, leaping for the ball, fearless in big packs – bookended by Our Man Rance, imperious, as is his way, across the backline. Premierships are won with defence, etc. He was the keystone in a defensive set-up that physically and psychologically had Adelaide beaten by midway through the second term. Their jig was up. All their options were shut down. You get nothing from Vlastuin. Good luck beating Dave Astbury in the air. Good luck beating Dylan Grimes in any duel, at any venue, at any time, wearing whatever colours you like. But Rance was the man. A confidence player, as every player is, and his could hardly ride any higher. He buggered Adelaide, for this season and maybe next. Made them know who’s boss. 10 votes.

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Quarter time, Mrs TTBB, at the ground, Level 2, N29, a plum seat, sends a text:
“Arggghhh. Tell me what to think.”
Me, in the pub, alone, one pint down, bicycle tied to a tree outside, making friends with strangers, replied:
“Last two goals hurt. Need to keep them to 2 goals this quarter. We’re well in the game. Need it tight at half time”.

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Embed from Getty Images
No 2, Bachar Houli.
Great pleasure in giving him votes. Where are my notes from the day? “Going to bar for second beer, Houli kicks a goal, double fist-pump”. That’s me doing the double fist-pumping; have no idea what Bachar was doing (see ‘yet to watch replay’, refer to ‘saving it for later’). Whenever Bachar kicks a goal, I reckon good things await. When he kicks one in the first quarter, we might be in for a treat. We were. Bachar was everywhere, all game. Eleven marks, five tackles, setting up the play, swooping on anything loose across the half-back line. It’s such an attacking position, and Bachar as our runner and ball-carrier, and Nick Vlaustin as our quarter-back distributor, both give us so much drive. Nick was at his best when it mattered most: the second qualifying final, against Geelong. Bachar saved his best for last. As he walked from the ground, into the players’ race, I gave him a hug. I’ve been told it’s on the replay. Must watch it one day. 8 votes.

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Before the final siren sounded, I stood by the players’ race, took photos of the VFL team who assembled, in their suits and ties, and called-out to some of them, told them, “you are part of this”.

And it’s bigger than that. I reckon every Richmond player who has played any games alongside any of the twenty-two who represented the club on 30 September, is part of this. Dan Jackson in the stands is part of this. Matthew Richardson, crouching on the boundary, his face knotted in tears, who played his last game alongside Alex Rance and Jack Riewoldt, is part of this. Chris Newman, Nathan Foley, Joel Bowden, Shane Tuck, they’re all part of this.

A football team, a club, is a lineage, and this line goes all the way back to Round 4 of 2007, when an 18-year-old Shane Edwards made his debut. The twenty-one others in the team that day included Lids, the Gas man, the ‘Push-up’ King, Dean Polo, Captain Shulz, Greg Tivendale, Luke McGuane, Kayne Pettifer. They are all, in some small way, part of this.

Of those current players in the tunnel on that last Saturday in September, I reckon at least a dozen of them could have been out there playing, and we still would have won. Anthony Miles in the midfield, we still win. One or two of Sam Lloyd, Shai Bolton, Tyson Stengle playing in the forward line, we still win. Corey Ellis or Connor Menadue on a wing, we win. Jaydon Short or Oleg Markov running off the backline, we win. Reece or Batch given a role, we win. Run Steve Morris off the bench, we win again.

Depth, and a togetherness.

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Christmas gift option No. 2.

The good folk at the Footy Almanac have compiled a compendium of Richmond’s season, as seen through the eyes and hearts of its fans, published as The Tigers’ Almanac. The book will be launched this Wednesday night at the North Fitzroy Arms hotel. Make it if you can. I’ll be there. Among all the other Richmond fans. Books will be for sale.

If you cannot be there and would like to buy a copy, see the Footy Almanac’s website for details.

For Richmond fans on Twitter, the Almanac are also giving away three books for a storytelling competition they are running. The challenge. Write a story about something/anything to do with Richmond’s season in 280 characters (which must include the hashtag #almanac280). Best three entries get the books.

It’s a wonderful community, the Footy Almanac, bringing so many people together through words and stories and ideas. It is open to all who wish to contribute. It is about the game, as a code, as a belief system, as an embodiment of who we are. It is about football, it is about us.

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No 3, Dusty.

I’ve wrote something about him, about our admiration for him, that is published in the Almanac. I will tell you all about it at the pub on Wednesday night, if you can make it. Six votes.

So after leading most of the year Dusty has wrapped up his third successive Benny award; full details of placegetters and other awards here.

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Got a haircut a few weeks back on Swan Street and Shaun Grigg walks in to get his cut, too.

What are the chances?

I get my hair cut about twice a year. Our premiership player has his medal.

Bumped into Andy Fuller at Richmond’s public library on Church Street and he tells me about Jay Croucher’s piece published in The Roar. I read, retweet, etc. Got home and read John Carr’s heartfelt piece on his Holy Boot Football Emporium website. If you haven’t seen it, look it up.

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Friday night before the GF I posted this on Facebook:

When I shower I do my best thinking. I don’t shower often enough, but I did shower tonight. I’m giving my ticket for tomorrow to my partner. For many reasons. My decision. Mostly, because I remember several seasons ago when I started unpaid blog-writing about Richmond, when I went out of my way to interview other fans, go to games with them, tell their stories, I remember how heavily I leaned on her. Me at the football. She, with young child and baby, in this foreign city.  She has come to cherish the game, and Richmond, as so many outsiders do. She has continued to support my writing life, which offers a richness that is hardly financial. I am proud of what I have contributed to our football club. I like to think I have advocated for inclusion, for sharing its stories, for giving ordinary supporters a voice.  I have always supported and encouraged our players to be the best they can be, in this part of their lives. I think football can be an agent for change. And should be an agent for change. I have checked our club when I think it’s warranted (gambling sponsorship, etc).  I have barracked. I barrack with all my voice at the footy. I try and rally the players, inspire them. I held up a sign last week at the footy, to give them a smile, a little release from all that mental exhaustion.  None should question my loyalty, or intentions.  One ticket does not go into two. I’m so proud of Richmond’s gender equality.  I’ve been to Grand Finals before – granted, not a Richmond one in my adult life, etc.  I have been so blessed to meet so many remarkable people through the football, for them to share so much with me, and that is my reward. I am happy, so happy, for so many Richmond supporters tonight. These past two finals have given me – us – such pleasure. I wrote a story about this week, published on the RFC website today, and my happiness is if people read it and enjoy it. If the players read it, the parents of the players read it, and get something from it, an understanding of what it means for us.  The game is a deeply personal experience.  If anyone does have a spare standing room tix, please do let me know. Otherwise you’ll find me at the Cherry Tree Hotel, on the edge of the crowd, the flats of Richmond, the lowland, beneath the red brickwork, the peeling sign of the old Rosella factory, with a beer, wearing our colours, my homemade Tiger top, barracking.  Eat em alive, Tigers!

The short story goes like this. I tied-up my bicycle outside the Cherry Tree about ten minutes before the bounce (our 7-year-old boy had had his tonsils taken out on the Thursday before the game, had been vomiting all morning, etc.). Step inside, check my phone. Text messages, about an old friend Simon Troon, trying to get in contact with me. He has a spare ticket!

I had been in contact with Simon earlier in the week. He said he knows someone who was selling a ticket for about $2000. I haven’t seen Simon for many years. He is eight years younger than I. When he was about 10, I coached a hockey team he and my brother played in. I told him I am no corporate high flyer.

I assumed the messages were about this ticket.

At quarter time I checked my phone again, and mutual friends were still texting, saying I needed to contact Simon. I called him. He did indeed have a spare ticket. A friend of his had to leave the game, before it began. Something about a new father, the baby at home, vomiting, him needing to leave.

His misfortune, my blessed luck. The ticket was mine if I needed it. The only condition, I needed to be wearing a collar. I was wearing a collar. I rode my bicycle to the ground at half time. The luckiest man in Melbourne. Thank you, Simon. He barracks for Carlton, but all is forgiven.

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No 4, Jack Graham.
Too young to play in such a high-pressure game? Ha! These young blokes don’t have the burden of history weighing on their shoulders. He has no memory of the 2013 Elimination Final. He bears no scar tissue of losses. Pick No. 53 in last year’s draft. He’s played more finals than he has regular season games. And he’s won the lot, and now a Grand Final. In which he kicked three goals. The future doesn’t look bright. It looks composed, poised, dependable. Four votes.

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No 5, Nathan Broad.
I had decided his game was worthy of votes before he took a photograph of his premiership medal between a pair of young breasts and diminished so many of us. Was so angry about that, now just disappointed, and I’m in the camp that says he should have been scrubbed-out for six weeks. Make a statement. This footy club of ours is about the respect of women. It does not treat them as trophies. It does not objectify their bodies.

But a young man must also be given a second chance, and an opportunity to learn, and an inappropriate photograph distributed on social media might just be the beginning of something better. Contrition, for one. Atonement comes next.

And nor should his misdemeanour detract from the game he played on the last Saturday of September. These votes, and this vote, could have been awarded to ANY in the team, so evenly was the load spread. This is togetherness, of all working for each other and it is a beauty to behold. But I gave this vote to N. Broad because he was probably one of the last players picked, and in his 12 AFL games I consider this his best. Always good to deliver a PB in the biggest games.

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Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.

I hope to keep writing Richmond fan stories next year, but that is for others to decide. Thanks to all who have read them, commented on them, shared them, participated in them.

I threw a little Richmond party at our house a month after the GF win, and thanks to all who came along. Was fun. Hope we get to do it again next year.

This season was the end of something, but it is also a beginning. New opportunities, new connections, new ways of doing things, new experiences and emotions. It’s our moment to set the agenda. Others will chase us. Here is a chance to show them all how we shine, how we take nothing for granted, and how we include other people, share our success, open our arms, as we go along.

Hope next year brings us continued football happiness.

Go Tiges!

Email: dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

Facebook: Dugald Jellie

Benny Round 11 v North Melbourne at Docklands

08/06/2017 By Dugald 14 Comments

The night before the calamity last year: a Hobart local with Mr 6yo, who does not feel the cold.

At best, it was three degrees. Despite the novelty and the cold winter air, all about the night was forgettable. And yet Facebook tries to remind me, prompting memories with photographs from a year ago. Un-social media.
All who were in Hobart this time last year have cold memories.

Match reports of last Saturday night’s game are glib with the matter – “North had beaten the Tigers seven times in their previous eight meetings,” wrote Rohan Connolly in the Sunday Age – but sports reporters live behind glass, on upholstered seats. They sit not on damp grass on cold earth, sheathed in a blanket, with ski mitts. They are not fans like us. Our memories rarely forget.

This game last year was a low-point in the lowly history Richmond has against North Melbourne since, well, since when Glenn Archer would beat-up on Richo. All knees and elbows, the little knot of aggression hopped-into our long-limbed thoroughbred like a hungry man might hop-into a bowl of hot soup on a cold night. He monstered Richo. North monstered us.

Sure, we beat them last round of 2015, when their team of interns bruised us, mentally, physically, emotionally. A cruel joke. Cheryl Critchley isn’t yet over it.

North Melbourne, a club with less, down by the old abattoirs, that for two generations has given its fans more. A club that fields teams that manage usually to humiliate us. We’re up by seven goals at half-time? No probs, we’ll let them run over us, and ensure a player once one of ours – Robbie Nahas – kicks the goals to put them in front. Salt. Rub. Wound. Richmond.

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Lucky table Nº 8: fish’n’chips before the game last year with the two boys and my eldest sister, a North fan, as part of her 50th birthday present. She enjoyed the night, I thought it was lousy.

Saturday night, and all was alright, although we never were quite sure, because this is Richmond and recent history says the margin of error is quite large (although for three games this season it was improbably small). We won! Yay! More relief than overblown excitement.

Our team are gelling better than theirs. And for the first time in 18 seasons, we didn’t have to play against ‘Boomer’ Harvey. Phew.
As fans in the stands, in the outer, we see the game differently, from our partial perspective, bringing to a game all our expectations and hopes and life history and who we are. We are not good judges. Nobody is an expert. We all know as much about the game as the next person, and we all want to wrap Dusty up in a bundle of love, make him happy, fulfilled, enriched, our little project, our warrior leader, indefatigable, we might follow him into a pit of fire, howling against the world, against all its social injustices, against inequalities, phonies, fakes, yes-men, hangers-on, fat cats, those who hardly know the value of a dollar and the truth of a hard day’s work.

See, that’s just me, at the football. Of course it’s more than a game.

It’s what we look forward to all week, our emotional release, seeing the beauty and skill of young and fit men in the prime of their lives doing extraordinary feats of bravery and athleticism. Or is that just Dave Astbury and Alex Rance in the back half?

And a cheerio to them, on their camping trip. Hope they’ve caught some fish, packed warm sleeping bags, enjoyed the fire-side. Anyone know where they are? My guess is the Edwards River, an anabranch of the Murray. Just wanted to use that word. Anabranch. So specific.

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The North game last year: staying to the bitter end.

Oh, yes, votes. And what was I saying? We all see a game differently, from our vantage. So, Dustin Martin has 38 possessions and kicks two goals and all the pundits give him the three votes, but many of us Richmond people aren’t so sure. We know he can play better games, more damaging games. A team is all apples and oranges, maybe the occasional banana, hoping to make the perfect fruit salad.

Bad analogy. There’s no place in football for Kiwi fruit.

Fans like me judge Dusty and Cotch and Jack and Alex to higher standards because through inherited gifts and dumb luck and hard work, and dedication, they are simply better players. They ought to appreciate this, if only for the betterment of the team. All are not equal on a football field. It is self-evident some are faster or taller or can kick a ball longer or straighter, or can stand-up in a tackle more often than others. But each must pull the other along, together. It is the essence of the word ‘team’; as in a teamster, a team of draft animals, each of them a beast of burden.

Dusty is our bull, but we need more than that. Where would our club be this season, where would this team be, without Toby Nankervis? He’s our lucky break. He was no long-term plan. We didn’t pick him in the draft, identify him as talent, school him. Maybe midway through last year he came onto the club’s radar, or maybe it was later than that. There is much luck in football. Or is it good judgement? Ivan Maric got us out a pickle. So, too, has Nank. But he needs some support.

Reckon we also need a bona fide centre-half-forward. Todd Elton, we are all with you on this (or at least I am). Get that shoulder right, fans like me have not given up. Keep jumping for the ball, flying for it, at least splitting open packs, getting the ball to spill. It’ll come. The ball will stick. So much of the game is also confidence. Look what Dan Butler and Jason Castagna and Dan Rioli are doing, and what Shai Bolton is threatening to become. When your tails are up, anything can happen.

Beers to tears: Justin Flynn and his merry crew “on the ferry over to Bellerive, before the carnage, with a wind chill of minus 4”.

The votes.

Bachaaaaaar gets my five. Controversial, no. Ramadan, yes. Thirty-one possessions, but who cares about numbers? When he got the ball, he gave us run and carry across the mid-section of the field, he gave us composure, he gave us a get-out and an attacking weapon, he gave us his beautiful, raking left-foot kick. Eighty-nine per cent game time. Only four other players are higher (Rance 100, Riewoldt 93, Astbury 91, Grigg 90), and my guess is none of them covered the territory Houli did. He has been a blessing for our club. I thought his game was marvellous. I would like him to taste my babaganoush.

Brandon Ellis gets my four. No longer “much maligned”, not this season. He’s straightened-up his game this year, is kicking crunch goals at critical moments, is getting in all the right spots, staying on his feet. He’s become more than dependable. He’s become one of our brightest assets. A gauge for all football fans: the heart rate when certain players have the ball. Dusty gets it and my heart skips a beat (knowing he can hit a target 60 metres upfield with a laser bullet). Jack leads and takes a mark and I can at last breathe, knowing the ball is in good hands. Alex takes the ball out of defence, running with all his pomp and confidence, and my confidence rises, too. Brandon Ellis got the ball on Saturday night and good things happened. The ball changed direction, went our way, went to good places, positions of attack, of our advantage. Well done! Been a great year so far, and he deserves it.

Three votes. Dusty. You cannot keep a good man down. He is a good man. I like the way he spoke after the game. A weight seemed lifted. He seemed easeful. He will stay. He is one of us.

Two votes. Cotch. His partner in crime. Been bloody brilliant this year. All leadership (except giving away that free off-the-ball in the centre of the ground that cost us a goal! Bad Cotch!). Good Cotch is a tireless combatant, slick hands, kicking goals again, run-and-carry, dropping his knees in tackles, is everywhere. Would any player be sorer after a game? He is remarkable. He is ours. We love him, we admire him.

One vote to Dion Prestia. Early in the game he fumbled the ball and my thoughts – uh-ho, here we go again – but slowly and methodically he turned it all around and kept getting involved in the contest, again and again (a game-high 11 possessions in the last, along with Cotch and Houli), kept running, contributing. Thought he was excellent. A rites-of-passage game.

Honourable mentions, in no particular order. Kane Lambert. He’s strung together a series of good games of workmanlike footy, that have started catching the eye. He’s put himself back in the picture, through effort and application. Toby Nankervis, our totem. We owe it mostly to him. Outpointed Goldstein (3 marks to 0), carried the load on his shoulders, long may he stay in one piece. Good stuff, big fella. Enjoy the long and hot baths. Dave Astbury and Alex Rance. They’ve become a two-hander, with the odd cameo from Dylan, a yin and yang, sidekicks to each other, both playing with care and confidence. Each make the other a better player. If one doesn’t get you, the other will.
We are proud of our Tigers, and happy for them they’ve gotten to the bye with their character intact, and now enhanced. A string of heartbreak losses, fatal mistakes, and all could have been derailed. But they’ve turned it around, put it behind them.
That’s what good sides do. And good sides keep finding new ways to win. Long may that be the case for this second long act in the season.

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A balmy six degrees and as seen at game last year (& this man last seen dispensed from casualty with frostbite). Pic supplied by Luke Wentworth.

A balmy six degrees and as seen at game last year (& this man last seen dispensed from casualty ward with frostbite).
Pic supplied by Luke Wentworth.

The Benny Leaderboard:

26: Cotchin
25: Grigg
24: Martin

17: Rance

12: Houli
10: Riewoldt
9: B. Ellis
7: Conca
6: Grimes, Nankervis
5: Castagna, Astbury
4: Rioli

3: Lambert
2: Butler, Vlastuin, Prestia

Blair Hartley Appreciation Award: for players who have joined Richmond from another club
(Eligible 2017: Caddy, Grigg, Hampson, Houli, Hunt, Nankervis, Maric, Miles, Prestia and Townsend.)
25: Grigg
6: Nankervis
2: Prestia

Anthony Banik Best First Year Player: for anyone who was yet to debut before round 1
(Eligible 2017: Shai Bolton, Dan Butler, Ryan Garthwaite, Jack Graham, Ivan Soldo, Tyson Stengle)

2: Butler

Joel Bowden’s Golden Left Boot: for left footers
(Eligible 2017: Batchelor, Chol, Corey Ellis, Grigg, Nankervis and Houli).
25: Grigg
12: Houli
6: Nankervis

Greg Tivendale Rookie List Medal:
upgraded from the rookie list during the current season
Potentially eligible 2017: Castagna, Chol, Moore, Stengle and Soldo.
5: Castagna

Maurice Rioli Grip of Death Trophy:
For the Tiges top tackler

74: Cotchin
47: Martin
45: Lambert
39: Nankervis, Houli
38: Grigg

On meeting St Francis & other things

20/04/2017 By Dugald 2 Comments

Fighting Tiger: Barry Giles (seated, far left with hat on), having a break at the rear of an armoured personnel carrier in Phouc Tuy province, the day after a battle and waiting to return to collect a compatriot’s body, 1969.

Last Monday morning I rode my bicycle to the front door of Francis Bourke’s house. Had a shave beforehand, out of respect. Looked up his playing stats on AFL Tables. I wore shorts, Richmond socks. Hoped he’d appreciate the touch. He did.

“Like the socks,” he said, on my way out, one cup of tea and almost two hours later.

We had much to talk about. Mostly it was about his father, and his involvement in WW2.

All last week I went looking for a Richmond supporter who had fought in a theatre of war. I wanted to talk to them about military combat, and a fear so few of us would know. I wanted to give them an opportunity to share their story. Inquiries to the RSL in Richmond and the city drew blanks. Several Richmond fans made contact who had been in the army, but none overseas in war zones.

I arranged to interview a former Richmond player whose father fought in Gallipoli, but at the eleventh hour he got cold feet. He said his father didn’t talk much about the war. Kept it all bottled up. He decided he’d feel uncomfortable discussing it.

Last minute, I put a call into St Francis, ask if I can come meet him. He says he’s be happy to help out.

1970_scanlens_no-_16_francis_bourke_richmond_tigers_card_sportmem We talk about his father, about the family farm in Nathalia, about a grandfather he never met (“he was gassed on the Western Front, came home and died a shell of a man”), and about looking back and remembering all who have served in war. Then we talk about his newsagency days at Maling Road in Canterbury. Before he bought the business, as a schoolboy I did a morning paper round there.

We talk about Deano, who lived down the bottom of the hill in a weatherboard railwayman’s cottage. Everyone in the area knew Deano.

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I stay up late Wednesday night piecing together the Bourke family story. It feels a privilege. Being invited into the private lives of others, entrusted to write their story, give it due respect, the right touch. In putting it together, I learn about Nathalia, and Oxford aircraft, and WW2 training bases, and Bomber Command, then skirt through the history of the Western Front.

My head spins. So much to tell, trying to squeeze it all within a readable length. I email him a draft. He says he is very appreciative I’ve what I’ve done. It makes me feel good. What I can do means something to others.

Francis Bourke was a hero of mine, but truth is, I was looking for someone else.

I wanted a Vietnam Vet, or someone who had fired a shot in Afghanistan. Not because I want to glamorise war, but because I wanted to make sense of first-hand experience. I wanted something raw, something where you might still feel the hurt.

Writing stories about fans has given me as much pleasure as I hope it has given those who I interview, and their families, and all who might read them. I have made wonderful connections and friendships. In my mind, it’s become like a family, all brought together with the common twine of football, and Richmond.

The game, it can do so much good.

How do I find those I interview? It’s an organic process, really. Some are recommendations from others. Some put their own hand up. Some I hear about, read about. Word filters through. There is no set formula.

Sometimes the best stories come from the most unlikely sources. I met a man at Launceston Airport on the Monday morning after the disastrous Friday night game against North in Hobart last year, both of us had been stranded on the ferry overnight, marooned by the floods. Barry Giles is his name. I introduced myself, wrote down his phone number, looked him up, told his story.

Inner sanctum: Barry enjoying the trappings of coterie membership at half-time at the MCG, in the recent game against the Gold Coast Suns.

I’ve been thinking about Barry Giles all week.

What I wrote about him, I’ve republished it below.

And if anyone know of any Vietnam Vets who barrack for Richmond and might want to share their story, please, do send them my way.

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Barry Giles is in the departure lounge at Launceston Airport, the Tuesday after Richmond’s Friday night loss in Hobart, waiting for a flight home. He caught the ferry to Tasmania and like many others his return journey from Devonport was booked for the Monday night.

Then the heavens opened, the Mersey flooded, moorings broke, boats sunk in the harbour, the ferry was cancelled, and a band of Richmond supporters were marooned with their cars on an island.

Adversity, it brings a crowd together. Barry was at the airport, wearing yellow and black, two colours that for people like us open a conversation, and he tells a story of football and being in Vietnam during the war, and I’m all ears, knowing not where it might end.

Every Richmond fan has a story to tell. After a season’s half-time break, what follows is but half the story of a man named Barry Arthur Giles.

Born in Richmond at Bethesda Hospital on 29 September 1949 – the year Jack Dyer played his last VFL game – he was the third child to Ernest and Beryl Giles, who met when working at the Bryant and May match factory on Church Street. “Dad was born into Richmond, too,” says Barry. “It went right through the family. We’re all mad Richmond supporters.”

They lived in Coppin Street and Barry’s older sister regularly visited Jack Dyer’s milk bar for sweets. She recalls games at Punt Road Oval played after the factory whistles stopped on a Saturday afternoon, when it was time for the football.

The family later moved to Springvale, where Barry left school at 14 to work in a firm making boat propellers, embarking on life’s great adventure. “I left home at 17 and went up to Mildura picking grapes,” he says. “I missed the 1967 Grand Final, was up there working for a winery.”

Two years later, two days before his birthday, Richmond won its second premiership in the Hafey era but now he was thankful to be alive.

Barry Giles enlisted in the army when he was nineteen. A war was on and he lost a job in a printing factory in Moorabbin and went to try his luck elsewhere. In June 1969 he was deployed to Vietnam, as part of the 1^st Australia Task Force stationed in Phuoc Tuy Province, south of Saigon. An infantryman, his platoon was later led by another Tiger, the then-lieutenant Peter Cosgrove.

He was only nineteen: Private Barry Giles in 1969, before departing for Vietnam.

On night patrol in a rubber plantation on the eve of the 1969 VFL Grand Final, Barry’s unit was ambushed. “It was the first time I’d been in a fire-fight or had contact with the enemy,” he explains. “We had no idea what was going on, but we stayed and survived.”

Australian armoured corps picked them up in the morning and took them to a makeshift base where Barry found what had been on his mind all night: a radio, and a broadcast of a game. “Richmond were playing back home and all I wanted to do was listen to the grand final.”

After his tour of duty, Barry left the army in 1971 on a medical discharge. Like so many of his fellow soldiers, the war had shaken him about. “I drifted away from the Richmond footy club, from the game, from what was a family.”

After a series of jobs he ended-up at Grassy, at a road’s end on King Island, a place half-way between here and there. He bought a little business selling newspapers; taking time out to find out which way the wind blows.

One morning he drove up to the island’s airport to pick up a bundle of papers and his son, David Giles, was front page news in the Hobart Mercury. A star footballer with Clarence, he was selected by Fitzroy with the second pick of the 1991 mid-year draft.

“He played with Jack Riewoldt’s old man, they called him ‘Cabbage’, and he also played against a young Matty Richardson,” says Barry. “He was a goal-kicker and moved to Melbourne but then my brother rang me one day and said he’s walked out on the club.”

“It’s something I think he’s always regretted.”

For two seasons now Barry – who lives in Inglewood, a town on the Calder Highway north-west of Bendigo – has been back at the football. The return was prompted by his brother’s death, aged 71, from asbestosis. “He was a boilermaker and a mad Richmond supporter like the rest of us,” says Barry. “Near the end of his days we started talking about getting back to football again, the two of us, because Richmond were starting to come good again.”

In his brother’s absence, Barry has made good on a promise. He returned to the fold as a member, joining the club’s inner sanctum coterie group and sponsoring a player.

“I love this club, I loved it when I was younger and I’ve been gone for a while, and it was time to come back, but in a different way,” he says. “I saw that they drafted Daniel Rioli and I remember watching his great uncle play and I saw the footage of Daniel and I reckon he’s got something so I put my hand up to sponsor him.”

And three weeks ago Barry returned to Tasmania for the first time in nine years, to visit his son and daughter and all the grandchildren, and catch up with old friends from King Island, living now at Ulverstone on the north-west coast. And he went to the football.

All Richmond people at the game could never forget what a heartless night it was. But the result has not deterred Barry and his returned love of the club. “I’ve seen the Tigers in their heyday and you can’t forget that,” he says. “I’ve seen some magic games, I followed them all through the 60s, 70s and 80s and there’s no reason they can’t return to the glory times.”

POSTSCRIPT: After the Gold Coast win last Sunday week, Barry booked into a hotel on Spencer Street, caught a bus to the airport in the morning, flew back to Launceston, picked-up his car and drove it to Devonport, where he brought it across Bass Strait on the Monday night ferry, then returned home to Inglewood. And he’ll be back in Melbourne on Saturday to see Richmond play the Lions at the MCG.

Giles and Rioli: An old soldier with a young Tiger. For all TTBB readers who were hoping this week I was going to write about Daniel Rioli’s hair, apologies. The story is on hold. My missus says just let the young man play football. But the day he kicks four goals (or if we beat Adelaide in Adelaide) the story is coming out. Working title: The heir apparent. All other suggestions of who should be in Richmond’s greatest-ever hair team gratefully received at contact details below.

Tiger tiger burning bright
Email: dugaldjellie@gmail.com
Twitter: @dugaldjellie
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Dugald 20/04/2017Filed Under: dugald, front, Uncategorized

When it rains

12/04/2017 By Dugald 11 Comments

Before the banner is lifted, jungle drums beat: at the gates of Heaven, waiting for Dusty

Walking from the ground, our seven-year-old boy all chatter, tripping over shoelaces, jumping about, turns to me and says: “Well, that was fun”.

I write it down, his excitement, all that might be going on in that beautiful mind of his.

“Dusty high-fived me!”

“I got high-fives from nine players!”

“Did Trout come to this game?”

“We never went to sit with Trout.”

“I thought West Coast would win this because they were so much better than us last year.”

His mum is overseas on a work trip, so we dropped Mr 3yo off at Grandpa and aunty Sar’s house for the afternoon, caught a tram down Swan Street, bought a footy Record outside the ground, queued for tickets in the sharp sun, he in a

Mr 7yo at the tram stop in his woolknit beanie.

Tram stop, in woolknit beanie.

sleeveless footy jumper so I make sure his arms, neck, face are slathered in sunscreen, and we sat near the players’ race, and I hold him in my arms as our players ran onto the ground, both of us waiting on Dusty, and in the second quarter we bumped into a friend of mine, Yeatesy (who I shared a road trip to Adelaide with to see us whumped in that Elimination Final), and I text Big Dave and he’s sitting nearby with his boy, Charlie, and Mr 7yo and he are school friends and at half-time they go outside the ground for a kick, and Charlie gives him seven footy cards, and the second half starts and I buy hot chips (as was negotiated earlier in the day) and the sky darkens, bruised clouds gather, and all in the stadium know a change is coming and it excites us, makes the game somehow even more real, the hard rain coming, and it’s a Saturday afternoon at the G and a great crucible of football awaits, and we are here, among our crowd, lending voice, bearing witness.

Walking through Yarra Park under leaden skies after the game, he asks: “Dad, where are we on the ladder?”

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At the end, a denouement.

Brandon Ellis slides on his knees into Chris Masten, clattering into him bravely, courageously, recklessly, knocking the ball loose in our open forward line, and Dan Rioli swoops, his long and dark locks wondrously lank in the wet, and he touches the ball on the sodden grass, and we are on our feet, delirious with joy, a second-year player with the ball in his hand distilling confidence, and all last year’s misery is at once forgotten, and we are in love again, believing it might be true.

Ellis, maligned last year, coupled with all that went wrong, is back to his best these past three games. But his beeline to Masten, hurtling into him, crashing him to jolt the ball free, was better than his best. It was inspiring, inspirational. It is what us Richmond people love. Honest football. Hard-at-it football. Selfless Richmond football.

Improvements are all incremental, but all the increments are going the right way.

The joy of winning: two friends, two pillars of a team defence, walk from the field arm-in-arm.

The joy of winning: two friends, twin pillars of a team defence, walk from the field arm-in-arm.

Reece Conca is back on the field, back straightening us up. Cotch looks to be enjoying his footy again, looks freer, looks more like the complete player he was, looks like he might come second in a Brownlow again (this time, fingers crossed, to his beloved former lodger). Dan Rioli has been a standout, and looks like he become anything. Dusty is unstoppable. Dave Astbury is back to his best, standing tall, good hands and an even better defensive punch. Jason Castagna and Dan Butler have thrilled us (in the dry, now the wet). Toby Nankervis is the rock upon which it’s all been built. Wrap the big lump of a lad up in cotton wool each week, please. We need him more than we know.

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Reading a match report in the Sunday Age, a sentence in the third paragraph irks: As the weather morphed from a sunny, balmy afternoon of 28 degrees into something more akin to an Arctic front after half-time, so the momentum changed in the Tigers’ favour.

They sit in glass boxes. So much about the game on Saturday afternoon was about the weather (Ben Lennon ran out, sensibly, with zinc cream plastered over nose and cheeks), but there was nothing Arctic about it. It was a storm front. There was thunder and lightning, both notable, and drenching rain (which we could smell, then feel and see), but it was not cold. Not nearly Arctic, or Antarctic, or whatever meteorological term the reporter was after.

The change in weather was a significant event of this football game, it made the win so much more memorable – blessed by the rain – so best get it right.

It changed the football, as it changed the crowd. Early in the third term, strangers joined in conversation. Rain’s coming. Seen the rain radar map? Looked a classic, brushing in from the west, a long and narrow band of dramatic yellows and reds. Heavy falls, coming our way.

Plastic fantastic: the last quarter begins and a hardy Tiger finds plenty of spare seats in the open.

As we anticipated it, so, too, would the players. They know the game is to change. Plastic bags swirl around the arena, and an urgency descends. A goal now might be worth two, three, four in twenty minutes’ time. It’s going to get physical, bruising, tiring, plodding. Every inch will count. Body behind the ball. Spoils go to whoever wants it more. There are no social niceties playing in the wet. The game gets mongrel, and you want the biggest mongrels on your side.

(Step up in the last quarter, Alex Rance at one end, Jack at the other).

In the stands, the sudden change has a galvanising effect. It’s glorious. Before the rain the stadium’s half-empty, a good

crowd of 42,000, dispersed evenly. Heavens open and it’s like shuffling seats before dessert at a dinner party. It condenses us under the awnings. For the first half, we enjoy an empty seat on either side. After the rain, we all squish-in together, moving up to give room for others, revelling in the company, our crowd, our chants, our guttural celebration of what it is to be Richmond on an afternoon like this.

I remember I left the washing on the line.

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Father and son selfie: let the last quarter begin (and please make it wonderful, for all of us)

Father and son selfie: let the last quarter begin (please make it wonderful, for us all)

For most of the last quarter my boy is on my lap. I hug him around the waist, he bounces about, enthralled by the crowd’s cacophony, by being among so many, by all the cheering and chanting. For him, as with us, every game is different and some lodge squarely in the mind.

“Why on earth are we clapping,” he asks.

Nick Vlastuin’s courage, maybe. Or Dylan Grimes’s fearless attack on the ball. Or Alex Rance throwing himself into contests. Our players halving a contest, doing more of the little things right, playing for each other, which means they’re playing also for us.

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It is wet and warm, and we won.

Up the Tiges! texts a friend who goes for the Swans.

Good game! texts another friend sitting on the other side of the stadium, in his West Coast colours.

We catch a different tram home, from a stop on Wellington Parade. My boy commandeers my phone. In his footy colours, he leans his head against my shoulder.

“In the eleventh round we play North,” he says.

Flying the flag: Actually, it’s a scarf (we forgot the flag).

“In round twelve we have the bye.”

He’s excited by what’s ahead, as are we. A full tram and the chatter is open-ended. We’ve all been part of something that has given us happiness, belonging. We are proud of our team, our players. Our afternoon was in uncomfortably hot and bright sunshine, it was under heavy-lidded cloud, and it was the best.

Outside the tram window, inching along Bridge Road to the crest of Richmond Hill, I observe all the high Victorian-era flamboyance of the second-storeys of many of the shopfronts, most with peeling paint, with all the layers of history. I think all the football crowds who have walked these pathways after games, of the bells that once tolled from a nearby church on the hill when Richmond last won a premiership. Grown men walk now down the hill, in their colours, with numbers on their backs.

Windscreen wipers swish. Tram tracks glisten. Car headlights catch raindrops.

A question overheard, from the back of the tram.

“How do you spell Vlastuin?’

All of us love the football, when games like that are won.

Tiger tiger burning bright
Email: dugaldjellie@gmail.com
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After the game: Mr 7yo makes a start on an artwork using strong and bold block colours, at Grandpa’s house.

The sweet journey home

04/04/2017 By Dugald 5 Comments

Waiting on a train at Richmond Station at 10.11pm last Thursday night, I posted a Tweet:
And our crowd walk lightly from the game, with all the conversation, the song, the optimism. We’re believing again, and it feels good.

I’ve heard it said the best time of the week for a professional football is the hour or so after a win, drinking in the heady cocktail of joy and relief, before all the aches and pains creep up, bruises well, joints stiffen, fatigue hits, and the mind wanders to recovery and next week. A fleeting moment of complete insouciance; a job well done, a basking in the glory.

It’s much the same for us fans.

The walk from the floodlit stadium is so much better after a win. Footfalls are lighter. The stars above twinkle brighter. All the talk is of the future. Even the Yarra Park grass seems lusher, and somehow greener in the dark.

None mind too much the bottleneck crowd and shuffling wait at Richmond Station after win. It’s an opportunity to linger, on an experience, in a place, the stadium glowing still through the trees.

On the train, going home, we check our phones. Look at the stats. Who did what. Log onto Facebook, Twitter, the fan forum feeds, see what others are saying, how they saw the game, was there something we missed, needing to consume every little detail. Conversations are overheard. Three elderly women, standing by the carriage door, all Magpies, chat away merrily, philosophical about their loss, and among themselves they talk audibly about our Dusty, and they cannot help themselves. They’re drawn to him, as we are. They find him as beguiling as we do. One of them says she hopes he wins the Brownlow.

Richmond hearts in the carriage gladden.

The train lurches, jolts, trundles over the river, doors open-close at each stop, the crowd thinning the further we go from the game.

Getting off, wearing our colours, there’s a pang of pride. Leaving the group, the bright lights of the carriage, the station platform becomes a stage, a public place for the passing crowd, for the short victory walk into the night. It’s always better after a win. Check for familiar faces. Often, I see dear old Brenda, say hello, have a quick chat. Or there’s George Megalogenis, a voice of reason, a calming influence, rational in his support for this wayward club of ours.

I skip home alone, busting for a wee, hoping my partner might still be up, knowing she’s been watching it on TV, wanting to share the night – the football – with her.

She’s up alright, and buzzing. She loves the start of the footy season when the grounds are dry and the earth warm, and games fast and fluent. And she loves Dusty. (She flew to New Orleans for a history conference this week, but not before showing me a photograph of Dusty in full flight, arms and legs outstretched, about to kick the ball, telling our seven-year-old boy how much he looked like a dancer).

I watch the last quarter again. She sits at the kitchen table doing emails, looking over my shoulder. She wants to hear what Dimma says in the ‘presser’. Probably even more than me.

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Friday morning, I ride my bicycle to Richmond to meet an artist and talk about the visual landscape of the suburb. Its built texture. Its colours and shapes, and the Dimmey’s clocktower, and the church spire on the hill.

Later, I ride down Swan Street to a mural he once painted, a public artwork I’ve always admired, to study his streetscape more carefully.

Richmond win a game of football on Thursday night and on Friday morning I’m looking wistfully at the oversized yellow and black hoops on a sock, and boot studs, and a leg floating above the rooftops, painted on a wall near Richmond Station, and it is wonderful.

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Richmond is playing better football this year, and it’s pleasing to behold. No more crabbing sideways, going backwards. The rot of last year all began with this fixture. It wasn’t the coughing-up of the lead, but that didn’t help. It was the method. The quizzical sight our captain leaving his man and running twenty metres backward to demand a dinky little handball receive off one of our kickers. Or the vision of our star full-back, late in the last, switching play, kicking the ball deep into a back pocket, compounding the pressure, passing the buck, leading to another goal to them.

Bless us that this counter-productive playbook has been torn up, buried.

Dimma has seen the cliff edge, and a tiger has changed his stripes. No more dour defence at all costs. He’s freed them up. Let them run. Trust their instincts. Carry the ball, park Dusty up forward, kick it long to him, one-on-one, give the crowd something to delight in, a memory to carry home with them into the night.

Too much of football is justified, explained by numbers. Coaches look for logic, game theory, immutable truths in the streams of stats. Inside 50 count, disposal efficiency, contested possessions, etc, etc.

But football clubs are also in the business of hope.

Late on a Monday night I post another tweet:

And I go to bed thinking of Toby Nankervis, our warhorse, how much he’s needed, hoping he can battle-on all year. I’m addicted again.

And I hope for another sweet train ride home this Saturday afternoon, me and our 7-year-old boy, at his season’s first game, basking in the glory of football, in the joy of our team winning.
Go Tiges!

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