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A win! At last! (One for the true believers)

02/07/2014 By Dugald 5 Comments

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On Friday afternoon I found myself in Young & Jacksons. I’d caught a train to the city to meet Boris under the clocks at Flinders Street station, but he had a better idea. With a friend from Adelaide – a Crows supporter, who knows not of what is good for him – he waited across the road, with a spare pint ready on the table.

Boris Kilpatrick is 49 years old and was born in Glenelg in Adelaide and has lived most of his life in Glenelg and has only ever barracked for two football teams: Glenelg and Richmond.

As he tells it: “I used to go to the footy every week with my old man and watch ‘The Bays’ (Glenelg Tigers) and we’d get home and mum would toast crumpets and we’d put The Winners on TV and watch the VFL Tigers.”

So at a bar in the heart of Melbourne on Friday afternoon I learn about football elsewhere, and ‘The Bays’ and their rollcall of distinguished VFL/AFL players (Stephen Kernahan, Chris McDermott, Tony McGuinness, John Nicholls, Mark Williams, Brad Ottens, among others), and about Graham Cornes and a mark he took for Glenelg in the dying minutes of the 1973 SANFL Grand Final against North Adelaide that’s etched in South Australian folklore.

In the shared language of football, these were stories unknown, but readily understood.

And in 1973, for an eight-year-old Boris Kilpatrick, it was as if the stars aligned. Glenelg won a famed premiership in the SANFL and Richmond won its eighth premiership in the VFL and the two teams played before 34,194 spectators at the Adelaide Oval in a high-scoring semi-final on 6 October in the Championship of Australia.

Boris sat on his father’s shoulders, on that day in Adelaide when Glenleg wore plain yellow guernseys as a “clash strip”.

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Graham Cornes about to take off for a screamer over the ruck duel. I can’t for the life of me work out if he actually takes a mark or just takes it out of the ruck 3rd-man-up, as he handballs it away before he even hits the ground. This is from 0:30 on this clip.

 

“I created the bandwagon,” he laughs now, of his support for a club in a distant city that for him was like a dream. “I was the bandwagon. People jumped on me. And now I’m the only one in Adelaide holding the reins.”

The Adelaide Crows formed in 1991 and two former Glenelg Tigers – Graham Cornes was coach, Chris McDermott captain – were in charge, and all through South Australia football loyalties were reconsidered. But not for Boris. “You can’t change who you barrack for,” he says. “I grew up watching ‘Disco’ Roach, and Lee and Weightman, and Jimmy Jess and I loved it. The Crows were not my team. The Tigers are my team.”

A few weeks ago, Boris contacted me and said he was coming to Melbourne with a friend, Jamie, and their wives, for a weekend of shopping (the girls) and football (the boys), and he wanted to buy me a ticket to the St Kilda game. It was a generous offer that I accepted, but then reneged on. A wedding invitation arrived late, from a friend who’s a musician. He booked a midday wedding, on a Saturday, in winter, in Melbourne. He’s no interest, obviously, in football.

The least I could do was to meet Boris in the city and buy him a beer. But he’s too generous for that. He bought me a beer. He gave me a t-shirt. And he furnished me with football stories from Adelaide.

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Saturday’s game beckoned and mostly all I felt was ambivalence. It shouldn’t be like this. Maybe it’s because I knew I wasn’t going, and wasn’t watching, and wasn’t to be involved in the day’s drama, whatever it would bring. Mostly what I thought about was seeing Richmond play St Kilda on a Friday night at Etihad two winters’ ago, and standing with a cold wind at my back, but warmed by the game’s spectacle and its prospect, and a mark by Jack Riewoldt and all his goals, and at a critical moment in the last quarter a tackle by Addam Maric on Brendon Goddard that was the play of the night, and won us the day.

St Kilda were seventh on the ladder and we were 12th and we hadn’t beaten them for the longest time, and 49,337 turned up, and none of us wearing yellow and black could have gone home disappointed.

Now two years later, how the gloss has tarnished. Goddard is at Essendon. Addam Maric plays for the Werribee Tigers. And before the bounce on Saturday, both these teams could hardly be any further away from September.

But then the game arrives and I get edgy, and from upstairs in a pub in Port Melbourne – after the vows and before the lusty drinking – I sent a text: Can Tiger peeps please lemme know the score/highlights. At wedding. Wrangling children. #gotiges.

What follows is an edited critique of the game, and of the day.
@loumur81: Who gets married during footy season? #pooreffort
@eddie1007: playing with some ferocity. 6pts up. JR8 being fed very well. Lining up for his first......and a goal.
@SatchSkippygirl: Tiges OK so far!
@eddie1007: Cotch having a picnic - 4 goals, 14 touches. Tiges by 31
@eddie1007: Grimes kicks his very first AFL goal.
@eddie1007: JR8 doing Vickerys job, being accountable. Meanwhile, Vickery - 3 touches and missed a sitter. #enoughsaid @dugaldjellie #aflSaintsTigers
@eddie1007: 2nd half not too pretty but alright.
@eddie1007: Tiggies up by 26. Cotch with 5. Career high.
@eddie1007: @brandonjellis needs a mention, 27 touches so far @dugaldjellie !!
@eddie1007: There's some biffo. There's some feeling now. #AFLSaintsTigers Up by 24 points 3qtr time.
@eddie1007: 10mins to go. 25 points in it. Ellis 33 touches, @snippermiles25 going beautifully with 24 touches. Cotch up for number 6...
@eddie1007: …and a behind.
@eddie1007: Tross superb and just gets better with age. #grangehermitage
@eddie1007: a narrow 44pt win. @brandonjellis 35 touches. #welldoneboys #AFLSaintsTigers
@eddie1007: make that 36 touches.
@oldcoady34: is 9th still in play?
@murdriggs: who won the wedding?

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I was drunk on love on Saturday night, whatever that might mean. I made a Mietta O’Donnell chocolate cake on Saturday night, for our youngest son’s first birthday party. I put it in the oven and poured myself a chaser, and put a log on the fire and sat down with the pure delight of watching a recorded game in which you know your team has won. There are few things in this world that can give such simple pleasure.

Mostly, when I record a game I impose a media blackout – to preserve the contest’s tension – but there’s nothing about this season that is ‘mostly’. I recorded the Dreamtime game and still haven’t watched it, and probably never will.

But a win is a win is a win. And Dylan Grimes kicks his first goal! And how many goals did Cotch kick, again? And how did he come to kick so many goals? And I know to look out for Brandon Ellis, and Alex Rance, and…

…and I give thanks to Edstar (@eddie1007), who last I checked was watching from somewhere in Sydney, who interpreted the game, and offered a thread, and through all those flutes of champagne – through a glorious drunkenness – told a story that I read by the water’s edge in Melbourne and could see ended happily-ever-after.

Boris sent a text: Frustratingly beautiful win. Cotchin, Martin, Rance. Hope the wedding went well.

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Watching the game, what I think about mostly is how brave and courageous the players are. Nick Vlastuin runs back with the flight of the ball into a contest and I wince, concerned about his welfare. Anthony Miles gets crunched in another contest and I wonder how he can get back to his feet, how he’ll go walking in the morning. Each time there’s body contact on Chris Newman, I think mostly of soreness.

I would like to write about Dylan Grimes’ first goal, or Jake Batchelor’s first goal the other week and his renaissance as a footballer, or what the efforts of Anthony Miles might say about others at our club (the selection committee, for one), or the good form of Dustin Martin, or Jack Riewoldt’s gesticulations of dissent on Saturday, or how my man-crush on Nick Vlastuin only deepens, or my sigh of happiness when Reece Conca at last kicks his seasons’ first goal, or about the value of Ivan Maric’s marks around the ground.

I would like to write about it all, but do not have time. Besides, others can judge for themselves. We all watch a game of football; we all look at it in different ways, and for different things.

Besides, I’m distracted. Melanie Castleman, who last week was TTBB’s fan-of-the-week, sent through a pic of a new banner she had made. It is yellow and black and red. It has a love heart on it! All through the game when Richmond kicks goals and the camera cuts to the cheer squad for its response of approval, all I see is Melanie’s banner. There is love in this game and she holds up her heart! It’s impossible not to see. There is love, there is love, there is love.

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I love it that the Richmond cheer squad has Trout and his luminous yellow ‘wig’ that I’m sure can be seen from the moon (even with the Etihad roof closed), and I love it that the cheer squad has Melanie and her home-made banners, and on the newest of which she holds up high her love-heart for her ‘Newy’.

Spread the news, share the love.

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All I knew about Glenelg before I met Boris was that it was an Adelaide suburb, and the longest Australian toponymic palindrome I know of. I knew of the Claremont Football Club in Perth, and of their colours, but ‘the Bays’ and their long list of champion players was for me a blind spot. Now I want to visit Adelaide. I want to see the Tigers play at Adelaide Oval. I want to see Glenelg play in the SANFL, and write about it.

My time with Boris was short (TTBB’s other half, Chris Rees, was in Melbourne for a flying visit from Hobart, and coffee awaited in Lygon Street), and we talk about Craig Bradley, and John Platten, and Kernahan, and Boris’s days playing in the forward pocket at school (“I loved the game and kept playing until probably I was going to be killed”), and Richmond’s disappointing season (“I wasn’t buying into top-four, but this has been painful, it’s been horrible”), and his other great sporting true-love: baseball.

Boris knows more about baseball than anyone I’ve ever met. We talk about the game, and Wrigley Field in Chicago, and the difference between its two leagues in the US. Boris still plays the game (for ‘the Bays’), and writes a blog about baseball in Australia (see www.ablbuzz.com.au). We share notes about our labours of love. He gives me a T-shirt that he’s had made to promote his blog. I tell him about my ‘Tiger’ t-shirts and hoodies soon to hit the shelves of the TTBB superstore.

Boris is a generous man, he is a Tiger man. He offered to buy me a ticket to the football. He has never lived in Melbourne. He barracks for our team because of its colours, because of his loyalty to another. There is much that is unique about him as a fan.

Before I leave I ask for a photograph. He pulls out his Richmond top from a bag. Nothing is as you would expect. Whose number and name does he have on his back? What player has he chosen to wear? Riewoldt, Deledio, Cotch, Martin, King, Ellis?

Nup. He’s gone for No. 32, Brad Helbig.

Go Tigers! Go ‘the Bays’! Go Brad! Go Boris!

Tiger tiger burning bright

Email: dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

Dugald 02/07/2014Filed Under: dugald_14, front

The Map takes on the Common Bottlenose Dolphins

23/06/2014 By Chris Leave a Comment

Today I saw The Map in action live for the first time. At the world’s prettiest test cricket ground™ Tasmania took on a team representing the far-flung NEAFL, which covers the Northern Territory, Queensland, NSW and the ACT.

The traditional state football guernsey is known for obvious reasons as The Map. Its finest hour in recent times was when a Tassie state-of-origin side (which I think was 98% AFL players) beat a middle-weight Victorian side at North Hobart Oval in 1990. Darrin Pritchard, Simon Atkins and James Manson starred for Tassie. Jose Romero, Ross Lyon and Shane Kerrison wore the Big V that day. I guess “star-studded” would be an inaccurate description of that Vic side.

Some years later Richo wore the map in a game coached by then-Fitzroy coach Robert Shaw. This was a disaster and according to Richo, Shaw told the team they were a disgrace to Tasmania.

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This man disgraced this guernsey.

It was a gorgeous day today, so when Rob rang and suggested getting over to Bellerive I quickly talked myself out of spending the afternoon at the computer. I got a park so easily I expected to find the crowd outnumbered by players. I’d guess it was about 1000 – there was plenty of room.

I arrived right on the halftime siren – so I rang Rob and told him to met me in the centre square. I got the footy out of my backpack, took a few running bounces, then spotted my man on the northern wing. My first kick (in Blundstones) was appalling, and lightly sconned a small child. He had a hoodie on for protection, and neither he not his dad seemed fazed.

Rob and I exchanged some Gerard-Neesham-era-Fremantle-style chip passes then shook hands and caught up on things. He and I were at art school together in the 80s. These days we are making an effort to prop up the Tasmanian football and pie industries as regularly as possible with our joint attendance at local fixtures.

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B.O.G. Brady Jones has it on a string for Tasmania. The NEAFL jumper lacks conviction.
Photo by Nikki Davis-Jones from The Mercury.

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Former Essendon man-mountain Jason Laycock is back home playing for Burnie Dockers now. He represented the island state with distinction, getting 22 touches and 31 hit-outs.
Photo by Nikki Davis-Jones from The Mercury.

Tassie were 4 goals up at the long break but it had been more. The NEAFLs were clawing back into it. They wore a sort of Melbourne-clash-strip-esque jumper that totally lacked conviction, style, moxie or swagger. I was waiting for a mainlander to kick a clutch goal under pressure and look down to search the jumper for an appropriate symbol to grab, kiss or pump. Didn’t happen.

Rob and I searched for a mascot that could represent all of North-Eastern Australia. Carn the Scrub Turkeys? Carn the Skinks? We settled on Carn the Common Or Bottle-Nosed Dolphins which, although scarce around Canberra, do visit Jervis Bay, that enclave (or is exclave?) of the ACT on the NSW coast.

I can reassure Dons fans that Jason Laycock is still comically tall and still covers the ground rapidly with great, slow giraffe strides. He’s quite a sight, particularly on a pin-sharp sunny afternoon with a few sailboats in the background. There is a massive new stand under construction which will effectively blot out the sailboats – great news for those who hate the paint-a-picture-between-deliveries school of cricket commentary.

The third quarter was a lively contest with a proper comeback from the mainland cetaceans not looking out of the question, but Tassie finished the term with a couple of handy goals to McCulloch and Charlesworth. Jeromey Webberley (ex Richmond) was listed in the best but perhaps has dyed his hair – I didn’t spot him all day.

The Map romped through the last quarter when a lot of the NEAFL boys had clearly forgotten each others’ names again and the team spirit just wasn’t there. One of them with his head over the ball at center-half-back got caught high and dumped, and looked up blearily to see his assailant traipse into the goalsquare and test out the toughened glass of the D. C. Boon First Class VIP Balcony Superbox.

At the final siren most of the crowd climbed over the boundary fence with their footies and enjoyed running around on the excellent international-standard outfield. Rob teed me up with a pass into space which I ran onto, and dobbed one from about 35 metres, with a low-key celebration.

As it happens that’s about how far my car was from the D. C. Boon Gates. Rob’s mum lives two blocks from the ground so that’s where he leaves his car when he comes over. I gave him a lift there. Tassie as. TASMANIA 18.12 (120) d. NEAFL 11.13 (79)

Chris 23/06/2014Filed Under: front, tassie_14, Uncategorized

Not happy, Benny! (On the role of dissent)

23/06/2014 By Dugald 14 Comments

 

Tiger love under Friday night lights: Doug Sinclair, 66, from Wattle Glen, all smiles at quarter time in his yellow-and-black candy striped suit, with 12-year-old grand daughter, Lily.

Tiger love under Friday night lights: Doug Sinclair, 66, from Wattle Glen, all smiles at quarter time
in his yellow-and-black candy striped suit, with 12-year-old grand daughter, Lily.

'Boo, hiss! Poor form pushing gambling on Twitter, anywhere. A family club? Apparently not' , was my recent reply to a tweet from the Richmond Football Club.

Another follower replied to my reply. 'You seem to have a lot of anger towards the club lately'. And in this brief exchange, there’s an essay about all the ambiguities of supporter loyalty.

Two days before this season’s first game, our CEO, Brendon Gale, said in a press release:

“We are excited about the partnership with Sportbet.com.au [sic], which is another important announcement as we continue to build, on and off the field.”

Never mind that in an orchestrated media announcement – on the eve of the opening game, when all were looking elsewhere – the club would misspell the name of a business it had entered into a two-year deal with. Our football club chose money over responsible citizenry. It sold its membership to a betting agency. It has become complicit in gambling. It has traded in all its history and honour – its great community goodwill – for the quick fix of a bet.

Buggered if I’m going to be silent on this.

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The Tigers were terrific on Friday night; they were dreadful. Matty Dea stood under a high ball and took a courageous mark, and spontaneous handclapping rung out around our end of the ground; he spilled a mark near the top of the square and the Swans goaled. Alex Rance was at his imperious best on Friday night, blanketing his opponent and running off him when the game was there to be won; Buddy Franklin kicked four goals and was the match-winner. There are so many ways to look at a football club; there are so many ways to look at a game of football.

Seventeen minutes into the second quarter, when Brett Deledio kicked a running goal, grown men in the stands hugged each other. A belief that’s been missing all season was back. At this darkest hour, on the eve of winter’s equinox, our team at last was here to warm our hearts. There was beauty in the spectacle.

“Smash ’em, Richmond!”

Richmond would kick only one more goal for the game, and this night’s and season’s despair was complete. The glow-in-the-dark boots worn by Jack and Cotch were of no succour. Still we could not see the light. It didn’t matter that Shaun Hampson kicked his first goal in yellow and black and was mobbed by his team mates; voices in outer still derided his efforts. All that was gained was again lost. The final statistic condemned us: another loss.

“Stem the flow, Tigers!”

“Stand up, Richmond!”

“Do something, Tigers!”

A chestfull of Tiger pride: Glenn Rigg, 34, from Princes Hill shows-off his Bones McGhie design classic at half time.

A chestfull of Tiger pride: Glenn Rigg, 34, from Princes Hill shows-off his Bones McGhie design classic at half time.

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About a month ago, in a blog post titled A lament for Richmond (& how the club broke my heart), I offered considered criticism of the club I hold dear. It may have been misconstrued as anger. It wasn’t. Mostly, it was disappointment; generally about how I thought I’d been treated by Simon Matthews, the club’s general manager of media and stakeholder relations, and specifically about seeing my name on a whiteboard within the club, alongside the word “flog”.

I thank all TTBB readers who posted comments about that story, and who contacted me directly, and “Daffy” who posted about it on the Punt Road End fan forum under the title Shameful treatment of a devoted fan. I also thank the mediator of Punt Road End, Rosy23, for following-up on the issue and managing the debate. Again, in this thread there’s a lively discussion about ideas of loyalty.

In this piece, I wrote about the death of Tommy Hafey, and trust and belief, and about Benny Gale’s tilt for the AFL top job. I wasn’t disappointed in him pitching for the job – most of us have personal ambition, a virtuous trait in football as in life – but was disappointed for all those Richmond fans who hold unconditional trust in his leadership.

In “the Chief” there is an aura of strength and stability, of strong guidance, of a steady hand. In the Chief there is belief and hope. He’s a big man. All of us look up to him.

What had his interview for the top AFL job said about his duty to Richmond, I asked.

“For us outsiders, it can be read only as duplicity. He is Richmond, until a better offer presents. Rightly or wrongly, it is a signal that percolates down. And in a time of crisis, his wavering of trust resonates beyond its circumstances. If his heart is tempted by another offer, why should ours remain true?”

Last week, Brendon Gale was in the news again. At issue was a trip to the Soccer World Cup in Brazil, arranged for by Chrysler whose subsidiary, Jeep, are a major club sponsor. In an article by Greg Denham in The Australian newspaper, Simon Matthews said he had no problem with Gale’s trip or its timing.

“He left on Wednesday and he’s away for a week,” he said. “Brendon’s gone with our major partner, they are a big part of our business, and he’s gone with our blessing.”

Last week I tapped the words “maritime law” and “abandon ship” into Google. So much about football is about perception. The most damning accusation to be levelled at a player is that he is not trying. Or more truthfully, that he looks not to be trying. How a player appears on the field – the way he mans a mark, attacks a contest, runs off the ball – is everything, just as how a club and its leaders might look off the field.

Last week I set an alarm and got up in the mid of night and in a cold living room in Melbourne watched the Socceroos play the Netherlands in Porto Alegre in Brazil, and marvelled at Tim Cahill’s left boot, and thought of Brendon Gale and wondered if he were there.

I think his going to Brazil was ill-advised. Those within the club will, of course, say it was about business networking, which in part is true. But as with all these things, how much was work, and how much was personal pleasure? With Australia 3-2 down late in the second half, my head swirled with the fever of the occasion and the hour of the night, and SBS commentator Craig Foster asked: “How much do you love football?”

The point is this: all of us, if offered, would have jumped at the opportunity of an all-expenses trip to Brazil to watch two games of the World Cup. It’s a no-brainer. But all of us aren’t the head of an organisation with a $44.8 million turnover last year that now faces a crisis. The Richmond Football Club is in trouble, no matter all the calming words. Its on-field woes have the very real possibility of tilting off-field stability.

There is no harm in acknowledging this.

Last season, for instance, of all AFL clubs, only Collingwood pulled more barrackers through the turnstiles than Richmond, and it didn’t sell one if its home games to the tropics. Already this season, the crowd’s voted with its feet. Two weeks ago, for instance, the home crowd at the MCG against Fremantle was about half of what it was for the corresponding fixture on an unseasonably cold day last year. The more we lose, the worse it’ll get.

Both on and off the field, this season’s poor form has dire ramifications for next year, and maybe years beyond. It is not unreasonable to say there will be job losses, and belt tightening, and new ways will need to be found for doing things.

If a crisis is a time of immense difficulty or danger, then this feels a crisis for our club and us fans. And now in this time of crisis we hear that our CEO went to Rio, and it looks a folly. If the trip was about brand partnership with Jeep, then surely Brendon Gale’s most prudent course of action would be to stay home, remaining behind the wheel.

If Jeep wants commercial leverage from the Richmond Football Club, the club need uphold its end of the bargain. It needs to draw crowds. It needs to ensure prime-time exposure. It needs traffic to its website. It needs to pull an audience to be sold to its sponsors. In short, it needs to win games of football.

When Brendon Gale presented to the AFL board for its top job, it was a matter of self-interest. When Brendon Gale boarded the pointy-end of a plane for Brazil it was, in part, a matter of self-interest. As Caroline Wilson, an ardent Richmond person is wont to say, it “wasn’t a good look”.

If this is a misguided interpretation, consider an alternative scenario. Brendon Gale is approached by the AFL to pitch for its top job and he respectfully declines, citing his ongoing role at Richmond. And Brendon Gale accepts a sponsored trip to Brazil but later pulls out, citing urgent matters at hand, namely that he cannot vacate his office due to pressing and unforeseen problems on the home front.

Footy, it’s a game of perceptions.

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I stood in the outer on Friday night with Michael Green and others. No, not that Michael Green. This Michael Green is a freelance investigative journalist, and a Richmond man, who looks a likely half-back flanker. Our crowd was in full voice, and good humour, and wasn’t afraid to speak its mind.

“Ya sold your soul, Buddy! Ya sold your soul!”

At game’s end, I left my night’s companions – a Tiger and a Swan – to jump the MCC fence and scuttle around to see the players leave the ground. Richmond were in no mood for lingering. There is little to celebrate when you’re at the bottom of the ladder and expected so much more. Even our home games must for now seem so foreign to the players.

Swans players, conversely, were in no hurry to leave the rapturous adulation of their crowd. The aesthetics of the game mean nothing when you win. Their crowd and its colours looked so joyous, so cheerful, so happy with the night. It is as it should be: their team had just won its ninth consecutive game.

Imagine that? Nine games in a row. It’s been 34 years since Richmond last won nine games in a row. That’s a generation of support. And how it feels as if it could be another 34 years until we do it again.

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 subliminals_s02

 

Early last year I wrote and sent a letter to Brendon Gale.

It began:

“My name is Dugald Jellie and I am an ardent Richmond supporter. I am also a writer. I was a journalist at The Age newspaper, before moving to Sydney in 1997 for a job as a features writer for the Sydney Morning Herald. I have played football, mostly for country teams, and once ran into Greg Dear’s elbow at a game in Lakes Entrance while playing centre-half-forward for the Snowy Rovers. For this I received a free-kick.”

I don’t think he read it.

After last year’s heartbreaking loss to Carlton in the Elimination Final, I had a long telephone conversation with Brendon Gale. I found him inquisitive and fair-minded man; knowledgeable, open and considered.

What I know about Brendon Gale is all on the public record. He’s a family man, a graduate from Marist College in Burnie, was a champion Richmond footballer (244 games, 209 goals), studied law at Monash, was on the Board of the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and before taking the top job at Richmond was CEO of the AFL Players’ Association.

His faith is Catholic and his political leaning – gleaned from Martin Flanagan’s book Richo – is to the left. Every way I look at Brendon Gale, I like the man. He is that heady mix – the thinking-man footballer – that so excites respect and admiration among the crowd.

Our phone conversation was about my perceived grievances. What was unsaid is that both of us knew he was always going to back one of his senior managers – any of his employees – over a complaint from a fan who writes a blog. But he listened, he heard me out. A simple conversation, he placated resentments.

Textbook dispute resolution.

At conversation’s end, Gale confided in trade talks with a Richmond player. He said it was off-the-record. He trusted me, and knew that he could.

When once asked for advice for students at his former secondary college, Gale offered two tips. “Don’t limit your potential and be a doer not a knocker.”

Does my written criticism of the club, and of his recent absence in Brazil, fall into the category of ‘doer’ or ‘knocker’? Are my concerns – my voiced disapproval – of our club pushing the product of a betting agency, those of a ‘doer’ or a ‘knocker’?

Brendon Gale is 10 centimetres taller than I but I know I can look him in the eye. I am passionate about Richmond, I am loyal to Richmond, I want the best for Richmond, as so many of us do.

But this loyalty does not preclude me from dissent. Loyalty cannot silence the crowd from fair-minded criticism. And if the club is blind or deaf to those who disagree with some of its ideas, then surely it will never truly grow and prosper as an organisation. Three wins and 10 losses is the bottom line, as it stands, for this season. The house of cards has fallen. Our disappointments cannot be denied. The time is nigh for Richmond to consider new ways of doing business; to consider new ways of being a football club.

Tiger tiger burning (loyal and) bright.

Email:  dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

A long night closes: turn off the lights, shut the gate, as the last of the Richmond contingent leave the field on Friday night.

A long night closes: turn off the lights, shut the gate, as the last of the Richmond contingent leave the field on Friday night.

Dugald 23/06/2014Filed Under: dugald_14, front, Uncategorized

The night Richo was inducted into the Hall of Fame

16/06/2014 By Dugald 3 Comments

The sky was crying. Late on a Wednesday night, ascending the platform six ramp at Richmond Station, to wait for the 11.12pm to Pakenham, I received a text. It was from Craig, who I’d walked from the pub with, talking about football and Richmond and past premiership years – 67, 69, 73, 74 – that in the damp night air rung like magical numbers.

Neon lights glowed on city buildings, heavy clouds hung low, I listened to the sound of wet car tyres on Punt Road and the text message said Richo inducted to Hall of Fame and all I could think: “good on him”.

If already he wasn’t part of this city’s folklore, he was now. If already he weren’t down in the history books, he is now. Richo had arrived. He had been anointed. And tonight, the whole damned city was his.

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I had seen Richo on stage last winter at the Corner Hotel, in the bowels of old Struggletown, and he was a revelation. A pin-up of Presentation Night #2, hosted by Francis Leach, and paired with You Am I frontman Tim Rogers – a sinewy rock’n’roll shinboner; all elbows and knees; the Dean Laidley type – he had the crowd on a string. He was candid, honest, entertaining, and amusing in his storytelling.

The other Wednesday it was Presentation Night #3, the creation of impresario Andy Kelly, a Woodsman at heart, again bringing together two strands of culture that Melbourne does best: football and live music.

On stage were Cameron Ling (“the mayor of Geelong, the king of Corio”) and Paul Dempsey, a tormented Sainter known better as the lead singer of Something for Kate. Results were no less beguiling.

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What’s at first obvious is that it’s improbable to dislike Cameron Ling. The slicked red hair, the pink skin, his open demeanour, and that wide, affable smile – the irrepressible grin of a winner – are disarming. He grew up in Geelong. Barracked for Geelong. Won three premierships at Geelong. His last kick in AFL football was a goal, as captain of the 2011 premiers, Geelong. He has local hero written all over him.

“My dream as a boy was to see a Geelong premiership,” he says. “I couldn’t have thought with the lottery of the draft that I’d be staying at home, and playing in those premierships. I consider myself very, very lucky.”

Talk on the night began with the 2009 flag against Leach and Dempsey’s beloved Saints – Tom Hawkins hitting the post, the Matty Scarlett toe-poke – and for Ling, the panic beforehand and “huge relief” afterwards. “Anything short of winning the premiership was a real failure for that group,” he says. “It was my least enjoyable year. I remember the Grand Final after-party, everyone was celebrating but if you looked around the room there were 22 guys asleep in their chairs.”

Discussion diverged to Gary Ablett Snr and Barry Stoneham, and pre-match change room routines, and Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson (“He never yelled or screamed… I heard Damien Hardwick gave a real spray the other Saturday night”), and his first game of league football, at Football Park, when a Port supporter leaned over the fence as he warmed-up and yelled: “Oi Ling, I’m gunna fucken kill ya!”

He talked of footballers he most admired – Ben Cousins (“hardest runner, hardest worker”), Michael Voss and Nathan Buckley (“strong, hard bodies who win their own ball”), Scott Pendlebury (“so good at what he does”) – and fans like me could have pulled up a pew and listened all night.

There was talk about his coaching aspirations (Francis Leach quipped: “you’ll be the first redhead to go grey”); the relative intellect of former teammates (on Stevie J: “not a lot goes through that head”), and Brownlow night when Warrnambool-boy Jonathan Brown called him, affectionately and on-camera, a “big pink pig”. As Ling explains: “Any time I sweated up I looked like a big pink pig.”

As with Richo last year, self-deprecating humour serves a footballer well.

But the night’s biggest laugh came at the expense of Brad Ottens, nowadays a furniture-maker, and a story relayed by former Richmond coach, Danny ‘Spud’ Frawley. As Lingy tells it, Otto was in a police lock-up after a big night on the turps, and had the constable call his coach at three in the morning to pick him up. Frawley arrived at the police cell some time later, to find Ottens sitting with hands over his face. He looked up, dumbfounded, and with a look of incredulity, said: “Spud, what’d they get you for!”

Only at Richmond.

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As with all things football, the temptation is to compare: to put this player up against that; this team versus that team; how the game was played in this era compared to that era. My inclination is to measure Presentation Night #3 against its earlier incarnation. But this is unfair and unnecessary. And I can only imagine how the inaugural version – musical-poet Paul Kelly up on stage with football-poet Bob Murphy – must have been.

I kick myself still for missing this night; for not being where the party was at.

Richo’s stories are not Lingy’s stories, and vice-versa, but each are equally engaging in their own way. What can be said with authority is that Richo has more contemporary musical tastes than those of his Channel 7 commentary box cohort. The latter brought along some vinyl for the night – a song he would play in the car on his way to games. ‘The Sound of Silence’.

How can anyone dislike Simon and Garfunkel?

The counterpoint to the evening was Paul Dempsey, a Black Rock boy, a Saints man, an earnest fellow, reserved in manner and temperament. Whereas Tim Rogers had used the evening as a wondrous confessional – about his love of football culture, his mental illness while growing-up in suburban Adelaide, his passion for life – his friend Dempsey projected as guarded and clipped.

All the hurt of St Kilda’s grand final near-misses looked to weigh heavily on his shoulders. He appeared anguished.

Then again, standing behind the microphone, he delivered two of the night’s highlights. His second song was a version of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ (“In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream…”) and in this filled and darkened room my heart skips a beat. I love Bruce. Always have, always will, and although maybe something from Nebraska could have bettered this, in these opening chords there’s a promise of escape and Dempsey duly delivers.

And at night’s end he sings a cover of The Angels’ ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’. News of the day had been the untimely death of the bands’ former lead singer, ‘Doc’ Neeson. Here was instant respect; for Paul Dempsey, and how he commemorated the death of his compatriot. The crowd hollered for more. We rose as one. None of us truly wanted to leave.

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I spent that night mostly nursing beers and standing alongside Craig, a decent, learned and fair-minded man, whom I’d met at the Western Oval and took an instant liking to. He barracks for Richmond. He is tall and lean and has ginger hair, and looks as if he’d fit nicely on a wing. And he runs a football-themed blog (Footy Maths Institute, although rebranded as Futebal Instituicao for the World Cup) and is fine company on Twitter (see @Footy_Maths).

Having returned to Melbourne several years ago, after so long away, here is a type I want to meet, talk into the night with, share stories with, go to a game of football with, and on a Wednesday night stand at the back of a pub on Swan Street in Richmond and watch three blokes on stools and at a high table talk about football and life what it all might mean.

If I am to get out only once or twice a year, I am happy if it is to Presentation Night. Long may the format prosper; long may it become a cultural institution of this city.

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The World Cup is underway and Francis Leach is in Rio, and our benighted Richmond has dug itself only deeper into a hole, and our CEO is away in Brazil – having a sojourn in the sunshine – so we look elsewhere for consolations and little mercies. In 90 minutes of football played in a faraway land and telecast early on Saturday morning, I found more happiness and pride than in any 90 minutes of watching Richmond play this season, and this saddens my heart and leaves me bereft.

But still, there is beauty in our code of football.

Catching a train to the game on Saturday, crossing the Yarra and rounding the bend into Richmond Station, I read a piece on the Presentation Night webpage that brought forth tears. Written by Toby Martin, from the band Youth Group, he tells a story at the end about his father, and Collingwood and Carlton, and a chance encounter with Nathan Buckley at a 7-11, that makes me want to hug strangers. It’s a story about compassion, and how football brings us together, and reflects on who we are.

There is hurt at Richmond this winter. It is because we care, because it means something to us, because we choose to make it part of our life. If this hurt is not acknowledged, it is meaningless. If it is meaningless, there is no point to this game of ours. If we have no game, who do we become?

Our game, our club, our team, our colours, they’re our very identity.

Standing among strangers behind the goals on Saturday afternoon, in the thinned-out crowd, I try to distil the meaning of the day in a few lines:

When the crowd rise behind the goals at the Punt Road end,
when the banners and flags and floggers fly in the air,
when all our colours are held aloft,
when the chants begin,
when voices cry out,
that’s when I love to be at the football.

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C’mon the Tigers!

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Not so long ago on this Wednesday night, alone at Richmond Station, feeling high on life, I remembered what Richo had said last winter; about arriving in this city as a Devonport schoolboy, off the ferry with his car and a freshly-minted Melways, and driving straight to Punt Road to see what he could make of himself.

He made us all look his way. He made us take note. He found for himself a belonging. That’s why all of us, we love Richo.

Tiger tiger burning (increasingly less) bright

Email:  dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

Dugald 16/06/2014Filed Under: dugald_14, front

On training at Punt Road & an unknowable match & Presentation Night #3

03/06/2014 By Dugald 5 Comments

lady

Tiger woman Ann Bakker, from Brighton, at training at Punt Road on Friday.

troutUnder an entirely blue sky, last Friday morning I caught a train to Punt Road Oval. It was my first training session of the year. I wanted to show support for my team, joining others at the fence in glorious sunshine. I wanted to know if our attendance – our enthusiasm – couldn’t yet help right this season from its confusion.

Trout was there. Lyn was there. Shelly was there. I met a woman visiting from Darwin for the Dreamtime game, now with her daughter and her four-month-old grandson. His name was Joel. I asked if he was named after Joel Bowden.

“Selwood,” said mum. “His dad’s Geelong.”

I went because there is an attraction in seeing the players – professional athletes – up close. I tell it how it is: they are beautiful. Young and immensely fit men in a physical prime of their life, in their bodies is a dream of what life once was, of what it could be, of how it may have been. They have unproblematic good looks. They are pharaoh boy-gods. They are what so many of us wanted to be.

dimmaAnd up close – away from the prism of television, the detachment of a stadium – they also become human. They are no longer names and numbers, lists on a stats sheet, “cattle” to be bought and sold at season’s end, appraised by all. Up close they again become young men. Young men with partners, wives, some with young children. Young men with ambitions and vulnerabilities, with pride and fear. Young men earning a precarious living, probably never feeling entirely secure in their job – despite a contract – knowing all the ways it could go wrong.

Brendon Gale walks the boundary in a crisp white business shirt. Dimma is in a black tracksuit, looking relaxed. I ask for a photograph and he obliges. I miss my opportunity to ask for a coffee catch-up.

On Friday morning I felt uncomfortable for having recently criticised the performance of some players. I owe Shaun Hampson, Troy Chaplin, Steve Morris – possibly others – an apology. What I see on Friday morning is that all players are trying in their own way, as hard as they can. Their mistakes are not deliberate. Their errors are not wilful.

I come to understand that from distance – watching from the stands, or through television glass – my heart has hardened. I’ve turned into a critic, and I do not want to be that person. Down that road leads only bitterness.

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On Saturday night I was reliant on others for the score, and to interpret the game. I was elsewhere; at a wedding, in Church Street, Richmond. It was a crowd mostly of medicos – all specialists – and at times I felt awkward. What have I done with my life? It was an evening of fine champagne, and introspection. None were probably too interested in football, despite the groom’s predilection for Hawthorn, mentioned in speeches.
Before the game, Skippygirl (@SatchSkippygirl) said she’d send quarter-time tweets. In her four messages is a summary of a night:
OK Dons 28-1 but maybe Tigers will get it together for 2nd quarter.
OK enjoy the wedding it aint pretty here
Enjoy the wedding :(
Oh dear, enjoy the dancing.
A tweet came also from Darren Crick, from Canberra: its not good mate… don’t look!
Chris Rees (the better half of TTBB) sent a text: Wish I was at a wedding too. Just terrible. 0-26.
And a text came from a mate, Dave: Sitting in a bar in Lombok watching game – beer in my hand. Got a great souvenir to take home – 9 stitches in face.
What happened, you OK? I replied.
His response: Got hit by an Essendon surfboard.
Then early on Sunday morning, Dave sent this: “Am listening to a call to prayer from local mosque… considering going down. Go tigs!

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I’ve not seen the game and am not sure I will. Advice via Twitter after midnight on Saturday seemed unequivocal.
@SatchSkippygirl: Don’t watch the replay, no no no no no
@jebsrock: do not watch the replay. It will be painful. #holidayinSeptember”
@Suzeme: I’ve already deleted the recording.
@BorisABLBuzz: At least it was easy to create a few hours free space on the DVD hard drive… #brutal #brokenrecord #hugme
@ReadingSideways: don’t watch it. We’ve seen it all before, too often.
@BAFLD: that’s 120 minutes you’ll never get back – I wouldn’t bother

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vale_hardwickMonday morning and in the letters-to-the editor section in The Age newspaper, between commentary about federal politics and capital punishment, Tom Pagonis (from Richmond) adds three words to the issues of the day: Vale Damien Hardwick.

It is surely a brutal business being the coach of one of the big teams in Melbourne, when the tide’s running against you. The losses are so public, the humiliation so complete. There is nowhere to hide, no way to air-brush the hard truth. The bottom line in football is that it’s all about results, and the only result that matters is winning. I feel for Dimma, I do, I do, I do.

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Wednesday night is Presentation Night at the Corner Hotel, featuring Cameron Ling and Paul Dempsey, lead singer and guitarist of rock group, Something for Kate. I hope to be there. August last year, when Richmond was winning and the love was being shared, I went to Presentation Night #2. What follows was my interpretation:

It was a night of beautiful nostalgia. Last Thursday at the Corner Hotel, in the bowels of Richmond, they were together at last: Matthew Richardson on stage with Tim Rogers, in a salon of football and music – two forms of creative expression Melbourne does best – hosted by a saint known as Francis, adept at bridging this cultural divide.

It was Presentation Night #2, the creation of music impresario and Pies fan, Andy Kelly, in collaboration with the latter-day ABC Grandstand commentator, Francis Leach. Earlier this season they had assembled player-writer Bob Murphy and musician-poet Paul Kelly together on the same stage, for magical results.

Now it’s standing-room only and the pairing of a Tiger legend with the You Am I front-man – a rackety shinboner – for a long conversation about playing days, and performance, the spotlight, greatness, and the very meaning of life itself. For people like me, who love their football, music and this city, it promised a night of pleasure.

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Richo, Francis and Tim at PN#2. All photos of PN#2 © Tony Proudfoot Photography

Some confessions. In 1994 I was a cub reporter working at The Age newspaper, living with a flatmate on the top floor of an apartment block on the brow of Lennox Street in Richmond (the ‘Loft on Lennox’, we called it), playing sport, drinking with the boys, partying on weekends, often playing a round-robin of squash with two mates on a weeknight, then the three of us running laps of the ’tan’ after midnight. We wanted to push our limits, hold onto the moment.

We fell asleep on summer nights under a glow of neon. We could see the whole city from our living room. It was a time when we thought anything could happen.

I was 24-years-old in 1994, and restless, and often between girlfriends, and unsettled, and was listening to an album called Sound as Ever released by a band called You Am I, with a lead singer called Tim Rogers whose life looked to have the creativity and freedom I desired. He was wild, unhinged, intoxicating. His lyrics had a yearning (“And anyone who’s looking out/Just waiting for tall guys to fall”) that resonated. He could put on a show. He could travel the world.

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Francis with a Bones shirt that was raffled to raise funds for injured footballer Casey Tutungi.

Instead, I wrote little stories for the newspaper. I was good at my job, but never fully at ease. Office life was a chore. I never felt part of the crowd. Looking back now, I think I had bouts of depression that I masked with bravado. I often felt vulnerable. I found happiness in bending words as best I could. I wanted to excel at my craft. In my own way – fearful, unknowing, sometimes reckless – I was careful with what I had.

One of my fondest memories of being at The Age was playing football. One of our games, in the annual media cup against News Limited, was on a Sunday morning at Punt Road Oval. I was young and tall and fit, playing centre-half-back. Rohan Connolly was coach. We wore the Richmond sash.

I’d played sport the day before, been out until the early morning, and had slept in a bed elsewhere. I threw-up in the change rooms before the game, and at half-time. I still have a photograph of me playing that day – all unruly hair and sideburns – lifting up a Herald-Sun player, readying to thump him into the ground. This is how I played football. I was angry. I had no time for pleasantries.

After the game, a colleague, Stewart Oldfield, gave me a lift home to his unit in Northcote where we watched Withnail and I, and I fell asleep on his lounge room floor. Next morning, my name was in the sport section of the paper. I was named a best player.

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Richo with his treasured possession, “The Map”.

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“They’re resilient and loyal, Richmond supporters,” says Richo, up on stage last Thursday night, before an adoring crowd, in a room that hung off almost his every word. He looked a natural performer; tall and handsome, and with an easeful and disarming manner. In a recent profile interview, Greg Baum wrote that Matthew Richardson looks “as if he expects something good is about to happen”, and this is how he is on Presentation Night #2. He tells his story about “getting off the boat” from Davenport with his new Melways – a wide-eyed boy coming to the big city – and all of us want to share in his success.

He is also funny, open, and self-deprecating. “I did like to express my body-language on the ground,” he says, wryly. Memorable anecdotes include the phone call he received from Leigh Matthews trying to coax him from Tasmania to Victoria Park; the day he wore the “map of Tassie” on his jumper in a representative game (“we disgraced the Apple Isle,” lambasted the coach, Robert Shaw); and the afternoon he had tea and biscuits at Denis Pagan’s house in Moonee Ponds, seeing if he might defect to Carlton.

Stories were told about playing against Glenn Archer (an “angry man”, “psychotic on the ground”, all “sharp elbows”, and “once you marked it he fell on top of you”); the fearlessness of the Kellaway boys, especially Duncan running back into the path of Tony Lockett and Gary Ablett (“those guys didn’t miss you if you were in the way”); and the crowd participation behind the Punt Road end goals, most notably from the so-called Grog Squad.

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In 1994, when Sound as Ever hit the charts, Richmond put together a decent team, and I saw Tim Rogers play an acoustic set in a pub in Fitzroy, a 19-year-old Matthew Richardson was in his second-year of AFL football, had found his feet, and showed all what he could do, while promising more. He kicked 56 goals that season.

I watched him play often, sometimes with ‘Yeatsey’, or with other friends who were MCC members, who wangled me in to the old Members’ stand. We walked across from Richmond Hill, stood in front of the stand, drank beer, called out to the players – and all the time I wondered what it would be like running around out there. If I were put on the field, and the ball came to me in space, could I hold my own?

This wondering, I think, must enthral many able-bodied men of an age when they could be a footballer, a contender.

Yeatsey also lived in Richmond, buying a house in Cotter Street, on the flatlands, where our bunch of friends often would end up on Saturday night. He was also a You Am I fan, and through a mutual friend who did occasional night-shifts on 3RRR, got tickets to see them play a prized gig at a club on Jazz Lane. A young Matthew Richardson was also there.

Richmond finished 9th in 1994, missing out of finals by percentage, from Melbourne and Collingwood. In the second-last home-and-away game I went with Yeatsey to see them play Carlton at Princes Park on a Saturday afternoon. We stood in the outer, on a warm day, among a crowd of 32,486 people. It was the Tigers’ last roll of the dice. We needed one win to get in the finals, but were to play Geelong in the last round. We could never beat Geelong.

I had been to a party the night before and had not slept a wink since the Thursday night. Our Tigers got flogged by 114 points. I went home to bed, and slept for two days.

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Tim cranks out Berlin Chair to close proceedings.

I could have stood all night, listening to Tim Rogers talk about football, his childhood growing up in Adelaide, his love for North Melbourne, and the day at the Sacred Heart Mission’s Community Cup, playing for the Espy Rockdogs against the 3RRR/PBS Megahertz, when he took an overhead mark and went back and kicked a goal, in front of his child and several thousand spectators.

I had most recently seen Tim Rogers on stage at the Regal Ballroom in Northcote, performing an evening of musical bohemia during last year’s football finals, and it left me flat. Not so last Thursday at the Corner Hotel. At Presentation Night #2 he was at his engaging and compelling best. He told stories about his father who on weekends was a field umpire; about being a teenager in the Sturt Football Club cheer squad (with Paul Bagshaw’s number on his duffle coat); and about life as a North supporter.

He sang a song about the Paragon Café in Goulburn – a Greek institution where I stop regularly on drives up-and-down the Hume, usually after a booth and lambs’ fry on the menu.

And showman that he is, Rogers provided the night’s two enduring memories. The first was an achingly raw monologue about life in Adelaide as a young man with an ongoing mental illness, and how for him salvation could be found in being passionate about something. “Live a life with heart,” he implored.

And the second came with the night’s final curtain. He picked up a guitar, sat on a stool front-of-stage, the lights dimmed, and he played Berlin Chair. I was 24 all-over again, and I didn’t want the night to end.

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byrne
Before this season began I received an email from Sydney-based Richmond supporter Richard Byrne. It contained this photograph:

His annotated caption: “Rome, January 2014. TOOK THIS WITH YOU AND THE BLOG AND THE TIGER DIARY AND RFC IN GENERAL ALL IN MIND. I OF COURSE TOOK IT AS A (GOOD) OMEN.”
Early last month, Richard emailed again with other tidings I’d like to share. “Been disappointing times for us tiges, battling on with both injuries and a hostile draw against us. None of us thought we’d be sitting 2-5 after Rd7, did we? What a great time for a bye, though…”

 

This present season… you can see us with a mope,

hanging from a rope

if we’re behind then we don’t mind 

we’ll fight and fight and…….. hope…….

So where to from here?

Where is our mythically powerful team?

Who are the characters – The Captain Bloods, The Rolls Royce King of Harts’ ? The Winners?

Who can pull the sword from this terrible stone?

Where are the merry men to lead us out of this dark forest, and who in turn shall lead them?

We need a man who has shed blood on the battlefield. Shows loyalty, follows orders, and leads only by example.

He wears the handsome, scarring near-death glory of a shuddering jousting head clash.

He risks head and skin and draws swoon and envy and respect and admiration at every turn.

Who is this Ace in our deck?

ARISE SIR RANCELOT !

and with him rise the cast of this fabled fairytale forward. 

Sir Ivan of Mullet, David of Astbury, The Jack of Riewolts, The Bacchus of Houli and arise too The Chaplin of Troy.

Arise Edwards The First

Arise Edwards The Second.

Arise the Two Blond Bombshells, Morris and Ellis, the Three Scarlet Pimpernels, Jackson, Vlastuin and Conca, the Four Scotch Guards, McDonough, McBean and McIntosh and Nathan@39Gordon and Nathan @42Foley

Arise The Cotchin of Trent, Sir Tyrone, Shaun of the Grigg, The Noble Batchelor, Doubtless Thomas, Grimes, Big Ben, Biggles, Lucky Pets, T42with SamLloyd, Chris the Elder, Flip Delidio, Service Hampson,  The Martin Lad, 

Intoducing Ben-John Lennon, Todd Elton-John, Bro’Hanlon, The Bigger O and the Matts Dea and Arnot,

Arise(please) Chris The Knight of Knights Knee.

But arise and go quickly good men of Richmond, 

for constant and confusing dangers are alurk.

Awrys things may go, you know, when the Jester is the Jake is the King.

Richard contributes to a blog (thebackpocket.blogspot.com.au) run by Mathilde de Hauteclocque, known well-enough to many Football Almanac readers. His sporadic contributions are filed under ‘The Tiger Diary’ which, he says, are a “slightly loopy look at the riches and routs of Richmond.” 

In these strange days, maybe loopiness is what we all need.

Tiger tiger, burning (not at all) bright

Email: dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

Dugald 03/06/2014Filed Under: dugald_14, front, Uncategorized

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