My high-school football coach was one of those blokes who could instantaneously transform from mild-mannered geography teacher to manic, hot-gospel zealot. Foaming at the mouth, he’d shower us callow sportsmen with a fine litany of motivational clichés. Two of my favourites were “A champion team will always beat a team of champions” and “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog”. (Come to think of it, this latter exhortation isn’t too far removed from Tommy Hafey’s famous line about the ‘tigerishness of a wounded bloody tiger’.) Now, decades down the track, I’m reminded of these fine motivational mantra because both of ‘em applied to the Tigers’ inspired performances throughout the recent finals series.

A month after the big event, we’re still pinching ourselves. Richmond Tigers are reigning premiers. How the f#@% did that really happen?

I watched the Grand Final at a beer hall with a big screen, just round the corner from my place in Fitzroy. There was the odd table of Crow supporters. My table accommodated the noisiest bunch of Tiger fans in the joint. The projected TV image was in the wrong aspect ratio, so the players looked a bit squatter than they should have. But we were nervous and excited so we didn’t really care. Some of the more impartial characters in my grand final coterie opined that the game was no great spectacle, but of course we Tiger fans disagreed. As the game went on we became overcome with excitement and joy. The odd involuntary tear was shed. And the Crowbots turned out to be a mob of chocolate teapots, dropping their collective bundle with surprising alacrity.

Like many Tiger fans long starved of on-field glory, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time over recent weeks reliving those glorious three games our team reeled off at the business end of the season. These three football matches inspire awe and wonder, most particularly because our team played with such impressive self-belief and never looked like losing, even in those inevitable periods when the run of play was going against us. For a club with such a well-deserved reputation for choking and capitulating in big moments, this indefatigable spirit seemed truly amazing. Who were these manic men in the yellow and black? Let me sing the praises of them all because they were simply magnificent, and then let me extol a few in particular.

Our September team was unchanging and rock-solid. Everyone seemed to play out of their skin. Everyone played for their teammates. No-one shirked a bump, a tackle, a smother or a knock-on. Everyone seemed to run like a maniac from opening bounce to final siren. There were never any passengers and, to my eye, the difference between our acknowledged stars and our so-called second-tier players was largely negligible.

Jacob Townsend exhibited an incredible knack for bobbing up in the right place at the right time, always calm and collected, whether slotting a goal or driving an opponent into the turf.

Jack Graham materialised as a fully-formed, nerveless man-child, seemingly hatched from nowhere to operate as fearsome tackling machine and performer of perfectly executed, timely cameos.

Trent Cotchin transformed himself from silky virtuoso to bloody-minded maniac, throwing himself head-first into countless contests that he simply refused to lose. For a guy whose hair never seems to move, our Trent brings time-warp closing speed and mad-dog endeavour to his game. (And then, talking to the TV reporters afterwards, he can calmly put forward a string of almost proper sentences!)

Jack Riewoldt was a phenomenal on-field leader, seemingly filling the role of at least two key forwards for most of the season and especially throughout the finals run. He kicked only four goals across those September games, but he set up many more for other players and exerted enormous influence in each game. Like Cotchin, he’s learned how to focus his immense passion as a productive force, always inspiring his teammates.

I worried, last year, that Shane Edwards (one of my personal favourites) had somehow lost the magic spark, that ability he has to extract the football with freakish speed and make something from nothing. So it’s been heart-warming to see him back at his best, performing subtle miracles fast enough to be frequently missed by TV commentators blinking at the wrong time. For a bloke with sleepy eyes, it’s incredible how he seems to have a spare set in the back of his head.

‘The Human Meatball’ seems an unfortunate nickname, but Dion Prestia does exhibit an impressive ability to just keep on rolling, often taking the ball with him. He’s a perpetual motion machine, and his occasional lack of polish is more than offset by his relentless ability to win the ball and keep it moving in a Tigerly direction.

I’ve noted many commentators opining that our team has been incredibly lucky to avoid injuries in season 2017. There’s some truth in this, but also some significant counter evidence: Ben Griffiths effectively going down for the rest of the season in round 2, Reece Conca ditto at some early stage of the year, Shane Edwards missing a run of games, Riewoldt out for a couple with a freak eye injury. Bachar and Nank both missed games through suspension. Nick Vlaustin missed nine weeks with a broken shoulder, but his courage, skill and creativity was phenomenal once he got back on the park. He played a critical role in our defence and was superb in all the September games.

There are so many other players whose praises I might sing, including those we’ve heard much about already in every other forum (Dusty, Alex, Bachar, the so-called ‘mosquito fleet’) and those less copiously eulogised (Lambert, Astbury, Grigg, etc, etc.) but, as I say, the point is that every member of our team was truly magnificent. ‘A champion team…’, as my old footy coach would say.

Walking ‘round my inner-city Melbourne neighbourhood this week, I’ve been much impressed by spontaneous demonstrations of Tigerishness in front yards and shop windows. Lovely gestures of passion and hope, at a glorious remove from crass commerce. Here are just a few of my favourites:

Front window altarpiece, Fitzroy

Florist shop window display, Fitzroy

Weird poster in newsagent window, Collingwood

Excited garden gnome, Fitzroy

I hope that other members of the TTBB community are enjoying similar demonstrations of Tigerish enthusiasm in their own neighbourhoods.

PS: As excited and caught up as I am in Tiger fever this week, I even subjected myself to a stretch of Channel 7’s excruciating Brownlow medal TV event. The two things that struck me most were:

• Dusty’s grace and charm in dealing with the creepy attentions of Bruce McAvaney.
• The shameless and disturbing saturation of gambling advertisements, leavened only by token pleas to ‘bet responsibly.’

I don’t claim to be a world expert on parenting, but I’m pleased that I’ve brought up my son Otto to be emotionally resilient and prepared for the inevitable vicissitudes of life. For one thing, I made him listen to a lot of country music throughout his formative years. He’s learned that many things – especially affairs of the heart – tend to start well but end badly. As well, I insisted that he align himself with the Richmond Football Club. That’s just the way thing are at our place – football club allegiance is something you inherit, not something you get to choose on the basis of a personal childish whim. And, fortunately for all of us in the tribe of yellow-and-black, following the Tigers has turned out to be a richly rewarding, character building experience. We’ve learned never to build up unrealistic expectations. We’ve developed a philosophical attitude towards the disappointments that life inevitably throws in our path. We’ve learned to delight in the absurdities of near misses, where defeat is miraculously plucked from the teeth of victory. We understand the meaning of exquisite pain, the pleasure of returning again and again to pick around the same old scab. We appreciate the virtues of righteous suffering. (“Haven’t we suffered enough?” Otto occasionally asks me. “Apparently not” I wisely reply.) We’ve developed perspective, attitude and ironic capacity that those pitiable Hawthorn supporters, for example – those soft-bellied, fair-weather sailing turd-bird devotees – will never truly understand.

Cycling home from Saturday’s game against the Swans, we ruminated yet again on our team’s wonderful capacity for heartbreak. I suggest that overall, we were probably the better team on the day. Otto responds that, were that truly the case, we would have won the game. It’s a delightful conundrum.

I can’t remember who it was that once referred to Richo, our one great shining light throughout so many otherwise forlorn seasons, as the Hamlet of Australian football – immensely gifted but, somehow, forever shrinking from greatness. I always liked that description and thought it to be true and insightful. This year, it seems to me that our whole team has taken on the Hamlet mantle. But for a few fatal character flaws that have seen us lose four games by a combined total of nineteen points, we could be sitting a couple of games clear on top of the ladder. Instead, the inevitable logic of tragic drama sees us sitting several rungs down the table.

The Tiges played some exciting footy at the MCG on Saturday and then, just a few times too often, one of our blokes would make a clumsy skill error and turn the ball over in a dangerous part of the ground. The Swans kept plodding away in a boring, annoying and persistent manner, exploiting the chinks in our armour. They had too many tedious players with boring names like Jones, Smith, Lloyd and Newman. I didn’t like any of ‘em. Meanwhile, Sir Rancelot was clearly the most splendid player on the park, rendering that big bloke that we passed over in the 2004 draft as a misfiring pop-gun. Our other tall soldiers down back were similarly magnificent – David Astbury showing off his fly-paper hands and Dylan Grimes his Inspector Gadget extendable arms to great effect. Will-o’-the-wisp Shai Bolton was sublime for the first half of the game but then seemed to evaporate entirely in the second. Captain Trent’s hairstyle was immaculate and unmoving and Dusty’s tatts were as impressive as ever, but neither player managed to break the game open in the manner that we hoped they might. Bachar’s beard swooped hither and thither, but his raking left foot didn’t always work to great effect. Players like Short were courageous but, alas, often just too short. Our boys produced many moments of lightning-fast magic, but somehow never enough. I might well compare this game to a bitter-sweet country song but, really, it was more like a C&W oratorio.

Otto is now seventeen-years-old and, quite naturally, increasingly independent and resistant to parental direction. At some point around the beginning of the footy season I asked him to do some chore or other around the house. He replied that the chances of this happening were perhaps only slightly greater than finding a solution to the problem of global warming. Or to Richmond winning the premiership. Furthermore, he said, on the overall table of probability the Tiges saluting in September seemed to be the least likely of these events. Which, depending on how you look at it, might be an observation that’s tragically sublime. Or, alternatively, perhaps it’s simply tragic…

Malcolm McKinnon
20 June 2017