“Barracking for the Bulldogs has always demanded a certain unique perspective,” says Roger Franklin in Sons of the ’Scray, an essay about place and identity, and a football club in Melbourne’s west. “A good clubman will look into a room packed with manure and know, just know, that there must be a lovely pony in there somewhere.”

Early Saturday morning I caught a train to the west. A Sudanese woman sat opposite – barefoot, hair braided – as we passed railway yards, grain silos at North Melbourne; the broad shoulders of cranes at the docks. We crossed the Maribyrnong, we left the city behind.

I was off to see a game at Whitten Oval – the first-round match between new stand-alone VFL teams Richmond and Footscray – and under bright skies it felt like a return to something cherished that’s long since gone. Football was back at the old Western Oval. The Tiges were playing. I had to be there.

“There used to be a pub there,” said a man in red-white-and-blue, at the newly-developed West Footscray Station, with the excitement that comes before a game, and returning to a place redolent with fond memories. Talk is of past games, the length of quarters, goals kicked. “He was a big man,” says one. “He could run like the wind.”

A brass band greets barrackers at the stadium. A tour coach arrives, offloading Bulldog supporters. For away fans, it’s a gold coin entry donation. Gates are open for all to walk onto the ground. Food vans – gelato, pizza, smoked Kransky sausages – are parked in a pocket. A crowd gathers, dressed in colours of identity, pleased to be here. It feels as festive as a school fete.

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If I could ignore the game between these two clubs on Saturday afternoon – indoors and televised – I would. But in good times and bad, til death do us part. Consolations must be found in loss, to give it meaning. We hit the front with three-and-a-bit to go. Jack lifted our spirits. Our souls soared. Then in a heartbeat, all was lost and for now the season looks long and filled with shadows.

Brandon Ellis panicked at the death, clutching at falling knives. There is gallows humour in being a Richmond supporter. We have our unique perspective also.

A last-gasp misplaced tackle on Dan Giansiracusa – the game’s oldest player, its wiliest, and now its match-winner – did not of itself lose the game. If only Troy Chaplin hadn’t turned-over the ball in the game’s third minute. If only Bob Murphy didn’t shimmy around our Reece on the wing in the second quarter. If only Ryan Griffen didn’t beat us in a two-on-one in the goal square. If only Dave Astbury’s errant handball to Chris Newman in the last 20 seconds of the first half found its target. If only Trent kicked straighter. If only their prodigal teenager, Jack Macrae, had been opposed when marking clear in front. If only the ball wasn’t cleared from our forward 50 so easily and swept down the other end so effortlessly. If only Shaun Grigg didn’t kick inside to Nathan Gordon, and if only our debutante had stood firmer in the tackle. If only Bachar hit one of our targets on the last play of the third quarter. If only the third quarter ran longer. If only we could have the last quarter all over again, especially the last three minutes.

It was death by a thousand cuts, none of which makes defeat easier.

But watching a replay late Saturday night, it was the welfare of Nick Vlaustin that concerned me more than the loss. On returning home from Footscray on Saturday afternoon, the game was underway and our gun teenager had been subbed-out as a result of a head knock in a marking contest in the first quarter. The telecast showed a replay. It looked brutal.

What I didn’t know until late Saturday night is that Vlaustin stayed on the field after the knock. A club has a duty-of-care to its players; it failed in its obligations.

Having incurred a head injury in amateur football – playing centre-half-forward for Sydney University, head over the ball, bang, cleaned up by a malicious opponent, six weeks on the sidelines for me – I know about concussion. I know of the sensation of losing consciousness. I know of the shock. I know of the nausea. I know of the recurring headaches. I know how it knocks you about.

I know also that one knock to the head causes swelling in the brain, a physiological response to protect the organ. And I know that a subsequent knock – while the brain is trying to cushion itself from further harm – can cause irreparable injury. That is, a second blow can cause permanent brain damage.

Watching the replay well after the game had gone and the result known, every time Nick Vlaustin went near the ball my heart was in my mouth. What was he doing out there? He shouldn’t have been on the field. He shouldn’t have been in harm’s way. The AFL has a contingency for such a scenario. Our club’s medical and coaching staff should have known of the dangers.

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I had gone to the old Western Oval for reasons of nostalgia. I had gone also to support Richmond’s fledgling VFL team, to watch a game of footy in the suburbs, and to meet on the terraces with two men – John and Craig – each of whom write blogs about football and its place in Melbourne culture that in these past two seasons I’ve come admire and enjoy. Both live and work in the west. Both are Tigers.

At season’s beginning I again found myself at theholybootsfootballemporium.com and lost in one of John’s blog posts. It was his musing on Punt Road Oval, filled with his inquiry and archival photos and personal anecdotes, and family snaps of him as a child with Barry Rawlings. At the end of the post is the reason why his stories about football seem so much richer than all the white noise offered by much of the corporate football media industry. It is a photograph of a brick. He souvenired it when the Cricketer’s Stand at Punt Road was demolished. It is a memento of place and identity and shared history, and I think it’s wonderful.

Then last week I found myself immersed in a two-part history of football at the Western Oval, compiled by Craig on his popular The Footy Maths Institute (see footymaths.blogspot.com.au). As these things do, it lead to a 37-minute Youtube clip of the last quarter of a 1978 game between Footscray and St Kilda in which the home team kicked 12 goals to tally-up a then record score of 33. 15. (213), to St Kilda’s 16. 10. (106). Commentated by Geoff Leek and Peter Booth, it’s compelling archival footage.

Then as is my way, I was diverted by a Youtube clip of Peter Landy on Channel 7’s Big League, crossing to Scot Palmer for his ‘Palmer’s Punchlines’ segment. It was from the early 80s, and had Herald and Weekly Times sub-editors in the background wearing cardigans and pouring the kettle for a cuppa. Here was pre-digital football, before all the big money and the preoccupation with marketing and spin, and it seemed honest and raw and real.

Old wooden seats at Whitten Oval, painted blue and red with white numbers, speak of this bygone era. Canary Island date palms at the ground’s Barkly Street end add to the day’s aura of festivity.

I start the game on a bitumen terrace down the railway end, and our Ed Barlow kicks the game’s first goal, and the weekend begins nicely. Barlow played 26 games with the Sydney Swans, then eight with the Western Bulldogs, and was recruited to Tigerland from Old Scotch last year. He’s a 26-year-old tall utility, and wearing the team’s yellow strip with a black sash, he looks a footballer.

Footscray kick the next two goals, then we kick two, and a man walking along the terrace hands me a sticker. It reads: “We are Footscray – fly the flag”. I ask whether he’s from the supporter lobby group, Footscray Not Western Bulldogs, and he says no. His name is Bill Andrew and he was born in Hobart, where he lives still and runs a café at Salamanca Place. “I tried to barrack for Collingwood, but it didn’t stick,” he says of his football allegiance. “I guess I went for the underdogs.”

Now he’s in Melbourne for the weekend for the footy, and to hand out his stickers. “We’ve lost our identity when we lost our name,” he says. “We’ve extended our nickname but it’s made no difference with membership. There was a mystique about Footscray.”

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The Richmond Football Club, I’ve come to realise, is burdened by its history. Reading about Footscray last week – about its abattoirs and glue-factories, and how the Great Depression scoured the west of its jobs and hope – there is a truism that when you’ve got little, you’ve got not much to lose. When the Tricolours – the Bulldogs name was not officially adopted until 1938 – beat Essendon in a special game played on 4 October 1924, pitting the premiers of the VFA and VFL against each other for a first time, it heralded the arrival of Footscray, North Melbourne and Hawthorn into a new 12-team league.

After that historic game, a local newspaper said “no Footscray player would ever again need to buy shoes, as they were carried everywhere shoulder high.”

Visiting Whitten Oval on Saturday, I see this famous pennant in a hallway. In the 90 years since, the club has won only one piece of silverware; the 1954 Grand Final, when a team comprising a market gardener, plumbers, a couple of carpenters, storemen and a butcher, were twice as good as Melbourne. They won 15. 12 (102), to 7. 9. (51).

Those with the heaviest pockets build the highest fences. They fear outsiders. They guard jealously what they have.

Like all Tiger supporters from my generation, I’ve known of glory days. I was a child at the 1980 and 1982 grand finals. I was raised on a diet of Francis Bourke and Kevin Bartlett and Michael Roach. I was aware of a greater legacy, of names like Royce Hart and Jack Dyer, and of golden years that filled my club’s trophy cabinet with premierships. There was a culture of hard-nosed success. Failure wasn’t considered.

But these past 30 years have offered a counter narrative, and it’s shaken belief and confidence for most supporters. We have had something – or we’ve heard the stories of when we had something – and now it’s long gone, and truly none of us can tell if ever we’ll get it back.

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Trent Cotchin on Saturday afternoon was like Atlas, the primordial Titan who in Greek mythology held up the celestial sphere. He has the weight of our club on his shoulders. Already, he looks stooped. I worry it’s a burden too great. He was at the bottom of packs, he kept running and contesting, he who kept willing the play. For how much longer can he do this, if few others are to follow?

All things being equal – as they are in the controlled environment of Etihad Stadium – on Saturday afternoon there were some rays of light.

Halfway through the second quarter, the Channel 7 broadcast displayed a graphic that looked like a box of donuts. Jack’s stats; a column of zeros. Nothing could be more damning – and humiliating – for a professional footballer. His first touch came with 40 seconds to go in the half. It looked to be a handball, although none could really be sure.

To Jack’s credit, and our blessed relief, he turned the game’s course in the second half. A goal assist to Tyrone, a fearless leap for a one-handed mark, and he was in the contest and up on confidence. Gordon’s deftly crumbed running goal soon after had the blood pumping. Football is a game played in the head, but it’s a game also of the heart. What is football without passion? When Jack shows that desire, it can lift a stadium. It can carry our hearts. It almost won us the game.

Steve Morris was, again, fearless in the clinches. Orren Stephenson battled manfully in the ruck, breaking even with his All-Australian counterpart (and again showing how far a big heart can carry you). Dylan Grimes was elegant in defence, with his sweetly-timed fist. Ben Griffiths has proved the season’s revelation. We all knew he could kick a country mile, and had a graceful leap, and now he’s put the two together. His belief is back. He’s been our most consistent focal point up forward. His long-range goal in the last quarter was a beauty.

It concerns me that again we relied on the brawn of Matt Thomas for much of our grunt work. It was good having Jacko back, but it was Thomas who mostly put his hand up and head over the ball. Last year he won the Magarey Medal in the SANFL, was delisted by Port Adelaide, and until a few months ago was on our rookie list. Good luck to him. But what does it say about our list that these past three games we’ve so much depended on his strong-willed body work?

It concerned me also that when Brandon Ellis was dumped unnecessarily hard over the boundary line by Jake Stringer midway through the second quarter, no Richmond player remonstrated. Here was an opportunity for gamesmanship. The Bulldogs led 47 to 22, had a run-on, and here was a Doggy showing his muscle. Ellis had a right to be aggrieved with a tackle that continued once the ball was out of play. It was a chance to square them up, show we’re not to be bullied, and support one of our youngest players. More importantly, it was a chance to halt momentum.

Push and shove and wrestle, and let Jake Stringer know about it. In the umpire’s mind, perhaps we had the high moral ground. Did his tackle go too far? Here was a perfect excuse to try and out a pause on play. Instead, the game continued, they kicked another two unanswered goals; it was a match-winning lead.

Where was Jake King when we needed an enforcer? His arms shadowed in fresh tattoos, he looks a shadow of his former self.

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After quarter-time it was one-way traffic at the Western Oval. Guttural chants of “Foots-cray” rang around the EJ Whitten Stand. Their players were too big and too strong and too fast. We fumbled. Dropped marks in the forward half, and at times looked second-rate. It could be a long season for this new venture.

“Hit a target, then belt someone, ya peanut,” yelled a spectator to Brad Helbig, after his turnover in the forward pocket. Jake Batchelor got reported. The team lost by nearly 20 goals.

I made my way to the players’ bench to read the body language near the final siren. We were outplayed all day. We got smashed. “Finish this off boys,” called an assistant coach. There seemed a lot of strutting, a lot of false bravado.

After the game a middle-aged woman joined me at the fence and I asked if she was the mother of a player. Turns out she was an acquaintance of Aaron Davey – out injured – who she knew through friends who had spent time in the Kimberley. She was a Dees supporter. I asked her appraisal of the game. “If this is what the seconds are like,” she said, “you can only hope the firsts don’t get injured.”

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Walking down the railway ramp, I strike a conversation with a seventy-something Bulldogs supporter decked out in her club colours. She’s off to the game. I wish her good luck, but not too much luck. We agree her team needs the win more than mine. “West Coast, first round, thirty degree heat, we didn’t stand a chance,” she says. “They handpick it, the AFL. We don’t put bums on seats.”

Richmond Football Club had an operating budget of $44.8 million last season, the Western Bulldogs ran on $34 million. Our club has more than twice as many members. Nearly six months ago, we beat them by 60 points under the roof. On Saturday afternoon, we lost by two points.

In all my time visiting Punt Road these past two seasons, never have I felt as welcome as I was at Whitten Oval on Saturday morning. Partly, it’s because of the design of the stadiums. Whitten Oval’s redevelopment invites people into an open foyer, from which they can freely access the playing arena, a large reception area, a bar, a shop, and numerous other facilities. It invites curiosity. It feels open to all.

At Punt Road, the most obvious entry-point is into the Superstore. There’s a mouse-hole entrance – manned usually by security – to the social rooms. And there’s a separate entrance to the club offices. It feels like the architecture of exclusion. There is no space where visitors feel as though they can freely walk-in and assemble.

At three-quarter time in the VFL, our boys getting a roasting in the fierce sun, the pack gathered around the Footscray huddle. Tiger supporters had dwindled. Well-meaning Richmond staff cordoned off the players with a yellow chain. Footscray had no such encumbrance.

For better or worse, on Sunday morning, it was this barrier – real and imagined – that for me came to epitomise the difference between these two clubs. Theirs was deliberately open to its community, to its faithful, where those who came could mingle and feel a sense of inclusion. They could smell the sweat of their players, and listen to the rousing voice of the coach. They could be a part of something, and participate in a great football ritual.

Our mentality was to put a chain between the players and us fans. We had come to barrack. What we encountered was a fence of fear.

Prove me wrong, Richmond. Rebut this criticism. I love my team and would do almost anything to see it succeed and play regular finals football. I want our players to reach their full potential. Turn my appraisal against me – and Collingwood – this Friday night. And if you do, your feet will never touch the ground. I’ll be the first in line to lift and carry you through the streets of Richmond, high on our shoulders.

Tiger tiger burning bright

Email:  dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

Eight minutes to go in the last quarter with Richmond holding the slimmest lead, did anyone at the MCG think we’d win? Honest answers, please. Do you think Damien Hardwick, leaving the coach’s box for the boundary to try anything to break what seemed our wretched fate, do you think he thought we’d win? Do you think any in the cheer squad – TV cameras cutting to their forlorn countenance, to confirm a tired narrative of Richmond heartbreak – do you think they’d think we’d win? Do you think any in the club’s marketing department, any of the players’ friends and wives and girlfriends and parents, any of the fitness staff, the club’s property steward, the good doorman who drives up from Bacchus Marsh to man the rooms, the water-carriers on the boundary, the assistant coaches, Jake King on the bench in a red vest, the club’s Twitter guy, its new president Peggy O’Neal – do you think any of them thought we’d win?

A minute earlier, when Bryce Gibbs caressed the ball through the goals with a kick weighted exquisitely from the boundary pocket, to reduce the margin to seven points, do you think even the players thought we’d win? Honest answers, please.

And yet, and yet, and yet… we won!

Dusty dribbled a goal at the very death, at the other end, and it was as a punctuation mark sending us into delirium. Every able-bodied Richmond fan was on their feet. Strangers were hugged. Beer was spilt. Tears were shed. Fists were clenched. Stomachs unknotted. We have not known joy like this for the longest time. In a one-on-one contest before the goals, clear in space, the ball bouncing and two men twisting and turning – as if in slow-motion, as if all the night’s drama were distilled in this moment – our man was Dusty, and our hearts fluttered, knowing this night was ours.

We won! We won! We won!

It was our night of euphoria and blessed relief. Our night to stand in the aisles and sing our song like never before. Our night to skip home, eager for the replay. Our night when hardly could we sleep, thrilled to be alive, gladdened to know we wake in the morning and our spirits would sing.

Here was the type of win – with an unknowable belief when all seemed lost – that seasons can be made of. Both for the team, and for all us fans.

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Tiger Tiger Burning Bright has housekeeping.

We’ve ambitions for this year and if we set them free, we hope they’ll come true. For us all, it’s easiest if they’re listed. Each is a box, needing to be ticked. None are unreasonable.

• TTBB is forming a David Astbury Appreciation Society (DAAS). This was mooted before last Thursday’s game (on Twitter, I’d put out expressions-of-interest), but can now be confirmed. Dave is our man. He has all the makings of a fine footballer. Poise. Athleticism. Courage. Character. The society will arrange a trip to Tatyoon. We will report on his local footy club. We will inquire about his upbringing. We trust he will play every game this year. We are in the process of organising office bearers and a patron. We hope to fund our activities by producing limited-edition DAAS T-shirts. We hope all will contribute.
• TTBB wants a coffee with Dimma. At my home, at his place, in a café. Statistics will not be discussed (how many hard-spoon gets into the sugar bowl). We will talk instead about fatherhood, about ideas of masculinity, about being forty-something, about getting the best from a group of young men. It would be half-an-hour of his life. It would mean the world to me, and to the many fans who read this blog.
• TTBB would like to be photographed between Bachar Houli and Nick Vlastuin. See About Us for details.

• TTBB would be eternally thankful if associates of Richmond’s ‘Grog Squad’ were to pass the hat and collect spare change for a spare ticket to the footy. See Tiger Love for details. I’ll stand at the back.
• TTBB wants Dusty to win the Brownlow, this year.
• TTBB wants Liam McBean to play a game, this year.
• TTBB wants us to beat Collingwood.
• And Geelong.
• TTBB needs a Conca cuddle.
• TTBB wants rain on the day we play Hawthorn.
• TTBB wants us to win a final, in September’s second half.

• Last season, many of my most enjoyable times at the football were with strangers, including Richard from Adelaide, Dave from Splitters Creek, and Troy Chaplin’s parents, who drive down most weekends from Maryborough. This season, TTBB would like to sit at the footy with the parents or partner of another Richmond player. We have no preference, but if Megan Gale isn’t available, we like the idea of the Griggs, Ellises or Vlastuins. Again, see Tiger Love for details.
• TTBB would be much obliged to sit with any supporters who might have a spare ticket (if it must be in a corporate box with smoked salmon canapés, so be it).
• TTBB wants for a guardian angel. For at least one game, he wants to sit in the cheer squad, behind Trout.

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 I’m not as nervous as previous years, wrote B2 on the Tigers v Blues Gameday thread on the Punt Road End fan forum. I only vomited twice this morning.

May the football gods shine on our poor tormented souls tonight added Tigerflag2008.

Tommo37 contributed: Really really concerned about tonight……

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Two years ago, on the morning of the season’s opening game, The Age newspaper published an op-ed piece I wrote that began:

“Last week I paid $185 in an exercise of hope. I’ll know soon if it was money well spent. Funds were from the family budget, although not altogether with my partner’s blessing. She says the product’s faulty and causes despair. Certainly, it has a record of loss-making. Last week I spent perfectly good money on membership of the Richmond Football Club.”

Two years ago, in my first autumn back in Melbourne after years of living north of the Barassi Line, I could hardly breathe before the season’s first game. I was spent. The occasion got the better of me.

Two years ago, my partner knew little about football, and cared even less. We met in Sydney, late in the last season of my playing days. I had been concussed. She worked at a university, as a historian. Soon after our introduction, she wrote a book about the hopes of African Americans in Harlem in the inter-war period. We moved to Melbourne for her work. This city’s obsession with its winter pastime left her bemused.

All changed last winter. With her blessing, and support, she allowed me to indulge in my passion for Richmond. She subsidised me. She looked after our two young boys while I was at games. She encouraged me to keep writing, even though my efforts seemed at times to be discouraged by the club. She did more to support Richmond than anyone I know.

And then, in the balm of Thursday night, the air thick with humidity, something happened that’s not happened before: we went to the football together. I still can’t believe it. Ours were plum seats, on the second level of the Great Southern Stand, in the reserved 3121 coterie section (tickets courtesy of the Capital Tigers Supporters Group – more about that later), with perfect viewing of the game’s first four goals; to Titch, Brandon, Dusty and Cotch. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

“I’m your lucky charm,” she turns and says to me.

It’s our night out, and my goodness it’s fun. Tyrone kicks his first goal – after his push-and-shove before the bounce, after his head knock, after all the criticism levelled at him since the Gold Coast game – and relief is palpable. High-fives are shared among team mates. Reece Conca gives him the obligatory cuddle. Nick Vlastuin spears a pass to Lids, who goals from outside 50, and the TV cameras cut to Malthouse – the white-haired old sage – and he looks flustered. Dusty looks as strong as an ox; unbeatable whenever the ball is delivered to his advantage.

Applause for Dylan Grimes in the second quarter is so crisp when he punches the ball and runs it to the boundary, it sounds like hailstones on a metal roof. When Brandon Ellis sizes up his second shot, and waits… and waits… and bang – goals from the boundary from distance, all those with yellow-and-black hearts see the future and see it looks good. Jack takes a great pack mark. “Dusty one-on-one,” yells a man beside me. “YOU’RE NOT GONNA BEAT HIM!”

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Last week I held out my cap for a ticket, and readers of TTBB responded generously. On Thursday afternoon I rode my bicycle through pouring rain – passing Punt Road and the MCG – to a city building where I met a lovely woman who had two surplus tickets she could give me. I could’ve kissed her, but it would’ve been awkward. I was hot, sweaty, wet.

I told her how I had arranged for babysitters (thanks dad, aunty Sar!), and my partner was coming along. It was our date night, at the footy.

Darren Crick, president of the Capital Tigers Supporter Group, then contacted me, also offering spares. A sponsor of theirs couldn’t attend; he had two tickets in the 3121 section, with access to the Hassett, Ryder and Miller Rooms, where Dale Weightman was interviewing Mark ‘Wilbur’ Williams, Dan Jackson and Ivan Maric before the game. When it rains, it pours.

Phone calls were made and I found a willing taker for the other seats. We put our boys to bed, strode to the station, and made it to the ground just in time to take a ‘selfie’ – and pinch ourselves – before the first bounce. Never mind we missed the pre-match speeches, we made it to the ball game.

At half-time I took my partner down to the ground, behind the goals, to meet Trout in the cheer squad. We found our way back to a 3121 bar just as ‘Flea’ was finishing interviewing Kel Moore. I asked the former player why he wasn’t Richmond’s runner anymore, and he said something about a new business venture keeping him busy on weekends.

Malcolm Irvine, president of the Gippsland Richmond Supporter Group, came over and said hello, and explained he couldn’t hear most of what was said in the interview, but picked up that he’d bought into a pub somewhere in Richmond. If any TTBB readers know of which boozer, please let me know. We might be looking for a venue to launch our David Astbury Appreciation Society.

My partner and I shared a beer as the game resumed. It was full-strength, in a glass. “Tell Darren I thank him for that,” she said.

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“Jesus, MORRIS, get ON HIM! Ya four yards OFF HIM!”

Halfway through the third quarter and the mood within the coterie group shifts. As generous as some are in their support for the club, they can be brutal in their appraisal of players. I’ve always paid general admission. Rarely have I sat among such a partisan crowd. There was no moderating influence of opposing views. It doesn’t help that umpiring decisions go against us. Richmond people jump on our players when they make mistakes. At times, it makes me uncomfortable. It’s like a blood sport.

Then with four minutes left in the third quarter, wondering still who’ll stand up for the Tigers, I lose my composure, joining the chorus of complaint.

I had watched our game against Gold Coast in country Victoria (at my mother’s house in Camperdown, in Paul Broderick country) and identified two moments when the game was lost.

The first was with 6.04 left in the third quarter – the match at a stalemate, us five-points down – and from a goal kick-out, Dusty went long to the centre square to a two-on-one in our favour. Chris Newman was at the drop, against Clay Cameron on debut, with Shane Edwards in support. We had the upper hand, so long as the ball got to Titch. Instead, Cameron sized up the danger and outmuscled Newie in the contest – he went to ground – punching the ball back from where it came, into the arms of Jaeger O’Meara (gun No. 2), who slipped a handball to Gary Ablett (gun No. 1), who goaled (the first for the quarter).

The second fatal play was five minutes into the last, when Ricky Petterd on our forward 50 misjudged the ball’s trajectory, watching it land in the arms of Dion Prestia, who took off down the wing, had three bounces, and centred to Sam Day who had the sit on Astbury. He goaled. “Terrific slingshot footy,” said Richo. Gold Coast was home.

With four-minutes left in the third on Thursday night, it was déjà vu. Petterd again misjudged the ball’s flight on our forward 50; it got over the back and into the arms of Chris Yarran, who took off through the centre, had three bounces, and kicked to the advantage of Jarrad Waite, ahead of Astbury. Thank goodness his set shot missed.

“PETTERD’S MADE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE,” I exclaim, to no-one in particular. The night had gotten to me. I couldn’t believe Dimma had let this happen again. Our player under the ball, and over-committing, and opening up the play for them.

When Lachie Henderson, from behind a mark in the last quarter, kicked to the top of the square to an unattended Troy Menzel, I was ropeable. In my mind, we were condemned. The game was over. Nothing good could come of Richmond. No wonder so many pity us.

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Never have I known a last quarter like it. We were consumed by the fear of failure. Our forward line vanished. Our midfielders largely went missing. Stevie Morris – who had so many wonderful games last year, and is such a much-loved warrior – was having another of his recurring navy blue nightmares. Carlton had all the run, all the playmakers, all the shots on goal. The TV cameras cut to Trout, in the cheer squad with his luminous yellow wig, looking like a clown readying for tears.

Those around us turned their barbs from the players, to our coach. At least one party upped and left, unable to endure the torment. “Outcoached again,” said a man behind me, as if offering his opinion for others to approve.

I sought comfort instead in identifying players who’d stand up in adversity. I needed something to believe in.

Shaun Hampson in the ruck, and Matt Thomas around the stoppages, have each now strung together two commendable games for their new club. Bachar Houli kept running hard all night, as he always does, and was fearless at the contest, and on the most critical kick of the night – our kick-in with minutes remaining, us six points up – he was the man entrusted with the responsibility. There is bravery in taking that kick, and rarely is it acknowledged. The ball is slippery, the ground heavy, the game at a crux, and all eyes are on you. There’s no safety net, nowhere to hide.

No single turning-point swung the game back our way. It was a series of little events; their missed chances and – with scores level – our will to win supplanting a fear of defeat. Once they drew level, the psychology of the contest altered. A pause took hold. If we weren’t winning, we no longer had anything to lose.

Into this void led Jack Riewoldt, hunting down the field in pursuit of the ball – to retain possession – and jumping for his marks as if life depended on it. It lifted those around. When all others looked leaden-footed, it was Jack who had the spring, followed by Ricky Petterd and his game-saving leap into a contest in defence, and Ben Griffiths floating across packs, searching for the ball.

Elsewhere, Nick Vlastuin mopped-up across half-back, repelling their attacks, with his composed and calming demeanour. Matt Thomas willed himself to contests. Jack kept jumping. And out of nowhere, and after a sequence of mishaps from Titch (a dropped ball, an air swing, a tumble – all encapsulating the error-prone caper of our second half), it was the big man, Tyrone Vickery, who toe-poked a kick through for an ungainly goal. It was to be the winner. It summed up his night. He was dreadful, he was brilliant. He was a whipping boy, he won us the game. He looked disinterested, he was in the thick of it.

Friday morning’s newspaper listed Cotchin, Vickery, Thomas, Edwards, Ellis, Martin and Deledio as Richmond’s best – but don’t always believe what you read in a papers.

From our seats – numbers 12 and 14 (with unluckiness absent from getting between us) in row F, bay N14 – the two players who stood tallest for longest on Thursday were Ben Griffiths and our man Dave Astbury. And what a treat it was! Griff’s game was all the more exemplary considering he dropped an uncontested mark late in the first quarter to create Carlton’s second goal. It can be a lonely and cruel place, the middle of the MCG. It can bury a man’s heart.

When Griff goaled early in the second, applause was generous. Richmond people were happy for him, they were happy for us. As the game tightened, he only loosened his constraints. He glided across packs. He got his hands on it. No other Richmond player took nearly as many contested marks. And when he marked above a contest in the dying minutes, deep in our defence, here was our Leo Barry moment. It may only be March, but for us troubled Richmond fans, we take small mercies wherever they’re found.

This season is open for Ben Griffiths to make of it what he will.

And Dave Astbury was a pillar down back. With Alex Rance absent and Troy Chaplin down on confidence (a double-fisted punch when he could have claimed possession, spilled marks, doubts that beset a man who’s played so much football – but we back him, he’s a professional) – the slack was filled by Astbury. He is tall, agile, holds his feet, backs himself, and puts his head over the ball studiously when kicking. He doesn’t take his opportunity for granted. He won contests when outnumbered. He took 10 marks. He stood Carlton’s most dangerous tall forward. He looked to make the play. Now he’s set a standard for himself, there’s nothing stopping him doing it each week.

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 In the end, it all came down to Dusty, and his cameo, his wiggling fingers, and our delight.

On Friday afternoon, James Taylor, who last week was the first to post a comment on this season’s new TTBB (we thank him – along with Skippy in the forward pocket, and Cheryl), sent an email. “How good was that?” he asked. “I think in all the excitement I may have proposed to Dustin, but who cares?”

In warm night air after the game, walking from the arena, sweaty under the arms, feeling light-headed with victory, the woman who’d given me tickets sent a tweet. “Your wife has become our talisman,” she said. “First game at the G and we get a win”.

It was a night so many of us will never forget.

Tiger tiger burning bright

Email:  dugaldjellie@gmail.com

Twitter: @dugaldjellie

I have no blue blood. My heart is in the low country, on the river flats, among sewer rats, where we feast on hope and cheer and faith. I am proud. If you scorn me, you scorn an army, you raise the ire of barbarians – all noble in their cause. I am loyal. I have known humility and defeat and heartbreak, yet still I live and burn with life, and my love remains undimmed.

I am Tiger. Back me in a corner at your peril. Do me wrong and beg forgiveness. I will fight against injustice wherever it is found. My life has been condemned – by geography, by circumstance, by opportunity – which makes me hold only dearer the ideas of honour and integrity. I seek truth and fairness.

I am Richmond and never will I go meekly into the night. We are strong, we are bold. For those who believe, we look after our own. One day our time will come. And for all us Tigers who for so long have yearned for so much, never will we know of such redemption and sweet joy.

NEWSFLASH: Tiger Tiger Burning Bright is back and needs your help (see bottom of this report for details).

Before last season I had a dream. It was a vision in yellow and black, fabulous in its clarity – of young men running and jumping on a field before a breathless crowd. The players on my team could do no wrong. The ball bounced into their arms. Marks were taken crisply. Commentators strung together names – Conca, Deledio, Cotchin, Riewoldt – that sounded as poetry. It rained goals in this dream. All were happy.

In this dream my team won the tight games, they won the big games, they won games they had no right to win.

My team never looked back in this dream. It grasped its opportunities, charted its own destiny. Supporters of my team became filled with hope and euphoria. They could see the light and it burned bright with possibilities. They identified with its shared success. They gained meaning and satisfaction from supporting a group of men who all played for each other. It was the season we wanted never to end.

It was a beautiful dream, and almost it came true.

In the hollow disappointment of last season’s finals loss, I received a message from a partner of a star Richmond player. I will not say whom because I do not betray confidences. “We’ve had a very sad week,” she wrote. “[But] enjoying your blog very much. Your writing is wonderful. Soothing, honest.”

(In a moment of darkness, my heart sings).

When I started writing about Richmond last year I did so because I wanted to help my team in the best way I knew how. I wanted to bend words about the unheralded players, about us supporters, and what it means to barrack for Richmond. I wanted my sentences to be a tonic. I wanted to inspire, to include, to entertain, to share voices, to give form to something that is shapeless.

In my mind, how the project would unfold was straightforward.

I would craft considered and careful words about the players and fans, through which the team might better understand themselves, and which in some intangible way may help them perform better. This would lead to an invitation into the coach’s box (to report, to interpret), and Reece Conca and Trent Cotchin and Bachar Houli and others coming to my house where I would poach a (halal) chicken and introduce them to my family and at the dinner table we would share gentle stories about life. They would tell me what it is like to be a professional footballer. I would tell them what it is like to barrack for them. Our stories would become one.

That is, I am like most supporters: delusional. I wanted to be that voice in the crowd to make a difference. I wanted to be that person who helps turn the fortunes of my forsaken club. In my own way, I wanted to contribute.

And yet, and yet… if I open my heart to something I believe in, if I nurture it, if I treat it with care, if I respect it, why couldn’t it return the love?

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NEWSFLASH: Tiger Tiger Burning Bright is back and needs your help (see bottom of this report for details).

How the season unfolded was not in the narrative arc, but it mattered not. The club I love kept me at arm’s length. It never fully embraced what I hoped to contribute. For reasons known only to a chosen few of its administrators (all paid employees, all safe in their positions), it chose to treat me with scorn and disdain, and ultimately ridicule. It did not look outside of itself for new ways of doing things. It did not open its heart.

Rewards came elsewhere. Luke McGuane contacted me before he left for home, and I wish him only well in his endeavours. Trent Cotchin gave me a knowing nod of acknowledgement and I hope only that all goes well with Brooke’s pregnancy (and that he becomes the next Richmond premiership captain, and Brownlow Medal recipient, and on his retirement he becomes the country’s Prime Minister, and he changes the national flag to a black ensign with a yellow sash…). Reece Conca’s parents invited me to their family’s pizzeria in Perth (where they invited many of the cheer squad members after our memorable Monday night win away against West Coast last year) and I wish their two boys only happiness in their time in Melbourne.

But my greatest thrill last year was from the fans.

In all my years of being a professional writer (a chancy business, never could I recommend it), never have so many responded, contacting me to share intimate stories of identity. Strangers in the crowd became friends. I felt as if I belonged. Trout took me under his wing. The blog was shared. It helped coin the ‘Conca Cuddle’. It gave voice to fans. Then in the first week of September, in a roundabout way, it put a photograph of the Official Richmond Football Club Cheer Squad on the front page of The Age. Our fans walked in the beautiful sunshine.

Now a new season has begun, and there’s new hope, and I hope all will be different. What else can I do but show my love?

I am Richmond forever, but no longer can I do it alone. Tiger Tiger Burning Bright this season will be a collaboration. Mostly, it’s with Chris Rees – a graphic artist, a Tasmanian Tiger based in Hobart, who like me is the father of two young boys (each of us has a Marcus!). He is one of the many wonderful people I met last season through the blog. Our families visited last December. His bathroom window offers a great view of Cascade Brewery.

Stephen Reade (aka Easy Tiger) will provide weekly (themed) tips. Stephen is a Tiger living by a beach just south of Kingscliff, in northern NSW, who last season provided much weekly mirth when his prognostications arrived in my inbox. He is our mascot, our lucky talisman.

Andy Fuller, a thinking person’s fan, will contribute occasional essays under the banner ‘A Tiger Abroad’ (last season he was somewhere in the old Dutch East Indies, this season he’s in the Netherlands). By way of introduction, last year Andy and I corresponded regularly on themes of sport, writing, fatherhood, football and Richmond. As with others, I very much appreciated our exchange. As with Stephen, I’ve never met Andy but by happenstance I did once meet his mother. She is lovely. She runs an art gallery. It is in the back streets of Richmond.

Regular features this season will include:

• Tiger Tiger match reports: they will be shorter, they will include stories of other fans.
• Tiger-fan-of-the-week: a photo and vox pop of a Richmond fan. (All encouraged to nominate anyone whose story you think is worth sharing.)
• Our Tiger Book of Feuds: a few choice weekly words on the opposition (this week: on Carlton).
• Write home, Tucky!: An irregular series (all input from fans encouraged!) about our musings and the post-football life of any Tiger – but especially our beloved Shane Tuck. This column is to be a bulletin board. Please post your photos and messages on it.
• Other stuff we like: An annotated list of other blogs, websites and fan forums that give us succour (such as The Footy Almanac, Punt Road End, Yellow and Black, The Holy Boot’s Football Emporium, the new AFL Fans Association, etc).

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Our project can work only if it is shared. Spread the word, in the hope it will grow into something beautiful and everlasting. Tell a stranger at the football about it. Write down the web address and put it in their pocket. Contribute to it. All of us are barrackers. What we do gives meaning to the game. It makes it what it is.

Our expression of appreciation – for the game, for the players, for our team – can and must make a difference. We all bleed, we all hurt, all of us are swayed by emotions. When the Tiger crowd speaks – when it roars when it is our day and our moment in the sun – it is tribal and visceral and is a force that is not easily deterred.

My dream for this season is for more than success. It is for personal fulfilment – for all Richmond players and coaches, for their partners and families, and for all us fans. My dream is for togetherness. My dream is for our story to be shared, and for it to take on a life of its own that cannot be stopped. My dream is for understanding. My dream is for Nick Vlaustin to become a superstar. For Dusty to be beatified. For Tyrone to forever silence his critics. For Brandon Ellis to invite me along as his “plus one” to the B&F night.

My dream is for my team to find moments of transcendence, in which it plays football so beautiful all else in our everyday lives becomes meaningless – and it to happen in late September.

 NEWSFLASH: Tiger Tiger Burning Bright needs your help.

A short explanation: I’m a former newspaper journalist (The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald), who’s been between jobs for the past 15 years. I’ve milked cows, worked in shearing sheds, laboured for builders and bricklayers, ghost written for Donna Hay and once ran a storytelling workshop for the homeless in Kings Cross, among other things. Recently returned to Melbourne, I now find myself mostly – and proudly – a house husband. But my absence of any regular paid work challenges my brittle sense of masculinity. (I know, I know, but it’s the way it is). It also means I cannot justify (to my partner, our family) the cost of a membership or admission price to games. If you have a spare ticket to games, please contact me.

After so many years away, I love getting to the football. I will stand in the outer, or wear a collar in the MCC members, or shout support over the fence from the cheer squad, or display appropriate decorum in a corporate box. I like to meet people in the crowd, I like to find out about their story and write about it. I would like to sit with somebody different each week. My email address can be found on the contacts tab. If you have an upcoming game for which you know you have a spare ticket, please let me know so I can plan ahead.

The proviso: I always wear my yellow ‘Tiger’ T-shirt (home-made, at least a size too small), and bring a notepad and pen, and write about whomever I sit next to. (Unless, of course, my benefactor requires anonymity, or is Megan Gale, or Damien Hardwick’s wife, or…)

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

dugaldjellie@gmail.com

or Twitter: @dugaldjellie