Late May, 2001, and the familiar Edwardian red-brick of Punt Road Oval: do you know anything beyond what was published in the newspapers of the day?
A Tweet received on Anzac Day from Edstar: I fear we’re only a loss away from another Chickenpoo episode.
Fan dissent. Mick Molloy offered his home-truths on breakfast radio. All in the outer are disappointed and angry, asking questions, looking for answers as how clubs like Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs, GWS and most others have passed us by. There is no unity in a crowd. There is nothing the club can do about this heartache except, perhaps, to acknowledge it, and embrace it, respect it. Mike Sheahan’s confected breast-beating of the club’s 50 best players in 50 years reads as a hollow exercise. Who cares? There is a bigger picture, and all us fans know it. It’s not looking in the rear-view mirror; it’s confronting the here-and-now. It is being honest and truthful, and treating a shared anguish with respect. The only tonic, of course, is with the winning.
If not that, all we can ask for is courage and bravery, and doing something – anything – to turn this around.
Many at the club, and probably many fans, might be critical of the person who dumped a truckload of chicken manure by the front door of the football club’s offices. I offer a counter argument.
If the passion of Richmond fans is one of the club’s great attributes, then this goes both ways. It was direct action, an expression of frustration by one fan about the performance of the team. Sure, it was a public humiliation; but none were hurt, none harmed, none singled out for abuse.
It’s also become part of the folklore of our football club, and of barracking, and of this city and its home-grown sport. It was a Monday morning, after a loss to Geelong, playing away, when the Cats kicked seven goals in the last quarter. Richmond had slipped to four wins, five losses. The unknown driver edged forward to drop his complaint; what was said to be two cubic metres of chicken shit.
But what happened next was revelatory: Richmond beat Fremantle away, then Carlton and Sydney, and a four-game winning streak turned into a season of wonderment. Never mind the impolite end – a 68-point drubbing in a Preliminary Final in Brisbane, to a team twice as good who went on to win the first of three consecutive premierships – Richmond were alive in late September. We were contenders. For the shortest time, we could believe.
A sullen morning in late May, a querulous fan offloaded his complaint. Attention was taken away from the players. A passion was expressed. And the coach of the day, Danny ‘Spud’ Frawley, the son of a potato grower from Bungaree in central-west Victoria, understood the protests potential. He bagged much of it up for his garden.
If anyone knows anymore about this incident, if they were part of the club at the time, could they please contact me (call me on 0425 005 531 or dugaldjellie@gmail.com). I’m curious about it, for a manuscript I’m working on, about the cultural history of barracking.
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Joy was had in being at the game on Sunday night. It was in standing among Melbourne supporters and voicing my passion for Richmond. It was in standing up for my club, for what it might represent, for what I think it is to be a Tiger. I’m not going to go quietly into the night, that isn’t our way. It would prove nothing; achieve nothing.
At half-time a bloke grabbed my arm; his name is Glen, and three years ago, when for a while I had brief access to the change-rooms after a game, I met him among the crowd. Something about him intrigued me. Like me, he was alone, not part of the group. He didn’t look as though he belonged. But each week I talked to him, and came to understand many of the players knew him, and one pre-season he joined the players at their training camp in Cairns, and ran with them. Not much about Glen looked like a footballer.
Three years later we cross paths, and I tell him that when I go on my runs – trying to stay fit, keep lean – I sometimes think of him, a middle-aged bloke like me, trying to keep up with elite young athletes. It doesn’t get any easier.
And I remembered he’s a mechanic by trade, who runs his own business, working on Range Rovers. I joke that all his customers are likely in the crowd. And they wouldn’t be barracking for our boys.
Blue collar grunt, lads, that’s what it is to be a Tiger right now.
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The long arm of the law: John Ford, who played one senior game for Fitzroy, lining up in a combined police team led by Captain Blood (who played 312 senior games for Richmond)
During the game I met with Robyn Meggs and her daughter Emily, to take photographs of them, for a fan profile I wrote on Monday, late into the night when our young boys were asleep. Hopefully it will be published on the football club’s website. Read it, if you can. Maybe stories like this can turn a season. Ordinary fans, with extraordinary stories; stories that acknowledge how so many of us may feel.
Passions of barracking: Robyn Meggs’ parents, John and Tossie Ford, at the football, watching Richmond play St Kilda, 1977.
Late on Monday night Robyn emailed me some photographs that lifted my spirits. They are black and white, and beautiful. They tell of the history of the game, of what it might mean, of how it can involve us all. One is of her father, lined-up in a combined police team, wearing the Richmond colours and led by our very own Captain Blood. The other is of her recently deceased mother and father, at a game in Moorabbin, in 1977, watching Richmond, barracking as both of them did.
All the passion is with her mother.
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Commentators, ex-footballers, dismissed it as frustration. It was more than that, it was violent and malicious. Unlike when Tyrone Vickery swung a clenched fist at Dean Cox, the ball was nowhere in the vicinity. At the game, standing among Melbourne supporters, it was embarrassing and unforgiveable. Imagine if someone did that to Jack Riewoldt, imagine how we would feel and react.
Memories in football are long. An unreserved apology is a good start, but much trust needs to be earned, again. There is penance to be paid, purgatory. Forgiveness takes time, and a decency.
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A shared public lament: a screen grab snapshot of Tiger despair on Twitter
In the darkness, beneath trees in Yarra Park, walking alone on the grass on the way home, draped in my hand-knitted scarf, feeling sadness in our crowd, watching as a young woman in Richmond colours was pinned to the ground by four police officers and then put in a prison van, I stopped to send a Tweet: I cry for our Tigers, I weep for them, a dream is over. It is lost.
At that moment I encounter Mandy Woodward, and her husband Ken, in the inky darkness, each carrying a cheer squad flogger back to Punt Road Oval, like the burden of Atlas with the world on their shoulders. We stopped to talk, to share our misery, our disappointments. It felt good to be with brethren, to be with people who understand.
All we have is each other. A grief shared, is a grief halved. We’re all in this together.
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On Tuesday morning, before school, I showed our six-year-old boy footage of the Bulldogs’ Jake Stringer bursting onto a loose ball in the forward line, skittling three Brisbane Lions players, turning and kicking a goal. It is inspirational stuff. Our boy was incredulous. He went off and told his mum, in the shower all about it. Listening to him recount what he had seen – what these football god-warriors of ours are capable of – was delightful.
Later in the day I sent a Tweet to tell others about is, especially Bulldog fans, who deserve all the winning that comes their way. Think we’ve been hard-done by? I have a one answer: 1954. If you think our longing is great, imagine theirs. Two Grand Finals, one premiership. Yes, I cheer for them.
My Tweet: @Bulldogstragic showed footage to Mr 6yo this morning, his response: “wow, he’s got jet packs on!”. Then told mum in shower all about it.
Another Bulldogs fan read the message and thought @JStringer9 may appreciate it.
Later that night I looked at Jake Stringer’s public profile on Twitter. On his page he has a photo of his partner or wife holding their child in a kitchen. In the background is a microwave, with a sign above it that reads: ‘If football’s just a sport then the heart is just an organ”.
Fans like us love this passion, we love watching what young men, fine athletes, can do.
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Plans are unconfirmed, but I hope to be at the game on Saturday night. I’ll be standing in the outer, alone, and again standing up for something I believe in.
I don’t want to turn my back; I’m not ready yet to give in.
I want to see leadership, I want to see response to adversity, I want to see responsibility, I want to see teamwork. But most of all I want be there to show an appreciation; for Jack, and Cotch, and Sam Lloyd, and Kamdyn McIntosh, and Bachar, and Dave Astbury, and Dusty, and Titch, and all others selected in the team.
I want them to make us proud, and I want to be there to be part of it.
Tiger tiger burning bright
Email: dugaldjellie@gmail.com
Twitter: @dugaldjellie
Facebook: Dugald Jellie
Postal address: under the railway bridges on Punt Road, in the lowlands.
Well written again Dugald, we sat in the cheer squad and cheered our hearts out to no avail, this team called Melbourne along with the other one with Melbourne in their name and an Australian marsupial for an emblem have been our bogey teams for about 5 years now. Yes we were deflated at the end of the game, and riding the train back to Essendon station with joyous Dees fans made the sorrow lock in. Anzac day we rose out of bed, and as an ex RAAFie, thought about the night before and realised compared to the losses in war it was really only a game. Yes we are hurting, but the spirit lives on and once again tonight I was at Punt road making the banner for this weeks match, (Kerrie unfortunately was absent being sick). Numbers at Banner were down, maybe a symptom of our performance, or just coincidence, who knows, but the true yellow and Black family will always be there no matter how the team is going.
Just wonderful Dugald, from chicken shit to the unrestrained admiration of a six year old boy, from my family’s story, to the faithful cheer squad brethren – ah footy, it has everything! Maybe we should visit a farm with a dump truck, who knows, maybe we can spark another run….. Hope we see some more of the endeavour shown throughout the match on Sunday night, we’ll be there, cheering our boys, Go Tiges!
The last thing Richmond fans need is being reminded of the all-time greats. The series you mentioned is absolutely nauseating (I haven’t looked at it, beyond seeing it on the website). We need to ask ourselves what has our been our success in the AFL era? Forget the VFL, that’s history. And without the club’s VFL history, they have achieved as good as nothing.
I closely watched the first half of the Melbourne game (on delay), but, when it seemed like we just couldn’t bridge the gap, I jumped through the third and fourth quarters. And so this is what this season has become: not being surprised by losing to Melbourne.
For all the chest beating about the Anzac spirit: there were two rather low-acts performed in that game. Hardly what we would like to think of as being the highest acts of valor and courage.
Same – I have seen and ignored the 50 greats thing. Don’t really care for Mike’s opinion on that at the minute. In my darker moments I have said that all we have in common now with Tommy’s Richmond is the jumper. That’s a pretty harsh call; if you strip away the history and just look at Richmond as it is today, it looks like a well-run business with one dud product.
At no stage did we look like winning that game. I watched every minute but I chalked the 4 points up to Melbourne about midway through the 3rd. They are a fair side, not good yet. And we are not good either. We can work our way towards it, I know, but its going to take time.
Vince, I really hope the numbers at banner making bounce back. True believers are needed more than ever.
Dugald, you’re right, we are in this together. Go Tiges.
I watched a documentary about Australia’s WW1 submariners – most of whom were Poms – on Saturday night but I did flick over once or twice to check on the Tiges (not watching, Chris, checking) when on my final cross I saw Rance elbow Watts in the scone. I turned the tele off.
Thinking about submarines and Dugald’s ‘All being in this together’ I can only hope we don’t go the way of the Kursk, although having watched plenty of other teams play I can’t, in all honesty, find a team in the league which is tracking as poorly as us…except maybe Freo.
Fully agree with you Ando – we were a fairly potent club in the VFL era but a total non-event in the AFL era.
Ahhh…nnhhh…