The Book of Feuds

This feud is brought to you by the Cowboy Neale T-shirt in pure Wakelin Twins White.

On Sunday evening we play the poor Saints. Those hapless cellar-dwelling party boys. Those good-time kings of mucking up and staying out late and wooden spoons aplenty.

But never forget they pulverised us every game from about Robert Harvey’s 16th birthday until we started turning the tables last year. The Other Riewoldt, Montana, Ball, Goddard, Dal Santo tormented us. Bloody Milne kicked 7 against us in that game where Jack could have won it after the siren, then there was Gehrig who regularly made our backs look like idiots. Koschitzke who occasionally bumped into one of our players instead of his own and put them in hospital. And kicked five from 10 touches one day.

In 2010 there was a game where no Tiger kicked a goal except Jack (6) and Andrew Collins (remember him?) – of course the Saints were on their way to 2 grand finals. How quickly they have fallen, to the point where neutrals are clapping Lenny Hayes now. Clapping him as though he never tore their midfield apart, ruining the careers of blokes who were only getting games as run-with players. Let us not forget those years of pain.

Some miscellaneous Sainters to boo:

• Grant Thomas and Rod Butterss – classic unlikeable blowhard/snake oil merchant combo
• Jim O’Dea – almost killed Johnny Greening.
• Barry Breen – won’t stop talking about what is objectively the worst kick in history

I have a standing bet with a St Kilda fan – two longnecks per game. I felt like I was knocking at his door with my elbows twice a year for well over a decade. Yes, I got to drink one of them but that is not the point.

My earliest memory of a wooden spoon is South Melbourne in 1975, but after that the boys from Moorabbin seemed to have a mortgage on it. We have to enjoy this return to the good old days of Sainters spoons. We have to add to their misery on Sunday evening. I will be stitting by the radio with my tea and toast, cheering for their demise, and booing Lenny Hayes’ every touch.

This feud is brought to you by the long sleeve XL Geoff Blethyn t-shirt in Reynolds Red, available in other colours, sizes and sleeve configurations.

This is a late-breaking retro-feud posted after the event, the magnificent 6-wins-on-the-trot-capping event. We have talked about the battle of Windy Hill, Richo’s farcical hands in the back call, Sheedy swapping camps. Here is a list of my general gripes about Essendon. Less of a feud and more of a whinge, and to be honest a lot of these are hair-focussed.

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• Sheedy lured away our star wingman Bryan Wood, who won a flag in the red sash in 85; Richmond finished 8th

• Rotten Ronnie Andrews career in general

• Michael Hurley’s topknot

• Hardingham, Heppell, Hibberd, Hocking, Hooker, Howlett, Hurley, Hams and Hille. Hird’s egomania as regards the letter H knows no bounds.

• Ken Fletcher’s orange shorts, an early example of ranga personal branding

• I am not touching the whole Thymosin thing, but I am citing BT’s endless rhapsodising about The Weapon.

• Annoying Darren Bewick

• Annoying Sean Denham

• Dean Solomon who invented the “someone tipped a bucket of hair over my head” look that really took off

• The general over-reliance on Danihers. This is a national league club, not the Ungarie Magpies ‘Team of the Century’ fundraising dinner.

This pissweak (and late) chapter of the Book of Feuds is closed.

Our jumper? Oh you know, whatever.

It’s Chris here, doing this week’s feud, as you probably realise since “hate” is a very un-Dugald-like word. I do indeed hate the Weagles and it goes back to their first game in 1987.

I was watching in a shabby flat in West Hobart with the reigning Fan of the Week, and a couple of Carlton fans. The Tiges had set up a 33 point lead at 3/4 time through vintage work from Maurice Rioli, and some impressive efforts from boom recruit Michael Mitchell in his first VFL game. Joe and I decided to use the last break to pop up to the Marquis of Hastings for a new slab of Pale to see us through the celebrations. We got back to hoots of derision from the others, as the Weagles were already in front. They kicked 9.4 to 1.5 in the last term and won by 14 points.

So you could say West Coast and I got off on the wrong foot. Since then, their players have fallen into two categories – a) the unspeakably annoying ones, and b) Dean Kemp. I admired Kemp enormously, but on the other side of the ledger were Karl Langdon, Cousins, Michael Gardiner, Chad Fletcher, Brett Heady, ex Tiger Peter Wilson. What a pack of ratbags.

Malthouse’s robots won the 92 premiership, which was deeply unsettling, not just to Victorians. I grew up believing in the 12-team VFL and making the ladder longer just seemed to mean Richmond were further from the top.

I could go on about Ben Cousins and my delight in his downfall but it makes me sound like an unfeeling monster; so let’s just leave that out.

I have honestly never got over that 1987 disappointment. The Eagles went on to win 11 games and finish 8th. The Tigers contined their miserable run, winning the Spoon and going down in history as the first team to finish 14th. Whereas if they had kicked straight while we were at the bottle shop …

This feud is brought to you by the David Dench unisex tank top in Noel Teasdale Blue. Also available in white, and on other more sensible garments.

Guest Feudster @4boat writes;

Our feud with North Melbourne goes back to 1904.

“Richmond forfeited the title – the first and only time this would happen in VFA history. On September 10th Richmond were narrowly defeated by North Melbourne in a spiteful semi final. During the half-time break, Richmond officials complained to the field umpire that several North Melbourne players were wearing iron spikes in their boots. North Melbourne’s captain Paddy Noonan refused to allow Umpire Allen to carry out an inspection of the players’ boots, and after a stand-off lasting fifteen minutes, play resumed without the inspection being carried out.” [The Argus 12-9-1904]

Allen was appointed to umpire the Grand Final, and Richmond refused to play unless he was replaced. His lack of control in the semi between Footscray and North was cited as further evidence that he was unfit for the job. The VFA refused, Richmond forfeited and the Shinboners collected the flag without firing a shot.

But for most of the first 50 years of our shared time in the VFL/AFL, North Melbourne was just a minnow, well beneath our notice. Played finals in 49 & 50 but that was it – we had other fish to fry. Barassi arrived in 1973, and the next year they made a Grand Final against the reigning premiers, the mighty Tigers. We showed them up that day and secured back to back flags. And perhaps we showed them what was required – they won their first VFL premiership the next year.

In all our meetings since that Grand Final in 1974, they have won the day more often than not. I haven’t been lucky enough to attend that many Tiges games but saw the Roos belt us by 141 points one day in 1991.

In the 90s and early noughties there were games where the Tiges seemed to have a game in their grasp, and one man tore it away – The Duck. I loathed the man. I hated his preposterous mullet, his arrogance, his strut and sneer, his King Street antics. He was an extreme example of that syndrome where personal qualities that create a formidable footballer are less useful in civvy street. His offsider in arrogance was David King. Not such an outstanding footballer – he would never turn a game; but he was a proficient downhill skier. Carey would start the rot and then King would dash though a gap, nail a goal on the run and just puff out his stupid chest and showboat.

I had a lot of respect for most of their team-mates; Blakey, Archer, Stevens, Longmire, Byron Pickett – these blokes were some of my favourite footballers. But I would still jump at any chance to see Carey on the losing side, walking off with his arrogance at least partially deflated.

If you’d like to savour a few examples of the Tiges taking the chocolates against the Roos, have a look at Tiger Tube. It’s guaranteed all-natural 100% Richmond victories.

This chapter of the Book of Feuds is now closed.

This feud is brought to you by the long sleeve XL Geoff Blethyn t-shirt in Reynolds Red, available in other colours, sizes and sleeve configurations.

In another time, I had a crush on Essendon.

It was 1984, and since former Richmond player Kevin Sheedy had taken over the coaching job at Windy Hill he had made an irresistible force. By season’s end the Tigers languished in eighth spot on the ladder – it’d only get worse – and I did a morning paper round before school from a newsagency later owned by Francis Bourke, and on the Grand Final morning a customer walked into the shop with two spare tickets.

They were standing room. My father was a Bombers man. I woke him in bed with a phone call. We were off to the footy together.

When time comes to write his eulogy, I’ll recount this day. We stood on a concrete camber in the open before the old Southern Stand at the MCG – I was a boy among men, crushed in the crowd – and at each quarter break an Essendon fan bellowed his impersonation of a police siren. It was ridiculous, but made all in the crowd roar with delight.

And in that last quarter, when the Bombers kicked all those goals, when Kevin Walsh theatrically stumbled about, when Billy Duckworth was in everything – when the roll-call of Dons swarmed over Hawthorn: van de Haar, Watson, Madden, Harvey, Daniher – it was impossible not to be enthralled by the fervour of the crowd. I was young, I was impressionable. I had a soft spot for Garry Foulds in the back pocket, and Glenn Hawker running off the half-back flank.

This flirtation lasted a few years, probably ending on a bleak day at VFL Park in an Elimination Final, this time with my father and sisters, perched high in a stand under shelter and I knew I was in love with the romance of Fitzroy. In the sopping rain, in those vast open spaces, it was 1986 and they overcame all the odds. They won it with a goal at the death, by a point.

Where angels fear to tread. Young Geoff “flies the flag” against the Tigers. The look Sheeds is giving him is priceless.

As a young man, and from the days of the ‘Baby Bombers’, I had admired James Hird, the footballer. He was graceful, lean, courageous, poised, skilful, and I’ve seen few like him who could map out the play and seemingly read it before it unfolded. He was always at the fall of the ball. He was a champion of the game.

But then last season, all about Essendon changed. All those years of silent respect – for the way it fostered and encouraged Indigenous players, for its enduring on-field competitiveness, for the way it created the most unlikely stars, even for its uniform, so similar to ours – came to a sudden end. Whatever it takes? I cannot believe its hierarchy was so cavalier with the welfare of its players, in administering unknown and untested drugs within a culture of secrecy and denial. I cannot believe James Hird is allowed to coach at AFL level again, ever. Period.

The million-dollar-man-a-season in exile in France made a mockery of our game, and of who we are. He has disgraced it, with his greed and vanity. And I cannot believe how so many Bomber fans blindly fall in line behind him in tacit approval.

Then again, I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have a Brownlow medal and premiership-winning champion of the game. For us Richmond fans, here is a foreign concept.

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Our Book of Feuds is open to all, and as such I’ve sought crowd sourcing on Twitter. The season is long and the mind grows tired. Who have we played, who do we play next? I do remember some long ago idle talk of a little altercation between our two teams. A how-do-you-do, a brawl, perhaps?
How can you go past the infamous brawl at Windy Hill? suggests Sue C (@SueEllCee).

The night they took Richo’s mark off him for hands in the back says Chris Greenway

Far too many to enumerate. From Dons cheer squad’s massed spitting over the balcony in GtSthStand to Richo’s mark… I’m still spewing. As good as sent Richo into early retirement says Andy (@Harri_Chas_17).

My gripe goes back 1924! begins John (@TheHolyBoot). VFL changed finals system – even though we comfortably beat Ess in last ‘finals’ match… they finished higher on ‘Finals table’, thus awarded the flag. The system lasted just that year! #GiveUsOurFlagBack

Was going to suggest that I was 5 months pregnant ’95 final, got overheated, had to sit in stairwell shade says The Skippygirl (@SatchSkippygirl).

Richo mans the mark after having his matchwinning goal disallowed for hands in the back. I think he took it pretty well don’t you?

The push in the back call on @mattricho a couple of years ago in the dreamtime game broke my heart says Elliott Claxton (@burg11).

The draw in 77, which may have been Tim Watson’s first game says Cam Manning (@cmrmmnning).

It was Watson’s first game. I was there @VFLPark. He lined up on St Francis of the Bourke says steve b (@ASpeedingCar)

Yep was there too, but all I remember is Emmett Dunne replies @cmrmmnning.

Geez, Emmett Dunne, the 70s/80s version of David Astbury. I mean that in a good way says (@ASpeedingCar.

Must mention #33 Knights keeping RFC in the 95 Semi Final 1st half, before the overrun in 2nd half & Scott Turner cameo goals says FootyMaths Institute (@Footy_Maths)

Dons playing possum in round 22 of 2001 and then SPIFLICATING us the following week in the Qual final. Lloyd kicked 100th… says @TheHolyBoot. …dirty night.

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I have no words of wisdom, no venom in my soul. I applaud the Essendon FC’s latest online campaign of respect (to players, umpires, fellow supporters, everyone), but I hope our boys on Saturday night show no respect for their foes (in the nicest possible way). I hope we play beautiful football, as if the ball were on a string and all our stars had aligned. I hope it is a night of yellow-and-black dreaming. I hope it is a night to remember.

I have a wedding on Saturday night (not mine), at a venue on Church Street, Richmond. I will not be at the game. I hope only for our speeches to be interrupted by the sound of distant song. Raise your voices, dear Tigers, stand on the seats and boom it into the night sky, let the words echo over rooftops, beneath the moon, have no fear of the unknown, open your hearts and your lungs and let me hear a distant and a sweet chorus: “Oooooooh, we’re from….”

This Book of Feuds is now closed.

As there is no 1970s Footy Enigma for GWS, I am suggesting this design is appropriate for this week.
I feel my connection to Richmond is a struggling long distance relationship.
This and many other non-footy designs are available here.

We have no feuds, anymore. We have no rivalries. We have no fighting words. Our lives this winter look to be filled only with curses.

Tell me it could be some other way? Tell me there’s hope.

I write this on my way to Canberra, from where I will catch a bus to the game with the good people of the Capital Tigers supporter group, but I tell them not that I come with luggage. My bags, they are heavy and weighted not with expectation, but with boots.

Boots to take from mouths, boots to remove from backsides. Boots to brandish. Boots to wear to the football.

I mean not to kick a club when it is down but, really, what has happened here?

We beat these confected Giants by a cricket score last we played, but I am no so sure anymore. I cannot think what might happen if we were to lose on Saturday. I live in fear. Our team look to be playing in fear. It is a sad state of affairs, dear Tigers. But it is our state, and these are our affairs.

In the past off season, Dusty strayed and was seen wandering somewhere around western Sydney – do they really call it Spotless Stadium? – but he returned to the fold. And last Saturday it could be said he was one of our few to play with the spirit of our dearly beloved Tommy. He was a Tiger, Dusty was a Tiger.

Maybe there is hope.

Maybe the team will heal on a trip away. Maybe there will be a volcanic eruption somewhere, a plume of ash – an act of god – and the team will be forced to return on a bus, on which like us Capital Tigers we will get to know each other, and they again will be a football team who we make arrangements to watch.

We live in hope. We dare not upset all the GWS high draft picks. We pity their supporters. We have no idea of their song lyrics. We wonder if ever we’ll play them in Melbourne. And if we lose on Saturday, we will…

This chapter in the Book of non-Feuds is now closed.

This feud is brought to you by the Gentlemans Medium Robbie Flower t-shirt in Tingay Blue. Other sizes and styles available for ladies and children.

In a simpler time, a pre-digital age with no neoliberal economics, a gentler world when six games of football were played in Melbourne on a Saturday afternoon, when the game was easily understood and readily recognisable, when Richmond were good; in this time of certainty and routine there was a man found on the wing every other week at the MCG and his name was Robbie Flower. 

“Beat Flower and you could just about retire from League Football because anything else smacked of anti-climax,” has said Brent ‘Tiger’ Crosswell, of this will-o’-the-wisp wearing the No. 2. 

In this time of the final five, with the Demons always on the ladders’ lower rungs, among all their losses this man called Flower would blossom. Frail and short-sighted, an unlikely footballer, he played the game as though on another field; always finding space, always balanced, always fair, always with poise.

He was a purist, a classical footballer; a player it was improbable to dislike.

Then in his last season, Melbourne got good. 

Were it not for a muddle-headed Irishman, they surely would have played in a Grand Final. Richmond, incidentally, in that first year of an expanded 14-team competition, finished stone-motherless last, behind the Brisbane Bears. 

The Demons of ’87 had a roll-call of flint-hard footballers, including the Lovett brothers, Todd Viney, Jim Stynes, Sean Wight, Brian Wilson, Greg Healy, Garry Lyon, Steve O’Dwyer and TTBB’s all-time favourite, Rodney Grinter. It was a solid core that took their club to the Grand Final the following year, and to winning September football in three finals campaigns hence.

It was a place Richmond was nowhere to be seen.

Never mind Melbourne’s recent plight, they have been contenders far more recently than us. They have been to the big dance on that last Saturday of September, they have waltzed with the best of them.

And yet, who’d be a Demon? It’s a grand old flag – yes – but is it high flying? Does it have the moral supremacy?

Don’t mention the war. It’s a minefield. And as with North Africa and that desert rat called Rommel, it’s all about the tank. Remember round 18, 2009, when our boys got over the line against the Dees, courtesy of an after-the-siren shot on goal from outside 50 from Jordan McMahon? His last-gasp heroics kept us from the wooden spoon. Turns out Melbourne, those old Machiavellian squattocracy types (what would Robbie Flower make of it?), were contented enough to lose the game and win the spoon, all for the cause of a No. 1 draft pick. 

They mocked us, dear Tigers, they played a game with us. It was a cruel hoax. It was middle-class welfare.

Now they ask the AFL for handouts, and spend their millions on the man with the perfect coiffure, and overnight they are again competitive and have won several games and on Saturday will be looking to win one more. No draft picks are at stake. They know now about pride. They understand it is something that can sustain a club.

We at Richmond of recent times have known not of success, but we hold dearly onto our pride. This week, all our hearts are saddened, our souls feel that little emptier, and the night darker, with the news that Tommy Hafey is dead. Since Monday night, the flags at Richmond have flown at half mast, the church bells have pealed, all have walked the streets with heads bowed. An era is over. Long live Tommy! We will remember him always. 

Tommy Hafey in the players’ race at Punt Road Oval with young Club Secretary, Alan Schwab, 1969.

Now on Saturday, there is a game to be played. It’s a throwback. All this season, here’s the match that’s as close as it gets to a 2.10 kick-off at football’s spiritual home. Forget about Flower. This afternoon is all about the spirit of Richmond, the legacy of Hafey, the proud tradition of the Tiger. Nothing less than a win will do. It is non-negotiable. It is written in our destiny. It is all that Tommy would have wanted.

Most of all, it is all he deserves.

This chapter in our Book of Feuds is now closed.

This feud is brought to you by the Scratcher Neal t-shirt in Nankervis Brothers Navy (also available in Goggin Grey).

Those old Pivotonians, they’ve had the wood on us. It’s been a rather large lump of lumber recently, old Tigger, wielded our way. We gave them Brad Ottens, in a trade for their benefit. We’ve given them goal kicking practice. We gave them a leg-up for their first premiership in goodness knows how many years.

Oh, we’re a benevolent club at Tigerland. Remember round 6 of the 2007 season – how could we forget? They had 20 goals on the board up to half-time, winning by 157. Some wag recently sent me a YouTube link to the first quarter. How quaint. It was our home game. It set a new benchmark; as Richmond’s highest score conceded (11 points more than the 211 Geelong kicked against us in 1989), and as Richmond’s biggest losing margin. Ouch, doubled.

Brett Deledio played that day. He had a kick. That’s it – he had one kick for the afternoon. But the thing is, up until they played us, Geelong had had a middling season. We ran them into form and never have they looked back. We taught them how to win. We practically arranged a dynasty and three premierships for them.

No need to thank us. Do we get any credit?

Remember Gary Ablett’s feats against us? He kicked 14 goals against us one day, playing the first half on a wing. Most blokes would be happy with 14 kicks, but God had to go and get 14 goals. In his 20 career games against Carlton, he kicked 58 goals. In 20 games versus North Melbourne, it was 88 goals. In his 20 games against us (18 wins, 2 losses) he booted 117 goals. We offered target practice. We gave him bagfuls.

Tony Greenberg, Richmond’s resident sage on all matters football, sent out a Tweet this week. Abletts v Tiges: Senior 18-2: Jnr 11-2. 29-4… It’s not a pretty scorecard, not for us Tiges.

Last year I caught a train to Kardinia Park and enjoyed the day. It was like a country carnival. I’ve not seen so many woolknits at the football for such a long time. I got to meet Billy Brownless. And the Geelong mascot. And mingle with the fans. And in the third quarter I was consumed by the smell of fried calamari wafting across the stands and thought for a moment I must be in the Greek Isles, a place I’ve never been to, but imagined it might be like this. What I can say about the day is that their home ground is picturesque, their fans are happy about life in general, and they have the best in-ground catering in the league. The calamari – Humboldt squid, I was told – was lightly fried, and salted, and cooked by retired husband-and-wife school teachers, and was delicious.

On the train on the way home I met historian Geoffrey Blainey. He barracks for Geelong. In ‘Football the Way it Was’, he wrote about Corio Oval and its heady aromas. “From the fires that cooked the saveloys came the scent of wood smoke, and it mingled with the tobacco smoke and beer.”

In that essay he offers also the perfect line on how our code has never stayed the same. “The game, in every generation, gains something and loses something.”

If a generation is 30 years, what have we gained recently, my dear Tigers? What good tidings have come our way? How much have we given? How generous have we been?

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I have been a Cat, and have the photographs to prove it. I played half a season for the Cooma Cats, at centre-half-back, in the lowest rung of the Canberra and District Football League, and was runner-up in the B&F count held at the local bowls club. I still have a pair of blue-and-white hooped socks, somewhere in a bottom drawer. I remember the season fondly. I remember it snowed at the first training session I attended, and half the team turned up wearing balaclavas, and I thought I’d joined a team of bank robbers.

There are few other footy clubs in the country like the Cooma Cats. There are few other footy clubs where such a cold wind can blow from the mountains late in the last quarter. Their home ground isn’t called Snowy Oval for nothing.

The Geelong Cats are altogether a different proposition. I have never been comfortable with them. I have hot-flushes whenever we come up against them. I am traumatised by recent results against them.

I cannot say I have any confidence for this Sunday’s game. I am numbed by the prospect. I’m not sure I want to be there. I am hoping for a miracle. I am heartened that no Ablett is playing.

Often, in games like this I make secret pacts with myself. If I do this, my team will do that; or vice versa. I set myself challenges. Goals. Targets.

So here’s one for Sunday: if my beloved Tigers get up and beat the Cats at the MCG, I will put on my new pair of Richmond socks bought recently from the Tigerland Superstore ($18, and half-a-size too small) and walk from Punt Road to Kardinia Park. Go on, Tigers! Make me do it! Make me go on a long walk, meditating all the way on all the little joys of being a Tiger.

This book of feuds is now closed.

This feud is brought to you by the Michael Tuck size-0 romper suit in Graeme Arthur Grey.
Also available in Members Wing Green or Yabbie Gold.

I have barracked for Hawthorn.

Once.

The 2008 Grand Final, and their perfect game. Cyril Rioli was as make-believe as the north wind, and Stuey Dew as immovable as a lump of bluestone. Their team unlocked a puzzle that day, and in doing so changed the way the game forever has been played. It was as beguiling as a good heist film. I cannot deny them their due. And oh my goodness, those poor people at Hawthorn, they’d endured such an unbearable premiership drought.

How many long years had it been, Marjorie?

I must have cheered for them also in 1991, in the anomalous Grand Final at Waverley, because I am certain that never before have I cheered for West Coast. And probably never will.

Maybe I backed Hawthorn also in their 1978 Grand Final win over North, seduced by the vision splendid of Peter Knights, the personality of Don Scott, the romance of a youthful Robert DiPierdomenico. I was young. Our family had moved recently to the city. Many of my class mates went for Hawthorn. It was peer pressure.

Handmade Hawks beanie by nchantedclocks

What I do know is that in last year’s Grand Final, my heart said Fremantle (over Hawthorn). And the year before, I was keen for Sydney to win the premiership (over Hawthorn). And in 1989 I really wanted Geelong to get up (over Hawthorn). And in the 1988 Grand Final I was definitely going for Melbourne (over Hawthorn), although they never stood a chance.

For both the 1986 and 1987 Grand Finals, when Hawthorn and Carlton played off against each other – squaring the ledger – I was staunchly ambivalent. Richmond weren’t much good those years. In 1987 we won the wooden spoon in the new 14-team competition. My interests lay elsewhere – trying to kiss girls and overcome teenage resentments.

In the 1985 Grand Final I was going for Essendon (over Hawthorn); likewise in 1984, when I went with my father – a Bombers man – with standing room tickets purchased on Grand Final morning from a customer at the newsagency (later owned by Saint Francis Bourke) where I did a morning paper round. In the 1983 Grand Final I was probably against Hawthorn also.

As those car stickers say: ALWAYS HAWTHORN. Always, always, always, always, bloody Hawthorn!

Can’t they give others a go? Must they be involved in every other Grand Final?

Since Richmond last reached that last Saturday in September – 32 years ago, when 17-year-old Helen D’Amico ran onto the MCG with nothing but a Carlton scarf, making her way to Bruce Doull, with Carlton up by a point in the third quarter, and it all going downhill for us ever since – Hawthorn have played in 11 Grand Finals, winning seven.

Their trophy cabinet overfloweth. Nobody at Richmond knows where to find the Silvo. Out at Waverley, the ‘family club’ have a team of volunteers, all brandishing Michael Tuck’s umpteen pairs of worn-out old undies, busy polishing away. Last September, Hawthorn overtook Richmond on the premiership tally (their 11 all coming since 1961). Two ships passed in the night. And the Good Ship Hawthorn, it looks still to be steaming upward.

Individually, I’ve quite liked some Hawthorn players.

I always loved Dipper’s acceptance speech for his 1986 Brownlow (“I just came for the free feed”). I quite admired Dermie’s strut and pomp, and chutzpah to lay a kiss on Billy Duckworth, or run through the Essendon huddle. He was a player. Johnny ‘The Rat’ Platten lingers in the mind when I think of Hawthorn, as does Gary Buckenara galloping down a wing, or Michael Tuck catching opponents a third his age, or Gary Ayres looking such a boyhood hero, such a model of a footballer.

But collectively, I think of Hawthorn and think only of torment.

Jason Dunstall always had a day out against us, although one day at Waverley Park in 1992 was more out than all others. He kicked 17.5. Our 18 players managed only 14.9 for the entire afternoon. Richmond fans everywhere looked for ways to look elsewhere. Oh the humiliation. Oh the embarrassment of it all, being put in the record books again for all the wrong reasons.

For so long we’ve been stranded on the bottom rungs of the ladder, looking up to Hawthorn, wondering what the view’s like up there. Oh, yes – look! – I can see another premiership window that needs a polish, Deidre.

Yes, yes, we’ve beaten you each time these past two seasons, but that only makes me nervous. I don’t wish to remind you, Hawthorn. We had a Tuck playing those games. He did a rain dance. We got lucky. Our hunger for the contest was whetted by the day.

I remember singing in the rain. I remember walking to a pub in Lennox Street, texting my father: “There is a God and his name is Hardwick”. My father’s reply: “Essendon created many gods”. I remember going home and watching the replay over and over again, drunk on the winning.

Also available, the original Tucky-gallops-across-the-MCG-in-spring design,
shown here on Buckenara Brown but available in other colours.

The body is tired but the mind is still willing, dear Tigers. You have not yet convinced; you have been unconvincing. I listened to Mr Hardwick (that old Dickensian character that he is) on a football show this week and he ended with something apt. Our boys need “to play big in big games”, he said.

This is the crux, and Sunday afternoon is the crucible.

Play BIG, dear Tigers! Rip into those Hawks; knock them about, have them chase you, fear you, look up to you. None of this chip-chip-chipping around – slay them through the heart and straight up the guts. End-to-end stuff on Sunday, Tigers. Bang, bang, bang. Be fearless; be without fear. Be not afraid, for that is a burden us supporters can carry for you. Play with abandon. Play only for each other, and then for us, and show all our little football world that there is life still in this old Tiger yet!

Show us what you can do and why we love you.

And if anyone has a spare ticket for the game, please contact me if you wish to share the love. I will be on my best behaviour. I will only streak the breadth of the ground if it’s sure to lift the curse of Helen D’Amico, and get us back playing in Grand Finals (where we’re sure to see bloody-well-always-Hawthorn).

This chapter in our Book of Feuds is now closed.

This feud is brought to you by the Bernie ‘Superboot’ Quinlan t-shirt in Bunton Maroon. You can also get this design as a cover for your phone, iPad, or baby. Yes, really.

Nostalgia overcomes me. With each football season past, the tides of life recede, and the beating heart of the old Lion is but fainter still. Oh the boys from old Fitzroy – the club we once held so dear – how it seems now a long ago dream. “In defeat we’ll always try.” What other club could have a song lyric of such sweet humility?

And yet once they were the Gorillas, and by 1922 this foundation Victorian Football League club had won seven premierships – more than any other – and three of its best – Haydn Bunton, Wilfred Smallhorn, Dinny Ryan – wrapped up five Brownlow medals in the 1930s.

I am a Tiger, but there is a place in my heart for the Lions.

Of all the games I’ve stood in the outer, turned my back to the ill winds of winter, loosened my throat to applaud the feats of young men on an expanse of green, it is but a handful of matches that are truly memorable. Perhaps it’s the curse of us Tigers. Ours has been a lean row to hoe.

And yet, and yet, never can I forget being at the MCG on the last Sunday of winter in 1996. A crowd of 48,884 turned up to see our beloved Tigers play Fitzroy in their last game in Melbourne. It wasn’t for the football that so many of us went; Fitzroy were on their knees, on their death bed. We went to say goodbye and pay respects to a football tradition nearly as old as the game itself.

I went with a heavy heart, and came home with it weighted further still.

That our Richmond routed the old Lion by 151 points was of no solace. Rarely can such a big win ring so empty. All those goals we kicked made no joy. It was a day for the Lions – a last hurrah on their last winter of discontent. It was a day to remember all that was good about their club; all its history, its belonging, its people.

Brian O’Donoghue, past Fitzroy player, who lives in Elsternwick and still goes to the football.

I was in the Ponsford Stand and after the game sang the Fitzroy song as best I could with all others. We stood as one. None of us left early. I remember tears, and heavy-handed MCG security staff bullying the Fitzroy faithful, and I remember feeling both a sadness and anger. How dear they deny these barrackers their right to mourn! How heartless to deprive them of their farewell!

Weight of numbers – the sentiment of the day – won out, and the crowd spilled onto the arena and mobbed the last Fitzroy team to leave an oval in old Melbourne town, and I remember a flag being burned in defiance, and chants ringing out, and good Fitzroy people bereaved and lost and with part of their soul forever gone in the winter gloaming.

Round 21, Sunday August 25, 1996: it was a game that’s burned in the mind.

Last winter I looked it up on YouTube and remember being embarrassed. A long-haired 21-year-old Matthew Richardson, in his fourth season of league footy, was interviewed by Russell Morris after the game – as the Fitzroy players ran a lap of honour; amid scene of raw emotion, of grown men weeping – and these two men in the middle misread it all.

The world was burning – the Lions are dead, long live the Lions! – and ‘Richo’ blithely talked about his missed shots on goal, and those he kicked, and wanting to beat North the next week, and what Wallsy told the boys. “We just wanted to make sure we got the four points.”

I always liked ‘Richo’s’ last years the best, when he knew the end was near, when he had a greater awareness of his place in football, when he stepped beyond the sense of self. As with his television work, it’s gotten better with age.

Thank goodness then, for the sage words of Malcolm Blight in the commentary box. “You just think of a hundred years, and it’s just walked past our door,” he says. “It is a sad day in footy.”

Two of my Tiger heroes in that team of ’96 were old Roy boys. Michael Gale, older brother to Brendon, Richmond’s CEO, played 105 games for Fitzroy after moving from Tasmania, and before moving to the Tigers. And Paul Broderick – ‘Brodders’ – had 93 games in the maroon and blue before his 169 games in yellow and black.

We had plundered their stocks. Now we stood by, helpless, to watch their death.

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Left: Coming home: Fitzroy supporters on the way back to Melbourne at last season’s end.
Right: A young Lion: 6-year-old Lachlan White, from Lalor, born into a Fitzroy family and painted proudly in the colours.

Last year, when we played Brisbane at the MCG, I sat for the second-half among the Fitzroy faithful (“Come on Roys! Come on Roys!” they chanted) and was happy for them their belief has survived, and remains, and is strong.

And on the last game of the home-and-away season I caught a train to Geelong, to see the Lions play, and on the way home had one of my season’s most memorable encounters. On the station platform I met with Brian O’Donoghue, who played 10 games for Fitzroy in the 1960s, was a high-jumping champion, and says he went to Prahran Tech with Kevin Bartlett and Kevin Sheedy. He was wearing a Fitzroy tie, and a woollen jacket with a Fitzroy badge, and clutched a leather satchel, and he looked raffish and bohemian and like a player from another time, from a club from another era.

On the carriage – all seats taken by Geelong supporters, many looking sullen, despite their team winning the day by one point, and into the finals with a double-chance – I stood at the end in the luggage section with a small group of young supporters of the old Fitzroy. How the losers get to write the history, to tell the stories. We talked about that last Fitzroy game in Melbourne, sharing our memories of the most memorable of days at the football.

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I hope our Tigers tame the Lions in Brisbane this Thursday night, but not too much. Again, they are a team on their knees, and a club that has weakened. Never mind their consecutive premierships; it’s an era long since gone. In the here and now, both their club and ours need this win urgently. Their need is probably greater than ours, but football is a cruel game, a cruel business to be in. When the ball is bounced, there is no room for sentiment, no room for nostalgia.

It is time for our Tigers to prowl; time for our Tigers to rediscover their fight; time for our Tigers to kill. The season starts anew on Thursday night, and all of us will make our way to a television somewhere to see what happens. It is time for our Tigers to reassure us, to quell our doubts, to stem our concerns, but most of all to make us proud.

Our pride is in our song. We’re the Tigers of old, we’re strong and we’re bold, oh we’re from Tiger….

YELLOW AND BLACK!

This chapter in the book of feuds is now closed.