Danny Frawley says bizarre chicken poo moment was a turning point in Richmond's 2001 season
AFL coaches have enough to worry about without finding five tonnes of chicken poo dumped outside club headquarters. But Danny Frawley's response helped turn the Tigers' season, and reveals a lot about the man himself.
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It is the kind of question you ask with bated breath and an awareness it could be the one that immediately terminates an interview.
So Danny Frawley, how did you feel when a fan was so irate he dumped tonnes of chicken poo on your Punt Rd doorstep?
When we asked Frawley that question only last month for the Sacked podcast, there was a pause and a head shake.
Then came the distinct Danny Frawley cackle of laughter that so many fans of his work on Bounce came to know and love.
Only Danny Frawley could take a burgeoning club crisis and turn a load of chicken poo into the circuit-breaker that would surge Richmond into a preliminary final.
As Frawley told us after that guffaw, the Tigers could have imploded after losing three consecutive games in 2001 in a way Richmond had done so many times before.
Those losses to Essendon (46 points), Adelaide (28 points) and Geelong (42 points) from Rounds 7-9 had to the Tigers on the brink.
Instead, the disarming Frawley thought the entire episode was hilarious and another example of Richmond supporter passion.
Another coach with less human touch might have gone on a witch-hunt, adamant the perpetrator be immediately tracked down and suspended as a Richmond member.
Instead, Frawley got the property steward to grab a couple of bags, scooped it up and fed it onto his roses.
“I think we were 5-1 and playing Geelong and I thought we are on a bit of a downer at the moment. We are 5-3, we lost the last two," Frawley recalled.
"(On radio Gecko said) 'Frawley, if the Tigers don’t win the next one, I can swear here, chicken shit, I am going to dump it'.
“Anyway, Monday comes and we are as flat as biscuits, we started 5-1, and we are now 5-4, and you think, ‘Gee is this going to continue?’.
“(CEO) Mark Brayshaw came into the match committee and said, ‘We can’t get out, some bloke has delivered five tonnes of chicken shit on the front door.
“But on the inside I could see the funny side. What a lot of people don’t understand and that when all the dust had settled, and all the media guys were there for the lead story, I got the property steward to get a couple of the old chaff bags that we put the footies in.
“I got a shovel and he said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'Mate I am going to shovel a bit of this chicken manure into two bags and I tell you what my roses now are magnificent, I have got to congratulate Gecko.
“That was as funny as anything inside the walls. The Richmond supporters are passionate.”
The Tigers' response?
They went to Subiaco the next weekend, beat Fremantle by 38 points, went on a four-week winning streak and surged into the third week of finals.
Frawley would later reflect upon that 2001 season as one of the best seasons of his lengthy playing and coaching career.
“Looking back at that 2001 year, it was the best year in footy I have had. We couldn’t have asked for a better position that year," he told the Herald Sun.
“Brisbane won the flag and Essendon was still up there, but the fact was the team performed as well as it could have.
“It was the most satisfying year I ever had coaching or playing. It was a great achievement, and if you say that people look at you as if you are a Martian.
“We had people there like Wayne Campbell and Benny Gale, and Leon Cameron (and Danny Crocker). Alan Richardson was the VFL coach. We developed three fitness guys. Warren Kofoed (now at West Coast) and Matt Hornsby (now at St Kilda) were under Noel Duncan.
“Chris Bradshaw is now the Collingwood doctor, Tim Barber is St Kilda’s head doctor. It is on my bucket list to invite those guys back to my place before the end of the year.
“I will get howled down by all and sundry — what is Danny inviting back a team that only finished third? But those guys bled for the jumper.”
Another favourite Frawley story surrounded the Bungaree team of the century - a side the St Kilda legend wasn't named in despite his AFL heroics.
That made for an awkward presentation night when "Spud" was invited to announce the team.
"It was the showcase event for Bungaree which is a small town out of Ballarat, there's a street there where all the Frawleys live still to this day," SEN radio colleague Craig Hutchison said this morning.
"He was there to announce it and he didn't know the team, but he was the guy with the envelope to read out the names and he was going through the team and there was seven Frawleys in the team and he wasn't one of them."
Starting in the backline, Frawley read out the 22 team of the century members, including three uncles, two brothers and two cousins.
"He was one of the most famous names to ever come from Bungaree, but there was an eligibility criteria of I think 50 games and he may have played 47, that might not be exact but it was something like that, he played centre-half forward as a 16-year-old and kicked a bunch of goals," Hutchison said.
"So every time a position got read out by him - 'Full-back: Tony Frawley' (he was thinking) they've got me at centre-half back ... oh, they've got me on the ball ... oh, they've got me ruck-rover, oh, they've got me rover, then when he wasn't named in the 18 he thought, 'They've got me straight to legend status or captain-coach starting on the bench'.
"It grew on him through the night because all his mates were coming up to him saying, 'What happened, Spud?'. The night ended - he tells this story but I believe it to be true - with him having the president in a headlock at the Bungaree pub at 2am."
The club made up for the omission by naming its new pavillion after the town's favourite son in 2013.
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Originally published as Danny Frawley says bizarre chicken poo moment was a turning point in Richmond's 2001 season