Tiger fans’ celebration sad reminder of what Melbourne’s lost
After a dynasty-sealing grand final, loyal Richmond supporters journeyed to Punt Road oval on Sunday as if to animate the ghosts of absent heroes in an AFL season — and year — we hope never to be repeated, writes Patrick Carlyon.
Opinion
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All dressed up. And nowhere to go.
Richmond fans thronged Swan St on Sunday, to clot outside coffee shops and ponder notions of sporting greatness.
At Punt Rd Oval, supporters picnicked under the statue of Jack Dyer as police officers, like a ring of grounded drones, huddled nearby.
Someone had left a note on a locked Gate 1: “Well done Tigers on a great effort to get to the grand final in a weird year.”
They came yesterday, as if to animate the ghosts of absent heroes. But there was no meeting point. This was outside the rules. The closest they got to Dusty was taking photos in front of his Alfred St mural.
They could not stream through the gates of Punt Rd, to bow at the base of the Jack Dyer Stand, and applaud the spill of players on stage.
It was all pulse and no heart, a premiership celebration sans players, merchandise stands and the shared swell of jubilation.
The night before, brave souls had risked the weather and the law to come together in Swan St, despite the missing fixtures of booze and burning effigies.
They were told to go home. A police officer pointed out to a fan that he was wearing a Richmond jumper, as if this was evidence of mischief.
These are the times, when grand finals are played 1800km away, and the natural urge to embrace strangers can be confused with a crime. In the distorted prism of lockdown, togetherness is a $4957 fine.
Punt Rd Oval was supposed to heave yesterday, as it did on the Sunday after the 2017 and 2019 grand finals.
A dusty Dusty should have appeared on stage and muddled up his days. Chief executive Brendon Gale should have been articulating the serenity of success.
President Peggy O’Neal, ordinarily difficult to confuse with a political campaigner, should have been promising 25,000 supporters of more to come.
Instead, O’Neal walked down Swan St, chatting with a few fans, before heading back to her nearby home and another viewing – her third – of the grand final replay.
Normally, O’Neal walks to the MCG, via Jack Dyer’s once residence, for Richmond matches.
She watched this grand final on TV with a bubble buddy, as if they were just two more Tiger tragics.
“That last goal,” she said of Martin’s Norm Smith effort. “He just grabbed it out of his hands and shook off Patrick Dangerfield and kicked a goal. It was like it happened so fast. I thought: how did he do that?”
She had bubbly afterwards, when O’Neal received her customary post-match text message from her club’s biggest player: “We won, we won, we won.”
She described “this strange season”, and felt pleased that Richmond had been embraced as such a deserving winner. O’Neal hoped most fans would accept the missing elements of the usual Tiger roar.
“It’s just different,” O’Neal said. “I’m sure the Tiger army understands that it’s nobody’s fault. It is what it is.”
Anyway, there’s always next year. As O’Neal said: “There’s no reason why we can’t keep going.”