Richmond Tigers no longer with Jeep, as club jumps on climate change bandwagon

Woke virtue signalling on issues such as climate change has no place in footy and smacks of hypocrisy. The Tigers, AFL and sport in general have gone mad.

Steve Price

@StevePriceMedia

4 min read

November 19, 2021 - 2:30PM

After more than a decade, Richmond and Jeep have parted company.

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Checking my 2021 Richmond Football Club membership card this week it says I have been a member for 27 years in a row.

My two children — who I added at birth — are not far behind on 23 and 22. It’s a family thing and the recent success has given us much joy. Three premierships after so many desolate years makes you forget the hard times.

My membership card – virtually useless for two seasons – also carries the logo of the American SUV car maker Jeep.

For 11 long years, the iconic US vehicle maker has supported the Tigers, providing staff and players with cars, and taking pride of place on the billboard at the corner of Punt Rd and Brunton Ave.

Last time I looked, a Jeep was still mounted there on a 3D hoarding.

There was a time, not so long ago, that Richmond proudly spruiked its relationship with Jeep. Picture: Jason Edwards

Jeep, born out of the famous WWII troop transport legend, is a petrol and diesel family four- wheel drive hugely popular around the world, and the sort of vehicle greenies hate.

Just last month it was announced Jeep – a major Richmond jumper sponsor – was out of its deal, with its sponsorship ended. In Jeep’s place comes a non-bank lender called Latitude and existing sponsor health insurer NIB.

I suspect the hugely popular “beat the Jeep” sprint staged at home game matches will go the way of the sponsors. You can hardly race a banker.

Coincidence or not, the largely working-class Tigers have very recently announced they are the first and only AFL club to sign up to something called the Sports For Climate Action Initiative.

Interestingly, none of the other AFL clubs have seen the need to jump on the climate change bandwagon, and it’s not difficult to see why.

A quick scan of the major sponsors of AFL clubs reveals many are reliant on mining giants, petroleum firms, gas producers and steel makers.

It’s a little bit of a conflict surely, if your footy club takes money from – as the Fremantle Dockers do – Woodside Petroleum, or as its cross-town rival, the West Coast Eagles, do from BHP and gas company AGL.

Port Power in Adelaide has on the front of its jumper GFG, which is an Indian-owned global steel and aluminium producer, and the Sydney Swans has the Middle Eastern airline Qatar.

Even Richmond, who have jumped on this green campaign, are still taking sponsorship dollars from United Petroleum.

The Tigers after winning the premiership in 2020. The club should stick to playing footy. Picture: Getty

Richmond has happily taken millions of dollars, for 11 years, from a classic example of American automotive excess but announces on its website it is “fully committed to action against extreme weather that threatens the wellbeing of players”.

Are the players so naive that they think the extreme weather has suddenly appeared from nowhere? Or do they realise all those free Jeeps they had been driving for more than a decade might have something to do with it?

Sorry to say, but this blatant hypocrisy from a club I love and from people I really admire is very hard to stomach and difficult to write about.

Chief executive Brendan Gale and president Peggy O’Neal are two people I know well and will continue to support, but this sort of woke virtue signalling about things like climate change doesn’t belong in a football club.

It especially doesn’t fit with a club that had until just a month ago ran its operations off the sponsorship dollars of an American car maker.

And I suspect if I wandered down to the Punt Road Oval carpark where the players and coaches park, there would still be a few Jeeps on site.

I might not have known about this new green Tiger globe-saving deal if not for hearing CEO Gale appearing on ABC News Radio with Tracey Holmes. Where else to spruik it?

Exactly what my team is doing to save the planet seems rather lame. As Brendon Gale explained on the radio, it is using grey water from the MCG in its operations; hardly high-tech climate mitigation.

Richmond Football Club president Peggy O’Neal is to be admired, but climate change should not be high on her agenda. Picture: Tony Gough

The team has tried to limit the use of plastic and water-cooler cups and dumped staff uniforms and selling merchandise from plastic bags. But, I must say, those water bottles used during matches look like plastic to me.

Solar panels are on the clubrooms roof, LED lights have been installed and forest-certified paper is used — whatever that is.

Seriously, sport in this country and around the world has gone mad.

This is a club that was happy for 11 years to take money from Jeep. In the distant past it was sponsored by long lost petrol company Esso – remember “get a tiger in your tank” – and has a president, the wonderful Peggy O’Neal, who grew up in a US coal mining town. Now it’s signalling it’s the only AFL club that’s committed ‘green’.

Fans and supporters see through this stuff.

The AFL is the most politically correct sporting organisation in Australia and lectures us all the time about all sorts of social issues we would rather make our own minds up about, including climate change.

At the same time many of its clubs are happy to take sponsorship dollars from the demonised fossil fuel companies that the global warming movement tell us is destroying the planet.

I love the Richmond footy club and for 27 years have financially supported it, and will continue to do, so but I just wish it would concentrate on playing AFL.