Lou Richards: Collingwood legend’s dares draw cult following
FROM cutting Ted Whitten’s lawn with scissors to rowing Geelong coach Bill Goggin across the Barwon River in a bath tub, Louie the Lip’s dares are legendary.
Collingwood
Don't miss out on the headlines from Collingwood. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THEY called it “The Kiss of Death”, and it was the newspaper column everyone from the Prime Minister downwards devoured with a passion.
Lou Richards’ fearless predictions in the Sun News-Pictorial spread out across more than 30 years, and his penchant for bestowing the most memorable of nicknames on the some of the game’s greatest players, made him compelling reading.
Along the way “Louie the Lip”, as he became known, made football fun again, taught players to laugh at themselves, and dragged countless new people to the game.
TRIBUTES FLOW FOR LOU RICHARDS
LOU RICHARDS: THE LITTLE BLOKE WHO ROSE ABOVE THE PACK
DEVOTED FATHER: DAD WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT ALL UP FOR FAMILY
LOU WAS KING OF VICTORIA AND LOVED BY ALL: MIKE SHEAHAN
THE HEART AND SOUL OF COLLINGWOOD
LOU ‘WILL ALWAYS BE A COLLINGWOOD PERSON’: EDDIE MCGUIRE
TIMELINE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LOU RICHARDS
One of his early dares showed the level of interest in his weekly prognostications. Ahead of the 1961 preliminary final, he favoured Melbourne over Footscray, and in his inimitable fashion declared on the morning of the match that he would cut Ted Whitten’s lawn with scissors if the Bulldogs won. Walking into the MCG that day, the first people Richards ran into was Prime Minister Bob Menzies, who said to him: “Good day, young Richards. All I want to see is Melbourne get beaten here today, so you can cut the lawn.”
The Bulldogs won, and a crowd of onlookers turned up to see him start snipping Whitten’s lawn with scissors.
There were countless more dares, each one more outrageous and better attended than the last.
There was the time he rowed Geelong coach Bill Goggin across the Barwon River in a bath tub with more than 5000 people on either bank; when Peter Hudson dunked him in a horse trough and when Dermott Brereton tipped a bucket of freezing water on his head; when he had to wheel Carlton’s Warren ‘Wow’ Jones along Lygon St in a wheelbarrow; when he swept a section of Collins St with a feather duster; and when he was smeared with pizza and spaghetti by an assortment of Blues players.
Most challenging was the day this 170cm, 73kg scribe piggybacked North Melbourne colossus Mick Nolan — all 115kg of him — along Errol St to the North Melbourne Town Hall after the Kangaroos beat South Melbourne in 1978.
Even more enduring were some of the most iconic nicknames he gave to some of the game’s stars, including “Lethal” Leigh Matthews, “the Flying Doormat” (Bruce Doull), “the Incredible Hulk” (Rene Kink), “the Galloping Gasometer” (Mick Nolan), “The Flying Dutchman” (Paul Van der Haar), “The Big Dipper” (Robert DiPierdomenico).
Matthews once told Richards his mother didn’t like the “Lethal” nickname, to which the media megastar reminded him how much money it had made him.
Richards did it all with a cheeky smile, knowing his audience loved it. In his autobiography, The Kiss of Death”, he explained: “Call them corny, call them contrived, call them what you like, but these pranks have been great fun.
They’ve shown the human face of the footballers involved and they’ve dragged people out in their thousands. And from a personal point of view, they’ve sold millions of newspapers.”
TV Wrap: Swann flags wildcard, champion Dee on Roos radar
The new football performance boss has weighed into several contentious discussion topics, including the introduction of the wildcard and the last-touch rule. Plus a Dee is on North’s radar. The full TV wrap here.
I presented my son with a Pies jumper, and our dreams came true
Nearly 20 years since he last played for the Pies, Mick McGuane opens up on what it was like watching his son Tom don the black and white stripes for the first time.