10 tales of Tiger heartache: Richmond’s pain from 1980 to today
EVERY Tiger fan knows about pain and loss. They might blame a streaker, a crooked billionaire or a succession of club legends. Here’s a guide to help explain why this Grand Final means so much to fans.
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EVERY Tiger fan knows about pain and loss. Ask them, and they might blame a streaker, or a crooked billionaire, or a succession of club legends for generations of failure.
Here is a potted guide to the errors and frustrations that help explain why today’s Grand Final appearance — the first for the club since 1982 — means so much to so many a legion of loyal and long suffering fans.
THREE DECADES OF TIGER TORMENT
RICHMOND FANS MAKE MORE NOISE THAN A JET
1982
Richmond fans’ despair at the 1982 Grand Final loss compounded over the decades; the game would symbolise the decline and the decay that followed. Yet their sentiments hardly match those of then coach Francis Bourke.
Bourke was a club emblem who embodied grit through five flags leading up to 1980. This game marked him as a losing coach — who had been slotted in to replace another club legend, Tony Jewell, the winning coach of the 1980 team.
Player Dale Weightman had assumed that the 1980 flag would be the first of many as a Richmond player: instead, the 1982 Grand Final would be a vain grasp at triumph in 12 years marked by sackings, a couple of wooden spoons and tin rattles.
Then player Kevin Bartlett later blamed the appearance of streaker Helen D’Amico for derailing a Richmond fightback in the third quarter of the 1982 grand final. “Blonde or brunette, depending on which way you looked”, is how Bartlett recalled her in a book.
Yet full-forward Michael Roach now sees D’Amico’s presence as a plus. “She was front page,” he says, “which was probably good seeing as we got beaten.”
Bourke offers harsh self-reflections. His recollections sound sketchy. “Unless we won the flag we thought we failed and I thought we failed,” he says. “I think that can be a result of expectations, I suppose, but I coached a losing grand final side and I still do deem myself as a failure because of that.”
Bourke has never watched a replay of the game. He says he never will.
GALLERY: AGONY AND ECSTASY OF TIGER FANS
THOUSANDS FLOCK TO GRAND FINAL PARADE
Trade Wars
Tribal spats dominated Richmond thinking in the early 1980s. Collingwood pinched players from Punt Rd and Richmond poached players from Victoria Park.
Collingwood picked up Geoff Raines and David Cloke, mostly because the pair (and others) were disenchanted by pay, facilities and the dated culture at Richmond, which retaliated by spending up on players who would not live up to their price tags.
The attacks financially crippled the club and handicapped the playing list for a succession of coaches.
“It was like a war,” Weightman now recalls.
“It just got out of hand. Both clubs went out to destroy each other and took their eyes off the ball.”
Roach, who kicked 112 goals in 1980, says both he and the club suffered immeasurably: “When you lose one of the best centremen (Raines) Richmond ever had, then losing Clokey who took a lot of pressure off myself by being that other key forward, we probably never really recovered. I don’t think I played as well without those two boys being around the club.”
Now Richmond chief executive Brendon Gale, a scholar on the longer club history, describes it as “decision-making based on vengeance”.
’DON’T ARGUE’: DUSTY ON ‘CREEPY’ BRUCE
Alan Bond
No one much wanted to be Richmond president until an unlikely candidate, businessman and crook Alan Bond, volunteered for the position. Bond announced his ignorance of football, and Tigerland, at the club’s best and fairest count by mispronouncing Weightman as “Wineman”.
Suspicion stalked Bond: did he seek to move or publicly list the once mighty club? Both, it seems.
Three days before the season started, Bond departed, his three months tenure possibly the shortest presidency in VFL/AFL club history.
Strange, then, that Bond later spoke fondly of the time. Journalist and Tiger tragic Cheryl Critchley wrote to Bond in 1998. Bond, serving a stint in jail, indulged her with her a childlike reply.
“When I became President (sic) of Richmond it was a short time, to help them out of the particular funding problem at that time,” he wrote.
“The tigers (sic) will always have fond memories for me. I still follow them when they are not playing against the eagles (sic). The game has got faster and more injuries are one of the main problems for the players.
“Next year it would be great if the Tigers and Eagles could play off in the grand final. After all it is not necessary that you win all the time as long as you play your best. Football Clubs (sic) are like people, we can all learn from our mistakes.”
Neither Bond — nor the Tigers — heeded his advice.
DERM: WHY I BELIEVE IN THE TIGERS
1989
Richmond had been thrashed by North Melbourne, and a fan needed to express his frustration. He fumed outside the changerooms, and demanded to see then president Neville Crowe, who was told the fan wanted to hand back his membership.
“Tell him to put it under the door,” Crowe replied.
Twelve years later, another enraged fan dumped chicken manure at the club’s front door. The club was outraged — that is, apart from then coach Danny Frawley.
The farm boy seized the opportunity to bag manure for his lawn and roses at home. They bloomed, Frawley now explains. “I was giggling behind the scenes,” he says. “I thought it was a great joke.”
The stunt also proved to be a turning point: Richmond won the next four games.
Sackings
Robert Walls was appointed coach in 1996. It ended badly — as all coaching tenures, including Jewell, Bourke and Kevin Bartlett, did at Richmond during the era. A 137-point loss to Adelaide in round 17, 1997 led directly to Walls’ sacking.
He later claimed that sponsors’ put pressure on Richmond president Leon Daphne to sack him, though Daphne blames high expectations — and poor performances.
Jeff Gieschen took over — until he was sacked in 1999. Daphne went, too, after the president vowed, mid-season, that the loss of Gieschen would mean his resignation, too.
Daphne had led the club for six years: in his words, he helped “maintain its existence” when “no one was else was wanting to stand as president”.
Roach played in the good times — and the bad. In all, he had seven coaches in 13 years, and ended his career in 1989 with two wooden spoons in his last three years.
“Take Paul Sproule (coach in 1985),” Roach says.
“I felt he was going all right, then he was gone. You start playing the way he wants you to play, then next year, you’re back to Tony Jewell (coach 1979-81, 1986-87) again or whoever it was. It was pretty hard as a player to keep adjusting to the different styles that coaches wanted you to play.”
It was hard on the coaches, too: “To be fair on Kevin Bartlett and Tony Jewell, we didn’t have any money to go out and really get a top-line player.”
1990
Brendon Gale’s father was pleased when his son was drafted by Richmond. He’d be a good chance to play Grand Finals, Don Gale explained. Instead, Gale found himself on street corners, rattling cans.
For 63 years until 1986, club property steward Charlie Callander had broken sticks of chewing gum in half, and refused players fresh pairs of socks, for thrift’s sake. It hadn’t helped — by 1990, the club had debts of $1.7 million.
“We were sent out to raise funds for the survival of the club,” Gale says.
“We were all over the countryside. We were dispatched to Bridge Rd, and Warrnambool, begging for money.”
1995
Every Richmond fan has a different memory of the 1995 preliminary final against Geelong, though all share the same pained vision. Some recall how Michael Gale kicked the ball the wrong way. Teammate and brother, Brendon, remembers the grey day at Waverley as “horrible”.
Then club president Leon Daphne, and now cheer squad president, Gerard Egan, share a disbelief at Richmond fans who started singing the club song in the last quarter, when the Tigers were down by 12 goals or more at the time.
“If you walked into that ground in last quarter, and didn’t look at the scoreboard you would have thought we were in front,” Egan says.
“To do this day I can’t fathom it.”
Round 6, 2007
Many Richmond fans take credit for the Geelong dynasty that began in 2007. Geelong kicked 20 goals to halftime in the Telstra Dome clash, and 35 in total to win by 155 points.
Richmond gained another wooden spoon that year, its second in four years and fourth in 20.
Daphne, now a member of Richmond’s history and tradition committee, says the game set Geelong towards three grand finals: “That was a terrible loss.”
Round 23, 2016
After one of the most disappointing years in memory, Richmond played Sydney in the final round. The 113-point loss reflects the internal club discord that is only now being properly understood. President Peggy O’Neal speaks of a club that felt “depleted”. Damien Hardwick, however, talked up finals in 2017. No one believed him, including Daphne. “Finals sounded a long way away,” he says.
Hardwick was right. Everyone else was wrong.
Pre-match nerves
Richmond cheer squad president Gerard Egan turned up to the 1980 grand final without a worry. He assumed his team would win.
He felt different before the grand final two years later. “Very nervous”, he says.
How does he feel today? He’s not sure. “I’m not feeling confident but the nerves haven’t kicked in,” he says. “It took me until Monday to actually realise we were in the grand final.”
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