Richmond Football Club in 1990: How the Tiger Army saved its own skin

RICHMOND will march into Saturday’s Grand Final as a financial powerhouse with no debt, 73,000 members and revenue of nearly $50 million. But 27 years ago this club was on death’s door.

JON RALPH

4 min read

September 26, 2017 - 8:00PM

Richmond players celebrate after a win in 1990. But there wasn’t much to celebrate about financially down at Tigerland. Picture: George Salpigtidis

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RICHMOND saved itself from extinction a dollar at a time.

On Saturday, it will march into a Grand Final as a financial powerhouse with no debt, 73,000 members and revenue of nearly $50 million.

But 27 years ago this club was on death’s door.

A year after Footscray was nearly forced to merge or worse, proud Richmond was about to go to the wall.

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Go back 27 years and Richmond wasn’t the financial powerhouse it is today. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

The club had debts of $1.7 million from a turnover of only $1.9 million, had a paltry membership base and was being sued for outstanding salaries by 22 former coaches and players.

From that crisis was born the Save our Skins campaign.

Instead of handing back the keys to the AFL, the campaign eclipsed its stated aim of raising $1 million in 10 weeks to save the club from liquidation.

Tin rattles, a legends game, sausage sizzles, comedy nights, an MCG rally attended by Jack Dyer — all of them mobilised the Tiger Army.

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'Captain Blood' Jack Dyer helped mobilise the Tiger Army for the appeal. Picture: Drew Fitzgibbon

The MCG rally raised $300,000 as Captain Blood lambasted the AFL for its lack of support.

The legends game raised $109,000 even if coach Tom Hafey’s pre-match cry to kick it long to Royce Hart backfired when opponent Bruce Doull didn’t give him an inch of room.

Thankfully someone donated a coin-counting machine, because so much of the money raised came in coins of all kinds rather than corporate donations.

And while it has taken nearly 30 years for the club to move towards the brink of a premiership, its echoes can be heard in everything the club does today.

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Then-Richmond coach Kevin Bartlett with Dale Weightman during training at Bacchus Marsh in 1990.

Richmond players celebrate after a win in 1990. But there wasn’t much to celebrate about financially down at Tigerland. Picture: George Salpigtidisy

Chief executive Brendon Gale was a raw-boned first-year recruit from Tasmania shocked by the events unfolding around him.

Witnessing the grassroots movement was an American businesswoman swept along by the fervour and realising she just had to barrack for Richmond. It was Peggy O’Neal, now the president.

The master spruikers were an unlikely pair in former captain Neville Crowe and club legend and former coach Kevin Bartlett.

President Crowe, whose sensational 1967 Grand Final suspension seemed at one stage likely to be reprised by Trent Cotchin, only passed away last year.

But if Bartlett has been stirring the pot this past week over the jumper clash issue, he can stir away — he helped save this club.

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Then-Richmond coach Kevin Bartlett and president Neville Crowe during the Save Our Skins appeal. Picture: Ian Stevenson

Then-Richmond president Neville Crowe gives the thumbs up as Opposition Leader Alan Brown and Premier Joan Kirner sign cheques for the Richmond’s Save Our Skins appeal.

Then-Richmond president Neville Crowe and coach Kevin Bartlett are jubilant after the Tigers first win of the 1990 season.

Cameron Schwab, who walked into the club as a 24-year-old chief executive with a famous family lineage at Punt Rd, says Save Our Skins is his proudest moment in football.

“It was 1990 and 10 years earlier Richmond had won a premiership, but they had lost a lot of money in 1987 and we basically had to cut the club back to the very core in 1988 and 1989,’’ he recalled on Tuesday.

“We were only paying about 40 per cent of the salary cap, we only had 5000 or 6000 members and our staff was about 12 or 13 full-times.

“I was the bargain-basement CEO, KB had come back for love as much as anything else, we had debt over $1 million and business interest rates were almost 20 per cent.

“Neville and myself presented to the board and the next day we announced if we didn’t find $1 million in two months we were effectively going to shut the doors.”

Decades on, it is difficult to imagine that Richmond could ever go bust, yet Schwab says that threat was very real.

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Richmond fan Geoff Brown with former Richmond footballer Brian ‘Whale’ Roberts during the Save Our Skins appeal in 1990.

Decades on, it is difficult to imagine that Richmond could ever go bust. Picture: AAP/Julian Smith

“The directors of the club had to sign off on whether the organisation can pay debts when and if they come due, and they couldn’t,’’ he said.

“It’s how businesses go bankrupt. That was the point we were at. This club was effectively saved by a generation of people who are now taking their children and grandchildren to the Grand Final this weekend.

“The strength of it was we had two people in Neville Crowe and Kevin Bartlett. Their energy was unbelievable.

“They were larger than life, they were energetic, they had the ability to mobilise people.

“It wasn’t as if anyone wrote us a check for $500,000. Luckily someone donated a coin counter because it was just piles and piles of coins.”

The sole corporate cheque was from Just Jeans owner Craig Kimberley, who had a stake in the Sydney Swans but operated out of Richmond.

Those who could give often did it in amounts multiplied by five — after the five premierships they had witnessed between 1967 to 1980. Richmond’s premiership drought has stretched to 37 seasons, yet the club still exists because of the efforts of the faithful in those remarkable months in 1990.

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