I know which footy team my family supports. Not all of them have realised it yet

As parents we take liberties with our newly arrived bundles of joy. Lumbering them with names and spellings of names that are sometimes a burden, tying them to cultural and religious rituals, putting their name down for independent schools, the Melbourne Cricket Club, picking their footy team. The list goes on.

I didn’t get around to the religious sacraments, or the private schools and I failed to submit the signed MCC nomination form for the eldest, who could have been a restricted member by now.

But when it came to that other religion, I took it for granted my kids would share my unwavering passion for Richmond. In any weather, as the theme song says.

I grew up in a Richmond-supporting family in the middle of St Kilda’s then Ballarat country recruiting zone, but it would never have occurred to me to back anyone other than the Tiges. My father had been more partial to South Melbourne but his interest waned when they flew north to become the Sydney Swans in the early ’80s.

My NRL-supporting husband picked up Geelong as his team when he moved to Victoria, notably before I got to him. How does one survive the office water cooler chats in Melbourne without an AFL team? Gary Ablett Snr was at the height of his godly powers at that time so I can’t entirely blame him for going for the Cats.

Claire Heaney’s newborn daughter wears Richmond colours at her first trip to the MCG.

Negotiating what the family footy team will be in “mixed” marriages can be tricky. In my mind, we were a Tiges family given I’d barracked for them since birth and it’s much easier for us to stroll to the ’G from our home in Richmond than it is to drive down the freeway to the Cattery. But that conviction has been repeatedly tested.

Footy clubs are for life in my book. The rare exemptions being if you barrack for Fitzroy, for instance, and they head to Queensland and become the Brisbane Bears, in which case you get a free pass to start again. But chopping and changing is disloyal. It’s just not done.

My eldest went to the footy at the MCG, strapped to her dad in a baby carrier when she was just weeks old. She was decked out in a Tigers’ bib, hat and wearing a baby sized yellow and black scarf gifted by friends to help stake the Richmond claim.

From memory the Bulldogs beat us, but it was good to get out of the house.

Our footy attendance dropped off as we juggled shift work and sleepless nights with three little people. Each child had a Richmond jumper. But my second child emerged as an outlier who was indifferent to Auskick and declared he wanted to wear Geelong gear to school footy colour day. I’ve never been able to prove it, but I think my husband was white anting.

After reflecting on yet another parenting failure, and resisting the urge to tell him he’d wear a Richmond jumper or go without, I reluctantly set out to find a Geelong jumper for my otherwise minimal maintenance middle child.

You can do your best to guide them, but what do you do if your kids start supporting the wrong team?Credit: Chris Lane

During a lunch break I handed over $60 for a much too generous size 12 jumper, rationalising he would grow into it eventually. The salesperson suggested I could fork out an extra $30 to put numbers on the back, which I declined. The jumper was worn once.

In recent years, the youngest flirted with Carlton. When she asked me to book a ticket for the now traditional Richmond v Carlton Thursday opening round, I assumed she was barracking for the Tigers but then she turned up wearing a Carlton cap. There was chat about me funding a Carlton membership but that was a bridge too far. Fortunately, as her friendship with a Carlton supporter waned, so did her interest in the Blues.

Now the eldest, living in Canberra, has been going to the Giants’ games when they play at Manuka Oval three times a year. It’s a social event up there.

In things I never thought I would do, I bought her a three-game membership for $100 when what I can only assume was the dynamic pricing model saw tickets climbing to $75 for the Saints game. Part of the package was a scarf. Licking my wounds from the hiding the Tigers got from the Dees on Anzac Eve, she taunted me with a selfie of her swathed in the orange GWS scarf.

While GWS and Geelong are among the top three on the ladder, Richmond is languishing just above North Melbourne.

While it’s grim, I’m not bitter because those three Richmond premierships are among the highlights of my life. But that GWS scarf isn’t welcome in my house.

Claire Heaney is a freelance journalist.

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