Tony Jewell was revelling in the glory of premiership success immediately after Richmond’s 1980 grand final victory when he was delivered a brutal reality check.

Just half an hour earlier, he had coached the Tigers to a record-breaking 81-point win over Collingwood.

But as he partied with the players in the packed MCG changerooms, Jewell noticed the club’s ruthless powerbroker Graeme Richmond looking downcast.

“Straight after the game, I was in there (celebrating) and Graeme Richmond was leaning against a post, looking as if he had lost a million dollars,” Jewell told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast. “I said, ‘Graeme, how good was that?’

“He said, ‘By jeez, ‘Cock’, that wasn’t bad, but they (rival clubs) will be coming for us next year and I don’t think we will be good enough’.

“He pricked the balloon pretty quickly. It wasn’t long after that I thought I might (only) get two more years out of this (coaching job).”

Jewell’s assessment was wrong. He actually had only 22 games left as coach before he was cruelly sacked the first time by the Richmond board.

Jewell’s late 1981 sacking – after a 13-win, nine-loss season and seventh place on the ladder the year after winning a flag – summed up the ruthless way Richmond cut a swathe through an assembly line of coaches across three decades.

Jewell, now 78, is well qualified as an interview subject for Sacked, having been dumped from three different VFL senior coaching roles – twice at Richmond and once at St Kilda.

But those departures do not alter Jewell’s sweeping contribution to the game – with a few soaring highs and some low moments, as he never lost his sense of humour or perspective.

TIGER TONY

Jewell was residentially tied to St Kilda, but lasted only one practice match before being told to look elsewhere.

Saints coach Allan Jeans lined him up on a young Ian Stewart, who would go on to win three Brownlow Medals.

“I will never forget Allan Jeans said: ‘Son, you are playing in the centre with the probables and you are playing against a player who can play a bit … a bloke called Ian Stewart’,” Jewell said. “St Kilda promptly cleared me to Richmond.”

That trade led to a lifetime’s love of the yellow and black, as he played 80 games, mainly as a defender, from 1964-70.

He played initially under Len Smith, a man considered a coaching genius.

Jewell still has the dog-eared notes that Smith passed on to his players, and his coaching influence was considered by many to be as significant as his legendary brother, Norm.

“Len was a revelation,” Jewell said. “His influence was astounding. Norm got all the credit because he coached a very successful Melbourne side, but had Len been able to stay at Richmond, he would have become a legend, too.”

Ill-health dogged Len Smith and he was forced to hand over the Tiger reins to Tom Hafey, who went on to coach Richmond to four premierships.

Jewell played in the Tigers’ 1967 flag – a side that had no fewer than seven future senior VFL coaches. All seven would ultimately be sacked, as would Hafey.

“You can add Kevin Sheedy and Mick Erwin – who were on the list at the time – who went on to coach,” Jewell said.

Jewell was a hard-nosed defender who played any role the club needed him to.

“Graeme (Richmond) would call you up to the front office and say, ‘Cocko’, in a couple of weeks’ time we are playing Geelong. John Sharrock could be the difference between winning and losing and I want you to knock him down at the first bounce,” Jewell said.

“If Graeme said it, and you didn’t follow through, it was ‘goodnight nurse’, you would be back in the VFA before you could think.”

Jewell left Richmond at 26 and was appointed coach of Caulfield in the VFA, which led to his love of coaching and his first flag as a coach.

BACK TO RICHMOND — AS COACH

Jewell returned to Richmond as reserves coach, uniting a group of young Tigers into a force, winning the seconds flag in 1977.

When Barry Richardson was sacked as senior coach, Jewell was the natural replacement, even if he didn’t have a formal interview and had already been told that when Francis Bourke retired as a player, he would automatically assume the senior coaching job.

“I knew before I even got the job that as soon as Francis Bourke was available that Graeme (Richmond) was going to appoint him,” he said.

He joked: “I reckon I gave Francis another 100 games … there was no way I was going to sack Francis and put myself out of a job.”

In Jewell’s first year, the Tigers finished seventh, but their mix of old and new blended perfectly in his second season, in 1980.

“There were a number of terrific young blokes like Geoff Raines, Dale Weightman, Mark Lee, Michael Roach, Greg Strachan and Stephen Mount and there was still a hardcore of blokes who played in some of the premierships like David Cloke, Kevin Bartlett, Merv Keane and Francis Bourke,” he said.

He appointed a reluctantly retired Tiger Kevin Sheedy to a skills coaching role, the start of a pathway that saw Sheedy become one of the most significant coaches in the game’s history.

“I remember talking to him and saying: ‘What are your plans for the future?’ He said: ‘I am going to spend my life in football.’ At that stage no one was absolutely full-time.

“He spent a year as our skills coach and he took training on Monday nights, but I could see even then that he took every scrap of information. It didn’t surprise me the success he had.”

PUNCHING ON WITH PERCY

Jewell almost came to blows with Carlton coach Peter “Percy” Jones at quarter time of the 1980 qualifying final clash at Waverley.

The two rivals engaged in a verbal joust over an official who had transferred from one club to the other. Suddenly a couple of wayward and inaccurate swipes missed their target before the pair were fortunately pulled apart.

Jewell told Sacked: “It was all over Rudi Webster who had been the psychologist for Carlton the year before. Graeme Landy had knocked out Ken Sheldon just before quarter-time and as we were going down the race, Percy was yelling at Rudi.

“Rudi was tugging at me on the coat, saying: ‘Percy is having a go at me’. I ignored him as I had to go and address the players. As we broke up and started walking back towards the race, Perc started having a go at Rudi again.

“As I got closer to Perc, I just sort of pushed him in the chest, it was a push and shove and it looked worse than it actually was.”

The Herald Sun reunited Jewell and Jones at the scene of their stoush six years ago, with both now firm friends, despite the old Tigers-Blues enmity.

“We are good mates. He (Jones) is a ripping bloke,” Jewell said.

“Fortunately, I can remember (Richmond fitness adviser) Peter Grant yelling ‘Don’t do it’ (hit him), and (Carlton official) Shane O’Sullivan was trying to stop it, and sanity prevailed.

“Anyway, we went into Channel 7 (for World Of Sport) the next day and we shook hands.”

FLAG THEN THE FLICK 12 MONTHS LATER

As soon as the Magpies defeated Geelong in the 1980 preliminary final, Jewell turned to his chairman of selectors John Robertson in the Waverley grandstand and said: “We’ve just won the premiership mate … there is no way Collingwood can beat us!”

Jewell thought his old coach Tom Hafey had worked a miracle simply getting the 1980 Magpies into a grand final.

“We had a very tall forward line … Michael Roach, David Cloke and Jim Jess; they (Collingwood) didn’t have much height and none of their backmen were quick and KB (Kevin Bartlett) was in absolutely devastating form,” Jewell said.

Jewell’s belief was spot on. Collingwood was no match for the Tigers, or for a damaging Bartlett who won the Norm Smith Medal with seven goals. Richmond won by 81 points.

It was Jewell’s jewel in his coaching crown. But within a season, the telltale signs of change came swift and fast after the reigning premiers missed the finals.

He had been booked to fly to Perth to speak with potential recruit Maurice Rioli when the club unexpectedly cancelled it.

During a tennis match with Robertson soon after, his chairman of selectors said to him: “Don’t be surprised if they sack you.”

Then late one night at his home when he and his lieutenants were planning out a pre-season schedule he would never oversee, he got a phone call from the club’s secretary Kevin Dixon.

He was told to front a meeting at Punt Road at 6am the next day.

“There was only one reason Richmond called meetings at 6 o’clock in the morning … and that was to sack me,” Jewell said. “I knew I was gone.

“I rang (journalist) Bruce Matthews and said: ‘Mate, do you want a story … I’ve just resigned.’

“I never officially turned up to the meeting to get sacked because I knew I was gone.”

SAINTS, PLUGGER AND SACKED PART II

Ian Stewart, the man who had deprived him a spot on the Saints list in the early 1960s, offered Jewell the coaching job at St Kilda in 1983.

It would prove to be a challenging two seasons.

One of the biggest moments came when Stewart and Jewell travelled to the Cattle Yards Inn in Ballarat, where Tony Lockett’s father worked, in the hunt for his son’s signature.

“Ian had been speaking to Tony and said he was a future champion,” Jewell said.

“Old Plugger (Tony’s dad) said: ‘I will agree’, and as we walked out, he leant over the bar and said words to the effect: ‘If you ever play him in the thirds when he gets down, he will never play for St Kilda again.’”

There was never any hope of that as Lockett went on to become the game’s greatest goal kicker.

Jewell’s time at Moorabbin would be far more fleeting.

“I reckon I was sacked about every four weeks,” he joked.

Jewell’s plan to introduce the kick-in huddle – first devised by Robert Walls – raised the ire of Saints president Lindsay Fox, resulting in a tense meeting at Fox’s Toorak mansion.

Sensing he was about to be sacked at some stage, Jewell told journalist Mike Sheahan that he would be leaving at the end of 1984, which Fox found out about and acted swiftly.

“I got to training and Lindsay was there and all the TV cameras were there and I thought, ‘Hello, this is trouble’.”

Jewell was sacked on the spot.

SACKED PART III

Jewell was talked into coaching Richmond in 1985 and ’86, after almost taking the job at Collingwood that went to Leigh Matthews.

But the club was a poor shadow of the one that won a flag not too many years earlier, having been torn apart by instability and almost bankrupted by a player poaching war with the Magpies.

In one famous game, Jewell was pictured almost tearing his hair out, which summed up his second stint as Tigers‘ coach.

It was a weird time at Punt Rd, where for a time, businessman Alan Bond served as president for a short period. Bond devised a plan for the Tigers to play all 11 home games in Brisbane and the rest in Melbourne.

It was knocked on the head and Bond swiftly moved on.

Bond was replaced by Neville Crowe, with Jewell and the new president working out an exit pathway for him at the end of 1986.

He was replaced by Kevin Bartlett, while Jewell went from senior coach to a recruiting role … until he was told after several weeks that the club could no longer afford the position.

“So I got sacked from that job as well,” he said.

END OF THE CURSE

Jewell can see the irony in the reason Richmond went from being a long-time laughing stock which regularly sacked coaches for more than a generation to a modern dynasty – stability.

A decision to stick with Damien Hardwick when he was under intense pressure at the end of 2016 – a luxury not afforded Jewell or a host of other coaches – paid massive dividends in 2017 with the club’s first premiership in 37 years and the first of three flags in four seasons.

“Graeme (Richmond) was always in the background putting the fear of God into everyone (in the 1980s) and it was year after year of trying to catch up. It wasn’t until ‘Benny’ Gale came along and what a great job he has done,” Jewell said.

“2017 was amazing,” he said of the game that changed Richmond’s chequered modern history.

“It was absolutely incredible. I have never seen so many people so happy.

“It gives you pride back in your club. In the past three grand final wins, I’ve been a barracker. I now know why the supporters are so passionate and why they can spit their dentures out at you.”

Having seen the best players the club has produced over the past 60 years, Jewell says Dustin Martin sits comfortably among the top echelon of Richmond players in his lifetime.

“We’ve had some fabulous players … but Dusty is right up there with all of them (including) Francis (Bourke), KB (Bartlett) and Royce (Hart),” he said.

“We’ve been really lucky as a club to have some great players all the way back to old Jack (Dyer).”

Jewell lives in Sorrento these days and still follows the Tigers with a passion, but also devotes much of his time to painting – a lifelong passion that gave him some respite away from the pressure of coaching.