Richmond’s recent prized trade acquisitions Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper have joined an exclusive group in the Club’s AFL/VFL history – members of a team beaten by the Tigers in a Grand Final who subsequently made Punt Road their football home.
Taranto and Hopper played in the Greater Western Sydney side that lost the 2019 Grand Final to Richmond by 89 points.
There are five other players in this select company at Tigerland – Bert Boromeo, Gareth Andrews, Paul Feltham, Peter McCormack and Craig Stewart.
Boromeo was a member of the Carlton team defeated in the 1921 Grand Final by the Tigers by four points.
He later spent one season at Richmond, in 1926, playing 14 games.
Gareth Andrews was centre half-forward in the Geelong side that fell nine points short of the Tigers in the classic 1967 Grand Final contest.
Seven years on, during the 1974 season, Andrews was traded to Richmond in exchange for dual Tiger premiership player Rex Hunt.
Andrews went on to be part of the Richmond team that comfortably accounted for North Melbourne by 41 points in the ’74 premiership-decider.
He played 31 games for the Tigers all-up.
Paul Feltham, a half-forward in the Roos’ losing 1974 Grand Final line-up, had a brief seven-game career at Punt Road in 1978.
McCormack and Stewart endured a horror Grand Final day with Collingwood in 1980, as Richmond romped home, scoring a crushing 81-point victory.
The pair then had short stints at Tigerland – McCormack playing four games in 1986 and Stewart 35 games from 1984-86.