Since the introduction of the AFL’s trade period in the late 1980s, there has been no bigger trade from a Richmond perspective than the one that took place in October 1993, when Tigers captain Jeff Hogg went to Fitzroy in exchange for three Lions players – Paul Broderick, Michael Gale and Matthew Dundas.
Richmond had finished second last (14th) in the ’93 season, winning just four games under coach John Northey, who had taken the coaching reins at his old club that year following a successful stint in charge at Melbourne. Fitzroy, under Robert Shaw, had finished 11th in ’93, with 10 wins.
The football planets had been aligning throughout the course of that year, leading up to what was to become one of the most sensational player swaps in the competition’s history.
Jeff Hogg had been a rare shining light during a particularly bleak time for the Tigers. He’d won the Club’s leading goalkicker award in five of the previous six years and had also been put to good use plugging holes up the other end of the ground in a leaky defence.
But 1993 saw a new kid arrive on the block for the Tigers . . . a raw, gangly, exciting teenager from Tasmania by the name of Matthew Richardson.
Young ‘Richo’, the son of Richmond’s 1967 premiership ruck-rover ‘Bull’ Richardson, had stamped himself as a young forward with enormous potential, booting 31 goals in 14 games in his debut season.
Across at Fitzroy, Alistair Lynch had emerged as a key forward of note, finishing the ’93 season with 68 goals and winning the Lions’ Best and Fairest award. Lynch’s excellent performance that year had attracted the attention of the fledgling, struggling Brisbane Bears, who were hell-bent on enticing a marquee player to their club.
Brisbane pounced on Lynch, offering him an unprecedented 10-year contract, reportedly worth $1 million (a massive deal back then).
Lynch’s acceptance of the lucrative Bears’ offer paved the way for the Hogg-Broderick, Gale and Dundas mega-trade deal to happen.
Fitzroy felt the 26-year-old Hogg, who had taken over the Tigers’ captaincy in 1993, was an ideal replacement for Lynch.
Meanwhile, back in the Lions’ den, gun midfielder Paul Broderick felt the time had come to leave, after an impressive six-season 93-game career at the club.
“When Alistair Lynch left to join Brisbane, I just felt Fitzroy had lost its figurehead and most marketable asset, and that the writing was on the wall for the club,” Broderick said.
“Basically, I wanted to stay in Victoria and Richmond, with the connection I had with them as a junior, was my preferred option.
“I loved the Tigers as a kid, grew up barracking for them, and they got wind I wanted out at Fitzroy.
“Occasionally, during my time with Fitzroy, they’d enquired about my availability and now they were trying to get me across.
“Francis Bourke even came around to my house one night and said the Club really wanted me to join them. And, when someone of Francis’ calibre goes out of his way to do that, it’s pretty impressive.
“So, it all just evolved from there.
“It was actually meant to be myself and (talented Richmond on-baller) Craig Lambert as a straight swap, with ‘Hoggy’ to be swapped for Michael Gale and Matthew Dundas.
“But at the 11th hour, ‘Lamby’ pulled the pin and sent everything into chaos (Lambert subsequently quit Richmond and joined Brisbane).
“From what I understood, Richmond pulled in all the heavies – Mal Brown, etc., and fronted Fitzroy and told them where to go . . . “we’ve got his signature, he’s coming, he’s a Tiger now”.
“Fitzroy wilted and sent the three of us across for Hoggy, and that was the end deal. But they really could have called my bluff and kept me . . .”
If the John Pitura trade (swapped by South Melbourne to Richmond for Tiger trio Brian Roberts, Francis Jackson and Graham Teasdale) a couple of decades earlier had been a low point for the Tigers, this move paid off magnificently, despite initial protests from some Yellow and Black barrackers, who were so incensed, they sent their No. 34 (Hogg’s guernsey number) jumpers into the Club.
Broderick finished runner-up in Richmond’s Best and Fairest in 1994 and the Club’s Annual Report that year paid him a glowing tribute . . .
“In his first season with Richmond, Paul Broderick has shown himself to be an outstanding recruit and well worth the efforts to coax him away from Fitzroy.
Paul played mainly in the centre and with his shrewd reading of the play and commitment to put his body on the line, he proved a constant source of drive from the midfield.
His professional approach to training and playing was a great example around the Club and helped lift the standard of other players who had been at Richmond for some years.”
Two years later, ‘Brodders’ won the coveted Jack Dyer Medal. He contributed superbly until his retirement at the end of 2001, averaging more than 20 games a season during his eight-year stint with the Tigers.
Gale, who joined his younger brother Brendon at Punt Road, following a 105-game career at Fitzroy, gave Richmond valuable service over 91 games, while Dundas lasted just two seasons and 14 games.
For Hoggy, however, it was a vastly different story.
A back problem that had restricted him at Richmond failed to improve and he managed just 40 games and 41 goals until he – and, indeed, Fitzroy – bowed out of the competition at the end of the 1996 season.
