Get this.  For those of you who read my last blog, you’ll recall I was bemoaning the fact that I’d not be able to catch any live coverage of the Richmond-Collingwood game because I was going to be on a flight back from Perth. 

However, to my great shock, when I took my seat for the flight and plugged in the headset and flicked through the audio channels there it was.  Channel 2 was meant to playing some of those mind-numbing business chats.  Instead, crackling away as though it was being broadcast from Mars was a live ABC radio feed.  Because of the buzz and static it was excruciating to listen to, but I was able to every now and then catch a score. 

What I could hear relatively well was the crowd reaction.  So while the commentary was often an unintelligible drawl (well, perhaps no more so than usual), I could tell something had happened by the raucous barracking that fans of the Tiges and the Pies are famous for.  By the end of the second quarter I was able to tell which mob were screaming and when. In the third term when the Tigers played what was arguably our best quarter of footy for a decade, for me the mightily brazen 6 goal attack on the Pies was a series of Tiger crowd bursts, growing louder and more profound as the score climbed up and we fought back.  I heard a lot less from the Tiger crowd as the final quarter unfolded, but listening to the post match commentary I caught feint snippets of David Parkin suggesting that the hype is true, the Tigers are on to something at last, and are going to threaten the top sides this season and beyond. Of course we are.

Though we’d lost I was feeling upbeat about the miracle of it all until suddenly, as though it were a dream, Channel 2 flipped back to business chat sending me into a deep sleep.

Then, for the Easter weekend, we holidayed down on the NSW south coast.  Our last rest before the arrival of our first child in early May.  A romantic interlude of a kind.  We’d booked in for an early dinner on the Easter Sunday night.  Heavily aware that this would clash with the final stages of the Richmond-North match, I was eager to catch as much of the game as I could.  Being deep in the heart of NSW, I knew there’d be no free to air TV coverage (ridiculous don’t you think given the AFL’s fixation on breaking into the NSW market).  Given that I’d been able to listen in to a radio broadcast on a plane flight the week before, I was fairly confident I’d pick up some radio coverage. 

But no!  All I could resort to in the end was the Footy Live app on my iPhone (a great app for score and stat updates but a long way from feeling like you’re at the game).  The upside was that during the tense last quarter, I could leave my phone on the restaurant table and watch the live score updates. Hard for the missus to notice...  I was worried and without appetite with 5 minutes to go, but once Jake King snared the sealer, I relaxed into dinner and wondered what David Parkin might be saying about us this week, given that we’d even managed to win this one.

Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m feeling very content with how the Tigers are developing.  An aspect of our game that has improved out of sight under Damien Hardwick is the work rate.  It has been improving since Round 1.   A team’s true work rate isn’t easily reflected in stats.  How often and how hard players run to push back into defensive zones, how much body work goes in to positioning around clearances, good old fashioned backing up and following through after disposal.  Efforts of this kind require uncounted hard yards and a kind of commitment that only really comes when you care about your teammates.  A spirit is definitely stirring.

This week we take on the Lions at the G.  I won’t be there of course, and a quick check of the free to air TV Guide suggests the radio will again be the absentee fan’s only friend here in the capital.  Having just seen the news about the AFL’s broadcast rights deal, I wonder whether this will finally and actually mean proper live coverage everywhere.  One can only hope. 

One way or the other though, the absentee fan gets the score, and I’ll be listening in to hear whether the work rate is still high, the Richmond faithful roaring, spirits stirring.  Eat them alive Tigers.  Eat them alive.