To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Tigers’ 1974 premiership, Richmond Media is transporting Yellow and Black barrackers back in time throughout 2024 to follow the Punt Road path to that tremendous triumph. Today we take a look at Richmond’s Round 19 match of the ’74 season against North Melbourne at VFL Park, Waverley, through the eyes of Tigers star Dick Clay, in a column he wrote post-game for The Age newspaper.

That’s North Melbourne out of our hair for a while at least, maybe for the rest of the season.

Now it’s Collingwood’s turn. Next Saturday we’ll pull out all stops to knock off the Magpies at Victoria Park.

And once we’ve beaten the Magpies it should be clear sailing for us to keep top place on the ladder.

We’re not thinking about winning premierships right now – that will come later. All we want to do is to finish on top at the end of the home-and-away games.

Once we have done that we’ll look for the flag.

That’s why we tried so hard and were so happy to win against North on Saturday.

Had North won it would have been sitting on top and we would have been down a few places so we didn’t really need any urging to play well.

Besides, we now have a big psychological advantage over North if we do happen to meet in the finals.

That’s the second time we have beaten the Kangaroos this season – first by 25 points at Arden Street and now by 25 points again at VFL Park.

I must admit North was quite a handful for the first three quarters. Until then the lead must have changed a dozen or so times.

If you had been watching closely you would have seen that after half-time we always had two or three players going after the ball.

Usually there would be one less North player there, and when you outnumber the opposition like that you must win the ball more often.

In the second half too, our ruckmen took over, particularly Mike Green.

We had been getting the ball away from the centre bounces for most of the game with good play by Paul Sproule and, of course, Kevin Bartlett.

But after half-time Green started holding his marks and handballing and this made it much easier for us.

And then there was Bryan Wood on the wing.

Wood stuck to his job well and pressurised Keith Greig the whole day, and when he burst through the North defence for two quick goals in the last quarter the game was definitely ours.

Wayne Walsh was just as damaging on the other wing and his two goals from there in the first quarter helped keep us in the game.

How about that sensational first quarter opening by Royce Hart?

He was on fire all right – 12 kicks and five marks for the quarter was as good a quarter of football as I’ve seen.

Ron Barassi had to make a change and he couldn’t have done better than bringing David Dench from full-back to centre half-back.

Dench did a wonderful job to curb Hart’s effectiveness. And alongside him Ken Montgomery was another North backman who pulled his weight all day.

I thought North fell down because its forwards didn’t do enough when the ball was near goals.

Wayne Schimmelbusch was a headache to us on a half-forward flank, and late in the game Phi Baker brought down a few big marks at centre half-forward.

But, except for these two, I think we had most of the other forwards well covered for the greater part of the game.

If North is to make the Grand Final it must play better than it did on Saturday.

But don’t forget, we’ll play better too. We have good players like David Thorpe, Kevin Morris, Barry Richardson and Robert Lamb to come into the side yet.

Match details

Richmond                       5.1           7.8           11.11     15.12 (102)
North Melbourne:            5.2           7.5           9.7           11.11 (77)                                                

Goals – Richmond: Bartlett 3, Brown 2, Sproule 2, Walsh 2, Wood 2, Balme, Cumming, Green, Sheedy.

Leading disposal-winners – Richmond: Bartlett 29, Balme 25, Bourke 25, Sproule 25, Hart 24, Sheedy 23, Green 21.

Best players (By Ron Carter) – Richmond: Sproule, Bartlett, Bourke, Green, Hart, Balme, Walsh.

Goals – North Melbourne: W. Schimmelbusch 3, Wade 3, Baker 2, Blight, Davis, Ryan.

Leading disposal-winners – North Melbourne: Montgomery 24, Cowton 23, Davis 23, W. Schimmelbusch 22, Feltham 18, Rantall 18.

Best players – North Melbourne: Dench, Montgomery, W. Schimmelbusch, Davis, Goodingham, Baker.

Attendance: 40,394