Richmond’s tremendous triumph over North Melbourne in the 1974 Grand Final, to make it back-to-back flags, wasn’t the end of the Club’s quest for more football glory that year. The Championship of Australia, to be held at Adelaide’s Football Park, featuring the premier teams of the VFL, the SANFL, the WANFL (now known as the WAFL) and a Tasmanian League representative side, was the Tigers’ post-season target. In its first game of the series, Richmond annihilated the Tasmanian team, setting up a showdown with SA powerhouse Sturt in the final. Here is leading football writer for The Age newspaper Ron Carter’s report on the Tigers’ total dominance.
Richmond had better go easy today or it may kill off the lucrative end-of-season Australian football championship series.
Who would dare tell Tom Hafey and his players to hold back and let Sturt, of Adelaide, make a game of today’s final? Not me!
But someone should – for the sake of football and the $12,500 cheque that goes to the champion club team of Australia.
On Saturday, the Tigers made a farce of the first game of the series, against Tasmania, winning by 317 points.
Even so, they held back and didn’t knock over the opposition nearly as hard as they can. And it wasn’t anyway near the strongest Richmond side, either.
It goes without saying that Richmond is the best and it doesn’t need a championship series to prove the point.
It’s just not fair on the premiership teams from the other States to have to play against a side so professional and proficient as Richmond is this year.
Perhaps the sponsors, Winfield cigarettes and Ansett Airlines, may think twice about having the VFL premier in the series at all.
They may prefer to leave the Victorians out of it altogether and then it may be a real competition again.
It doesn’t do the other States any good to see their football heroes made fools of.
Imagine the feeling in Tasmania today.
The cream of its three premiership teams could barely get a kick against the Tigers on Saturday.
Not even the football-mad South Australian public will keep going to championship series if the Tigers continue to wipe off the opposition as if they weren’t there.
This is the same thing which killed off interest in national football carnivals in Melbourne. The public refused to go to see VFL teams make fun of the opposition.
The poor Tasmanians – and there were a few former VFL players in the team – just didn’t have a clue how to get the ball against such professionals.
The Richmond defence had a picnic and its forwards had their most enjoyable day for the season, taking it in turns to fire away at goals.
And the result was that the Tigers kicked an Australian record score 34.29 – beating their previous highest of 30.19, which stood as a VFL record for many years until beaten by Carlton with 30.30 against Hawthorn in 1969.
The only interest in the game was whether or not Tasmania would get a score on the board.
It didn’t look like scoring in the first half and it wasn’t until five minutes into the third quarter that Francis Bourke’s opponent, Kerry Direen, snapped Tasmania’s first point.
Sturt qualified to meet Richmond by defeating West Australian premiers East Fremantle in the other game on Saturday.
The SA premiers were pushed to the limit to win by nine points and they will still be feeling the effects of the game when they take the field against Richmond today.
Richmond is expected to field its Grand Final team except for one placing – Brian Roberts in the back pocket in place of Gareth Andrews.
Who was injured on Saturday.
The Tigers and Sturt will not name their teams until an hour or so before today’s game.
Richmond v Tasmania match details
Richmond 8.6 18.13 27.17 34.29 (233)
Tasmania 0.0 0.0 1.3 2.4 (16)
Goals – Richmond: Taubert 9, Bartlett 5, Walsh 4, Morris 4, Balme 3, Sproule 2, Clayton 2, Cumming, McKellar, Wood, Carter, Keane.
Best – Richmond: Sheedy, Morris, Bartlett, Balme, Taubert, McGhie.
Goals – Tasmania: Looney, Manson.
Best – Tasmania: McLean, Greenhill, Barclay, Cleaver, Coombes, Lacey.
