Like the Tigers of old
“It’s an enduring passion,” says Valy Crowe, widow of Neville, a man whose name is enshrined on Richmond’s honour boards as a champion player and captain, and remembered always as the club’s saviour in its darkest hour of need. “For all us fans there’s a feeling of inclusion, a feeling of belonging. This is about the desire for our great club to continue for all generations.”
Sprightly in spirit, nurturing by nature, Valerie – “it’s always been shortened to Valy” – mourning still the loss of her beloved husband, is talking about her latest role at the Richmond Football Club. Announced this week, she’s to become the guiding patron of the club’s Bequest Society.
This is heartfelt. The job is a continuation of her late husband’s legacy, it’s a remembrance. He envisaged a perpetual pool of funds to safeguard Richmond’s financial security, and assist in its on-field endeavours for every season of our lives, and those of all others.
“Neville set-up the bequest program to help guarantee the football club’s existence,” says Valy.
“That was the focus, to allow others to give back, put a donation in the tin that in future years will only grow in value. It’s for the longevity of the club, for its ongoing welfare.”
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Sunday morning, and I meet Valy Crowe in her trim unit in a villa in Burwood, within earshot of birds calling and carolling from Wattle Park. She opens the door and all at once is warm and welcoming, brimming with a big smile. She brews a coffee, offers fruit cake, ensures her guests are comfortable, then sits for the gentle art of conversation.
Hospitality, it’s one of her fortes.
Born in Boksburg, on the outskirts of Johannesburg in the Transvaal, the daughter of an electric engineer, she moved to Melbourne at first as a 14-year-old, in 1970, with her family. Her father was relocated for his work, but it was her older sister, Tiga, who introduced her to the local game and to Richmond.
“My favourite colours were black and red, so I was going to go Bombers,” she explains.
“But Tiga was working in the city and coming home to Glen Waverley on the train one day, she asked someone about this place called Tigerland. They explained it was a VFL football club. So, she came home and said, ‘we are going to barrack for the Tigers, I’ve found a football club named after me!’”.
Nine seasons later, back from another stint in Cape Town, she met ‘Crowey’ – as she affectionately calls him – in late 1979 when she was working in Collins Street for South African Airways. “It was at a Christmas party at the Old Melbourne Motor Inn on Flemington Road and my eyes wandered over to a certain tall, dark and handsome fellow sitting at this table with all these men not associated with airlines,” she recalls.
“The connection was immediate.”
Never mind the age difference – Valy was 24, Neville 42 – from a spark, an abiding romance ensued, with nuptials in her homeland, twin daughters, and a shared Melbourne life rich with memories and friendships.
“Richmond Football Club were part of our family and I was always made to feel extremely welcomed.”
As a player, Neville Crowe retired on 150 games after Richmond’s drought-breaking premiership of 1967, which he missed, suspended cruelly in the Second Semi-Final for a ‘strike’ on Carlton big-man John Nicholls that many maintain was a ‘phantom punch’. But he never really left the club, as the club never left him.
In an official capacity, he returned in 1987 as president when Richmond was on its knees. The team finished last on the ladder. The club’s balance sheet was in disarray, its future far from certain.
Crowe set about fixing the problem, step by step. He was the public face of the Save Our Skins tin-rattling campaign of 1990, a rescue plan that called on the benevolence of fans to stave-off insolvency.
All along, he had Valy at his side, contributing with her indomitable zeal.
“I set-up the Tigress Committee and we held luncheons every second month, mostly for all the dear volunteers who had done so much work for the club,” she explains.
“On Thursday nights after training we had a club function in the old boardroom where the coach would come in and read out the team sheet. It was very male-dominated, so I walked around to all the men and said, ‘behind every man is a woman or a partner, and I want you to bring them along because I will be here’. In no time, the room was filled, cheek-by-jowl.”
This was Neville and Valy in full-flight, a close-knit team attuned to the best of human nature, making all feel acknowledged, welcomed, at home.
“It was our belief the football club thrives with every spoke in the wheel. One spoke goes, and it’s not a perfect wheel. Everyone needs to be recognised and appreciated, everyone deserves respect and encouragement.”
Now time has passed, a generation of supporters come and gone, but the memories remain fond and true, and no less meaningful.
“The club was Neville’s life,” says Valy.
“Both he and I believed that the club was an extension of our family.”
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Neville Crowe’s vision for Richmond was to safekeep its financial security. The game changed during his custodianship, turning fully professional, expanding interstate, with ever-present threats of mergers and relocation. Never again did he want his treasured Richmond to be in peril.
Turned 70, and in the early throes of a progressive brain disease that would rob him slowly of life, ‘Crowey’ established the club’s Bequest Society.
Essentially, it’s a crowd-funding concept, a means that’s been part of the history of the Richmond Football Club, and now is hoped to contribute to its future.
Of the traditional ‘big four’ Melbourne-based clubs, for instance, Richmond has always lagged Collingwood, Essendon and Carlton for off-field financial clout. Along with Hawthorn and West Coast, they’re part of the league’s habitual top-five big spenders, each bankrolled by large and affluent supporter bases, corporate largess, and benefactors with deep and generous pockets.
Richmond stands apart in one key measure. Our crowd.
There’s nothing like it. By its numbers, by our passion and longing, when Richmond’s crowd is in full voice there is nothing so raw and magical and wonderful in all the league. You cannot bottle its feeling and spirit. When the Tigers are up and the Pies down, as it is this season, no other club pulls as many spectators to the game as Richmond. It is a sight to behold, a point of pride, and all are included.
Geraldine Albrecht, the club’s bequest officer, is now in charge of tapping into this deep emotional connection the club has with its members and fans.
“Neville’s idea was to give the club further financial security, to guarantee its long-term viability,” she says. “And the Bequest Program is about realising his vision.”
Her goal, she says, is to accrue a $2m foundation in the communal pot.
“Once we get it to that amount it becomes self-sustainable.”
“Funds given to the club in bequest don’t get spent,” she explains. “They get invested in a perpetual fund and interest earnt is used and directed to special projects, not for ongoing operating costs.”
“The more money that’s put into that perpetual fund, the more interest is earnt, the more can be used on updating the club’s facilities and equipment.”
In a crowded marketplace, the idea of the Bequest Program is to further protect the club from future uncertainties, by generating another stream of income.
“The money we have in the pot so far is small,” says Geraldine. “But from small things, big things can grow.”
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Valy Crowe misses Neville, dearly.
“Every second of every day,” she says. “He was so gregarious and social, so full of life.” But the pain, she says, is lessened by her new role at Richmond.
Morning tea at the club this Thursday, and she’ll be honoured as the new figurative head of the Bequest Society, joining Michael Roach and Emmett Dunne as patrons, and all who’ve become lifelong Bequest Society members by pledging a gift.
It’s a group of fraternity and fellowship, gathering quarterly for lunches and functions, where all are equal and all share in their common bond of Richmond.
Neville died in September last year, his body cremated, farewelled but not forgotten, his ashes to be scattered soon in a private ceremony on Punt Road Oval. There could be no other place for it.
Valy talks now of his legacy, how he strived always to make the football club a better place, more inclusive, bringing all into the fold. She says a dream of hers would be for the Bequest Program to assist seniors experiencing financial hardship to remain club members.
But for now, she’s rolling-up her sleeves, mindful there’s much work to be done. She plans to throw herself at the task, knowing the sense of happiness and pleasure that comes from the giving.
It seems also personal, part of a lifetime quest, a sense of togetherness.
“I really see the work of the Bequest Society being an encouragement to keep the family together,” she says.
“And that’s what life is, it’s keeping together.”
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For a brochure or enquiries about the Richmond Bequest Program please contact Geraldine Albrecht.
(03) 9426 4480
Richmond Football Club
Swinburne Centre at Punt Road Oval
PO Box 48, Richmond VIC 3121
Geraldine is also the point-of-contact if your family is considering scattering the ashes of your loved one at Punt Road Oval. To scatter ashes, the Club kindly requests a donation, with all monies received given to the Richmond Football Club Museum to help it continue to create a legacy of support for all future generations.
