Christopher Green is a son of a Tiger gun. His father, Michael, played in four premiership sides with Richmond and is a member of the Tigers’ Team of the Century. Notwithstanding the tyranny of distance, Christopher’s Yellow and Black passion runs deep. In the lead-up to Richmond’s bid for Grand Final glory against Adelaide on Saturday, Green reflects on his special Tiger journey.  

Are there any other 46-year-old guys on this plane from Cleveland to Phoenix, at 8am on a Saturday, leaking a few tears because Richmond just made the Grand Final? Probably not.

You can’t remember when you were born, but it’s seemingly always been there – the passion for the Tigers.

Ironically, it didn’t really come from my old man . . . he might have used up all his energy for Tigerland by the time we were old enough to realise.

I’d say it was from his parents. They used to go and watch three Richmond games in- a-row, when that was still possible to do so – under 19s, followed by the reserves, then the seniors.

They would take us to the old Southern Stand, with our own packed lunches and thermoses of tea. We’d always have a hand-knitted blanket for the winter as well.

Ernest Sydney Green grew up in Richmond, left school before he was 14 to work, and loved the Tigers from when Jack (Dyer) was still playing. His wife, Nance, grew up in Queensland, but clearly knew more about footy than he did by the time their kids had kids. Nance couldn’t stomach watching on TV. She’d turn it on and off constantly, and do the same with the radio until she struck one of the two that got the Tigers home. Nance also kept scrapbooks of her son’s footy career, and we’d pore over them when we’d visit – lots of them in yellow and pink, as somehow papers decided that was what you should print in back then. They ended up being donated to the Tigerland museum years later. Syd just loved the Tigers unconditionally, and family lore is he went to see GR (legendary Club official Graeme Richmond), when his own son was 15 to say, “This kid’s going to be decent, let’s make sure he plays for the Tigers”. Who knows how true that is, but that’s how it turned out.

So, my brother and I literally grew up at Punt Road. And, if you were going to grow up anywhere in Melbourne in the early 1970s, what better place than Punt Road? Contemporaries, including Dan Richardson, Caroline Wilson, Cameron and Brendan Schwab and Rhett Bartlett, we’d all be hanging around the rooms on game day and at training, getting under everyone’s feet, and kicking footies into the net in the old MCG rooms.

Charlie Callander, the legendary Richmond property steward, used to give my brother Richard and I packets of ‘Juicy Fruit’ chewing gum and new footies to kick around, while Royce Hart and the crew had to make do with one piece of ‘chewy’ and one pair of socks – for the entire season!

The famous Sunday training sessions just looked like blokes sitting around the change-rooms shooting the breeze, to us. We’d grab a snag in some white bread, long before ‘Bunnings’ made that trendy. Years later former players would tell me they’d then head to nearby pubs, where friendly publicans would open the doors to usually closed pubs (pubs weren’t permitted to be open on Sundays!), so the players could have a few beers and continue to ‘BS’ with each other.

Herb Elliott, the world’s greatest middle-distance runner in the 1960s, was a great Tigers man, and every year we’d go to the Puma factory in Moorrabin to get our footy boots. Herb was running Puma in Australia, but somehow had time to wander the factory floor with us to pick out boots and track suits.

By the time we were old enough to realise what was happening, the 1980 Grand Final was here, and somehow you could bring whole phone books in to the MCG to tear up and throw around. At the end of the game, I distinctly remember a Pies fan dropping a whole phone book off the second deck of the Northern Stand in disgust, and nine-year-old me thinking, “That’s not going to end well for someone down below. I hope it at least hits a Collingwood supporter.”

You make lifelong friends via the Tigers. At St. Pat’s Mentone in early 1977, I stumbled on a fellow Tiger. When you’re in (Grade) Prep., that’s all you need. “You’re a Tiger, so am I, we’re mates now”. And, so it was that Paddy Harrington joined our tribe – from backyard games at Plummer Rd, Mentone, to coming to games, as Dad moved from playing to coaching and selection committee. We’d be pests in the rooms, eating pies meant for players after the reserves and witnessing such magnificence as Disco’s (Michael Roach) Mark of the Century against Hawthorn in 1979. Paddy and I got separated by schools in the mid-1980s, but like a ‘cork in the ocean’ he bobbed up 25 years later, living less than two kilometres away from me in Sydney, and we resumed our Tiger fandom like we were back in 1977.

Footy in the mid-late 80s was great fun, but Richmond wins were starting to become few and far between. The few highlights revolved around things like ‘Flea’ (Dale Weightman) dominating Big V games, which we’d take as a point of pride. Dad coached the reserves for a while, so we’d be at games super early, and the MCG would be a giant empty playground for us. I often think about the old open coaches’ boxes, each coach and his assistants sitting side by side. I suspect the MCG or the AFL eventually closed them in after hearing Dad yell and occasionally swear so loudly (usually at the umpires) that someone said, “We’ve got to close these things in, this is out of control!”

As the 80s came to a close, I saw fewer games, as school footy and VCE got in the way of the real stuff. But not enough that I couldn’t squeeze in a game v Geelong in 1989 – Round 9 at the MCG. Bad move. Gary Ablett (I refuse to add “Sr.”, he’s just Gary Ablett) lined up on the wing, kicked six goals in the first quarter, and finished with a lazy 14 for the day. I looked up his match stats – 26 kicks, 14 marks, four handballs, 14 goals. I’m surprised we lost by only 134 points!

By 1993 things were pretty grim, but somehow there’s always a glimmer of light for Tiger fans. I remember like it was yesterday, sitting in the MCC members with Dad mid-year against St Kilda. A tall, spindly kid ran around like a colt that’d lost his way. We kept noticing him, and eventually Dad said, “He’s ‘Bull’s’ (1967 premiership player Alan Richardson) kid. He looks pretty good, actually”. And so it was . . . For 17 seasons, we rose and fell with ‘Richo’. And while we weren’t great as a team, for many of those years, we always had Richo. Somehow it took 15-plus years for every other supporter to cotton on, but didn’t we love Richo! And for those who were sons and daughters of Richmond players, he was something else – living the dream of growing up in a Tiger house, loving the Tigers irrationally, and then pulling on the jumper and playing like a champion! He had some absolute monster games, including taking 21 marks and kicking seven goals against Fitzroy in its farewell game in Melbourne in 1996. Not sure why I remember that one, but it was a pearler. Once I had my own son he fell in love with Richo too, proudly wore the number 12 at Auskick, and even when we moved to Sydney he was the lone kid in a number 12 Richmond jumper among a sea of Swans jumpers. He carried it over to all other sports, from hoops to school footy, to US team sports, once we moved to the USA – always the number 12, always a silent tribute to the great man. That’s what it means to be a Tigers fan.

All through university, I worked for one of the great Tiger characters, Brian Roberts – ‘The Whale’. Initially at the Cricket Club Hotel in South Melbourne, and then at the Duke of Wellington in the city. Past players of all clubs would come through to have a beer, but ex-Tigers were always number one with Whale. For many years, ‘Mad Monday’ would start at the Cricket Club for the Richmond players. Flea would be BOG annually, and I’d just pull beers and stay out of the way, as the lunacy ensued. Players from Dad’s era would straighten up once Whale told them who was behind the bar. “That’s ‘Greeny’s’ kid,” he’d bark, and either because they knew M. Green wasn’t one for pubs and getting on the piss, or more likely because they knew Rita (Mum) would give them an earful if she heard they were behaving badly, they sobered up and inevitably gave me 15 minutes of, “How’s your mum? I love Rita! Can’t she talk!” Same script every time.

Past players have been in our lives from day one. KB would be out the back playing cricket. He’ll tell you I nearly took his head off with a short ball in about 1987. ‘Bones’ (Barry Richardson) and ‘Balmey’ (Neil Balme) would always be giving dad grief about his lack of drinking with the boys, or the time they were running down the race at the Western Oval on a cold, rainy mid-winter day, after a massive rev-up from Tommy (Hafey) and GR, only to have M. Green wonder aloud, “I hope Rita has the electric blanket on three already”. The players would tell endless GR stories, and always in GR’s voice, or their version of his voice! Tommy was a neighbor and he’d often come by on his run to drag his ruckman out to run the beach at Mentone . . . Even as a kid I could tell something was amiss, when the coach was fitter than one of his players! Tommy’s daughters would baby-sit us, and didn’t we give those poor girls hell!

There’s comes a point where many a red-blooded kid finally comes to the realisation he isn’t going to play AFL football. For me, it was mid-1990. I’d done a pre-season with the Club’s under 19s and played a few games. Duncan Kellaway’s older brother took me to the cleaners at Victoria Park, when he was playing for Collingwood under 19s. The next week coach Doug Searl brought me in to his office to give me the flick. He literally told me I was too short, too slow and had poor skills. At least I had the good humour to come back with, “But besides that, I’m okay, right?”. That night I drank the taps at the Geebung Polo Club.

Richmond fans are a great bunch. I’ve met them from all over Victoria, to all over the world. Somehow it emerges that we’re fellow Tigers. The conversation is always the same, “You a Tiger? Me too! What about Richo!” That’s now become, “What about Dusty!”

James ‘Tumper” Stanley was a great Tiger. A family friend, he was the maddest of mad Tigers. You could set your watch by the fact he’d stand in the same spot on the concrete steps in front of the old Bullring bar in the Members’ Stand, right through the 1990s and 2000s. He’d watch all the reserves’ games, too. He was a huge fan of John Bowen, number 57 in the early 90s. After the game, he’d always say to John, “You were easily our best today, JB”, regardless of how true that was. Tumper left us many years ago, but geez he’d love this week. He’d be at every event, like thousands of others, just soaking up the good times after so many hard times.

I’ve lived out of Melbourne now for 16 of the past 23 years – in the US for study and work, then in Sydney for seven years for work, and now back in the States for work. Yet, when we call home to speak with the family, it’s like we’re around the dining table in 1982, just talking about the footy – who’s playing well, who needs to lift. And where Martin and Rance are in the Tiger pantheon. Sometimes it feels like the movie ‘The Castle’, except we’re talking about Richmond . . . “Your mate reckons Wayne Campbell was a better player than Bugsy? Tell him he’s dreaming.”

For years, you wondered if you’d done the right thing having your kids barrack for the Tigers. Hawthorn and Sydney fans have had a mardi gras for 20 years, while we’ve battled on, putting up with unfunny gags about finishing ninth or the Richards (Lounder and Tambling). Our kids were born in 2000 (we finished ninth), 2001 (fourth) and 2005 (12^th). The average ladder position in the first decade of life of our oldest child’s life was 10^th, the number of finals appearances was one, and the number of wooden spoons was two. So, by the time we drafted Cotchin and then Martin, we were well and truly ready for bluer skies. And while Cotchin was a gun straight out of the shoot, it was to Martin we were all drawn. Somehow Tiger fans just knew, we’d finally got a ‘Chosen One’. A generational talent. Someone who could lead us back to the top of the heap, the promised land.

So, here we are . . . 37 years since ‘KB’ (Kevin Bartlett) ran the Magpies ragged, ‘Clokey’ (David Cloke) was huge, and ‘The General’ (Mark Lee) could easily have won the Norm Smith. We’re all the same . . . we’ve all been on 25 different group text messages with Tiger fans discussing Dusty’s contract, and if this magic carpet ride would continue all the way. I’ve heard from 50-plus friends from all over the world in the past few weeks. People wanted to talk about how to get Grand Final tickets, but didn’t want to talk about Grand Final tickets, as it was clearly bad karma. The whole Tiger enchilada.

From when I started to scribble this into my phone on the plane, to actually committing it to paper, Dusty has won the Brownlow, ‘Cotch’ and ‘Brando’ (Brandon Ellis) are free to play, and seemingly every person I know is headed to the MCG for the big day. I think the Green family will have 10-plus people at the ‘G. I won’t be amongst them, due to a visa being finalised in the US, which prevents me from leaving the country. Instead, I’ll have four TV’s around the house, on at 12.30am east coast time, and like my grandmother before me, I’ll turn them on and off, walk from one to the other, yell at them like they can hear me, and generally act like a lunatic, as we all will.

EAT ‘EM ALIVE!

Christopher Green lives and works in Cleveland Ohio and is the Senior Associate Executive Director for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA).