Oh we're from Tigerland

Stories of being Richmond

Trevor Watson, 55, Tigerland

Favourite all-time Richmond player
Matthew Richardson – “He wore his heart on his sleeve with his on-field theatrics. He was fallible, and I think that’s why everyone relates to him. He’s always been generous with his time off-field, given plenty back to us fans.”

Favourite current Richmond player
Dustin Martin – “He can’t be tagged. He’s so exciting to watch, a match winner, unstoppable with his ‘don’t argue’”.

Oh, how football has changed.

This Sunday afternoon, a football club founded in 1885 in the public bar of a hotel on Punt Road, in Richmond, is to play a team established in a boardroom at AFL House and situated in Western Sydney. It’s the product of market research, demographics, projected revenues, future TV content and broadcast deals; a grand expansionist vision.

This Sunday, it’s Tigers versus Giants, old against new, a time-honoured tradition opposing a test-tube confection, and a fan like Trevor Watson could only ever sit with one side of the crowd. Born in 1962, the “Chinese year of the Tiger”, he’s as yellow-and-black as they come, and notable for his collection of Richmond football club memorabilia that goes beyond Scanlens footy cards, back to swap cards produced by Allen’s sweets and MacRobertson’s chocolates, and cigarette makers, selling a game to an adoring crowd.

Tiger cartoon cards: ALL HEART.

Open his albums, and there’s a social history of Melbourne and a football code, spanning generations with the common thread of Richmond. Allen’s Steam Rollers. 1d per packet. The perfect peppermint. P. Bentley. Richmond. Captain of Richmond 1932-33, and one of the best followers in the V.F.L. Of big physique, Bentley uses his weight to advantage in the crushes, and is a determined player. He is a good mark and kick.

Allen’s Butter Menthol. 3d. per packet. Butter soothes the throat, Menthol clears the head. P. BENTLEY. Richmond. Richmond’s brainy captain and coach for a number of years; also a very good ruck-man and forward.  

Can’t make this stuff up. History cannot be manufactured.

**

Trevor Watson made contact, said he had a story to tell. He sent a photograph of his home study, WEG posters framed on the wall, Richmond’s 1943 Premiership win, and here was invitation enough on a Sunday morning to drive beyond Berwick, to an edge of Melbourne, to talk Richmond.

(Plus, the promise of homemade pumpkin soup).

At the kitchen table, he tells me Sharlene, his wife, a Collingwood supporter, sets the boundaries. “The rule is, all the Richmond memorabilia has to be in the study, and the overflow is out in the garage. There’s plenty of stuff out there I’d love to have up on the walls inside, but it’s a no-go.”

Mind you, she has allowed him to spend up to $2000 on a single Jack Dyer signature card.

“I don’t know how much I’ve spent over the years on the collection, but I do know there’s no cheap stuff left,” says Trevor.

Not that anyone’s counting. Bean counters don’t understand. The price of everything, the value of nothing. How do you measure a consuming passion, a lifetime devotion?

**

Poster boy: Val Watson with three of her children outside the family home in Springvale in guess what year?

Trevor Watson has big hands and a vice-like handshake. Just like his father, he says. He was a railwayman, who walked the tracks of Melbourne in repair gangs, wielding a sledge hammer on track ties, raised four children from the family home in Springvale, taking his two boys to the football on Saturday afternoons – Windy Hill, Arden Street, Kardinia Park, Moorabbin – where there was only one team to barrack for.

“You went for Richmond or there was no pocket money,” recalls Trevor.

Growing up: The Watson boys, parading the colours through the backstreets. 

Memories of his father, John Watson, are fond: listening to Richmond play in all those finals of the late 60s and the 70s, Jack Dyer and Ian Major on the transistor radio, 3KZ is football, World of Sport on Sunday mornings, all the joy that came with winning. Every premiership, his dad decorated the family home in WEG posters for weeks afterwards, much to the chagrin of his mother, Val. She was a Hawk.

“Football was always important to dad,” says Trevor. “He used to tell me stories about Tommy Hafey, and he wrote to him on different occasions, and got letters back. He wrote to Tommy after he finished up coaching at Richmond.”

Father and son: Railwayman John 'Jack' Watson with young Trevor in away shorts.

Herein lies a clue to Trevor’s footy memorabilia collection, and a cap he has with the signatures of all past and present living coaches of Richmond, and a few who have passed.  

“Most people who collect footy cards, they’ll be collecting the players or the teams,” he explains. “There are people out there trying to collect every Richmond football card, which is a huge task. I’ve limited my collection to only Richmond coaches, and Matthew Richardson, which is a big enough job.”

Damien Hardwick, Terry Wallace, KB, Francis Bourke, Tony Jewell, back through the honour boards to Frank ‘Checker’ Hughes, Charlie Pannam, and Dick Condon (in 1908-09) – 38 of them all up – and Trevor has cigarette, cereal and trade cards, or stickers, stamps and posters for all of them, each catalogued and filed behind plastic sleeves in five telephone book-sized albums.

Turn the pages, and they include 32 footy cards of Jade Rawlings (Richmond coach for 11 games in 2009) and six St Kilda cards of Verdun Howell.

Verdun who?

“He coached one senior game for Richmond,” explains Trevor. “Tommy Hafey was away at an interstate carnival and Verdun was the reserves coach in 1971. He did the one senior game, for a loss.”

Verdun who?: St Kilda's Verdun Howell, who coached one game for Richmond in 1971.

Flipping through the albums is a fascinating history tour of a footy club and a city’s mercantile past. On one page there’s a Regan’s Dairy card of Dan Minogue (Richmond coach, 1920-25). On another, a Standard Cigarette card (“cork tipped / pure & sweet”) of St Kilda centre, W. Schmidt (Billy Schmidt, coach in 1933 for 16 wins and 5 losses, one of which was to South Melbourne in the Grand Final). There’s Robert Walls in his Carlton colours. Jeff Geischen in his collared Footscray top. And all the trademark footy card poses pulled-off so stylishly by Francis Bourke and Kevin Bartlett in those beautiful cleanskin Richmond jumpers of yesteryear.

As I get all nostalgic, Trevor talks.

“One of my all-time favourites is Tasmanian Paul Sproule, who came across from Essendon,” he says.

“He was a school teacher, a low-profile player who never got his own footy card, but in the 1973 and 1974 Grand Finals he was one of our best. A big-game player! He coached Richmond for a season in 1985 but didn’t really get a go at it. Back in the days when we used to sack our coach every other year.”

St Francis: The prototype Scanlens Gum footy card poses.

Damien Hardwick?

“Everyone’s an armchair expert and says there’s a better way to do it. But you listen to Dimma speak about the players and he’s got high expectations of them. He’s always been a supporter of the list, at no stage has he ever not backed his players. I’d like to think we win a premiership under him, and he coaches for as long as Sheedy did at Essendon.”

The attributes of a good coach?

“You’ve got to be thick-skinned. If you’re worried about criticism you’re not going to make it. You’ve got to be very resilient. Tommy Hafey was an example. The players would do anything for him. The players would do anything for Jack Dyer. You don’t have to be the most popular person to be a great coach, but you have to have people who would follow you.”

Into the fire, into the cauldron, then out the other side with all the spoils of victory.

Top hat: Trevor's Auskick cap with his collection of signatures of Richmond coaches.

Trevor Watson’s football barracking has taken him on a journey through time, tracking down all the surviving Richmond coaches, to the front door of Max Oppy’s house (a Richmond 1943 premiership player who coached in 1956) a year before he died, to the oval of Redan Football Club in Ballarat to listen to the fire-and-brimstone oratory of John Northey (1993-95), to the bayside home of Tom Hafey (1966-76) where Maureen, bless her, brewed a pot of tea and left them to it.

“I spent two hours with him,” says Trevor. “We talked footy for two hours, flipping through my card albums.”

His is a quest, of sorts, focused with a collector’s private bent for organisation, on the trail of possession, buying-and-selling, always with an inquiring mind and making connections along the way. Bill Meaklim, the Richmond FC’s historian, has been good to him, introducing him to some former coaches, and he’s enjoyed watching Rhett Bartlett’s online podcasts about sifting through the Richmond archives. Gab Turner, Jack Dyer’s niece, has become a valued friend through their correspondence.

“We’ve shared mementos back and forth. There’s a community of us collectors, and once you build the trust, people have been very good and offered me stuff, as I’ve given them a bit of stuff back.”

Away shorts: A baby-faced Dave Astbury and Alex Rance?

This Sunday, Trevor’s Tigerland yearning takes him to the MCG and to a must-win game against the league’s newest creation, trying to build a history of their own. They’ve had only two coaches (again, by organisational decree). Kevin Sheedy (2012-13), the wily old Tiger that he is, and Leon Cameron (2014- ), who joined Richmond (84 games) as a gun-recruit from the Bulldogs during Danny Frawley’s (2000-04) tenure.

No disrespect to their small band of supporters, and Giants’ staff and players, but Trevor – as with all others who will be there on Sunday – are hoping our club’s weight of history crushes their upstart aspirations. All of us hope it might be as it was after Richmond’s first premiership in the VFL, in 1920, coached by Dan Minogue, when our champion ruckman turned to our delirious crowd and roared: “What did we do?”.

The answer came as one: “WE ATE ’EM ALIVE!

Go Tiges! Go forth as underdogs and slay the Giants at the G this Sunday, put them to the sword.

If you would like to nominate a Richmond fan who has a story to tell about their barracking please email Dugald Jellie with details: dugaldjellie@gmail.com

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