Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
Ali Yesilyurt 46, Roxburgh Park
Favourite all-time Richmond player
Geoff Raines – “Lightning quick, good hands, the way he roosted the ball. My heart was in pieces when he left Richmond.”
Favourite current Richmond player
Jack Riewoldt – “He lives and dies with every kick and we ride the emotion with him. Everything about him is Richmond.”
“Football taught me my English,” says Ali Yesilyurt, a barracker born in Turkey but raised in the hard-knock public housing towers of North Richmond. “Lou Richards, Jack Dyer, Peter Landy, Bobby Skilton, Drew Morphett and Tim Lane on the ABC, all of them were my English teachers. Their commentary was my education.”
On a rain-soaked Tuesday night I meet Ali at his home on a north edge of Melbourne, about to celebrate the end of Ramadan – the dawn-to-dusk daily fast on the ninth month of the Muslim calendar – and he offers gifts of a baklava and other Middle Eastern treats, and salad greens from his garden. Then we get down to the serious business of discussing Richmond.
“I can talk to anyone about football,” he says. “It does what politics and religion can never do, it brings people together. It’s a common theme. Differences are put aside, problems are put aside. It doesn’t discriminate. Football is a great leveller.”
.jpeg)
The day job: Ali at work as a Biosecurity officer at Melbourne Airport with Axel, a beloved beagle sniffer dog.
Sitting across a table from Ali, a Richmond scarf around his neck after a workday as a quarantine officer at Melbourne Airport, his football story is about identity and assimilation, and finding a way to the game.
He tells how as a 10-year-old, living with his family on the 14th floor of a Housing Commission block near Victoria Street, he walked alone to the MCG on Saturdays to watch Richmond play. “I loved it so much I made my own flag and packed up my lunch and I used to leave home at 7.30 to see the under-19s,” he says. “Then I’d watch the reserves and the seniors, and get home and watch The Winners on the ABC.”
Mostly, in those days, he sat by himself on the upper deck of the old Southern Stand, behind the Richmond cheer squad, a young Turkish boy from Richmond West primary school with his homemade flag and all his quiet hopes. Sitting among the crowd he found excitement, a connectedness, and attachment to a new home and a wider community.
“If I had my time again I’d do it all again.”
Young Turk: An 11-year-old Ali sitting rightly proud in his first woolknit Richmond jumper, circa 1981.
In 1980, Richmond played a Qualifying Final against Carlton at Waverley Park on the first Saturday of September. Ali had no idea how to get to Waverley Park, and nor where it was, so he followed his usual routine. “I just walked to the MCG and spoke to a man at the booth, and bought a standing room ticket to the game.”
He watched Collingwood beat North Melbourne (as Richmond played elsewhere, defeating Carlton), using the money he earned from an after-school job selling Herald newspapers to gain entry into another world: finals football. Among 83,032 others at the ground, he sat in spare seats until moved-on each time by ground staff in blue coats. Eventually, he was consigned to standing room, where others could see his predicament: he was too short to see the game. They helped out this young stranger, offering a new and used supply of liquid refreshments.
“I watched most of the game by standing on full and empty beer cans,” he says.
Ali Yesilyurt was born on Christmas Day in Erzincan, a town in the mountainous tracts of eastern Turkey, closer to the Black Sea than the Mediterranean, a first son – and the second-born – to Mustafa and Nuran Yesilyurt. As family, they migrated to Australia in 1974, seeking work prospects, and a better quality of life. Given permission to leave their family, Ali’s grandfather told his father: “You will travel to Australia and never come back. If you come back, it will never be the same.”
Landing in Sydney, the family were bussed to a migrant hostel in Wollongong, wherefrom Mustafa found a job in the BHP steelworks and Nuran commuted to Sydney for work assembling televisions. Three years later they moved to Melbourne looking for work and, as Ali’s grandfather predicted, they never looked back.
Young Ali grew up in the Housing Commission community of North Richmond, before its great influx of Vietnamese refugees, when the cultural mix was Turkish, Greek, Yugoslav, and Cypriot and where the adopted football allegiance was Collingwood or Richmond. Schoolyard talk on Monday mornings was all about the football, the Tigers were on the prowl and Ali became a convert. His younger sister, Esra, fortuitously, was born in a Richmond premiership year. (None could have guessed it would be their last).
He tells a story of saving-up to buy his first Richmond football jumper, and his mother sewed his favourite player’s number on the back – Geoff Raines, No. 40. Problem was, Raines had changed to number 4. Ali unpicked the stitching around the zero, but became the subject of ridicule among his friends for his left-of-centre No 4. His mother eventually re-arranged the needlework.
“Mum thought it was fantastic I was hooked on football because it was a way for me to meet people, understand the culture in Australia, and learn English,” he says. “Dad is not really into sport, because for him it is a luxury, but he never stopped me from going.”
.jpeg)
Tiger trio: Ali with his 21-year-old son, Salih, on the left, and Bilal, 16, at his first and only game of footy.
Nowadays, Ali has two sons and lives with his parents beside the railway line at Roxburgh Park, north of Broadmeadows, with his wife who works as a maths teacher at an Islamic school and has little interest in football. But his devotion to Richmond has not waned. He doesn’t get to games often any more – his youngest son, Bilal, is autistic and is unsettled by the crowds and the noise – but he rarely misses them on TV.
“I ride every bump and every kick,” he says. “My eldest son, Salih, is a Tiger tragic like his dad and we watch the games together in a room upstairs.”
Ali says he also gets his footy fix by helping convene a Facebook community page called “VFL Footy in the 1980s” that he helped set-up with one of his school friends, the ABC journalist Phil Johnson. “It’s a labour of love, I post things after work and on weekends, but the site has a big following and it’s been a way for me to be involved in something I love.”
.jpeg)
Paved in gold (& black): Backyard landscaping at the Yesilyurt's residence incorporates two of his favourite colours, in case any were left wondering about his allegiance.
Ramadan ended on Wednesday night with a celebration known generally in the Arabic world as Eid, although among Turks it’s called Bayram. For Muslims, it’s a time of great togetherness, of counting blessings, of being thankful for what one has. I ask Ali about the rituals, but also what it means to him to have Bachar Houli on Richmond’s playing list. His face lights up.
“What Bachar does off the field, all the community work, and the way he leads by example, we just love him to bits.”
On and off the field, the football is important.
“Richmond supporters are like family to me,” says Ali. “The game brings people together, there’s an inclusiveness of what barracking for a football club does.”
Go Tiges! And Eid Mubarak (blessed Eid) to all Muslim Tigers this weekend, and iyi bayramlar to Ali and his family.
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
