Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond

Cassandra Hall, 52, Narrabundah (Canberra)

Favourite all-time Richmond player
Wayne Campbell – “I know he’s at the Giants, but I think his heart has always been at Richmond and maybe one day he’ll come back. He read the play so beautifully.”

Favourite current Richmond player
Trent Cotchin – “He has a similar playing style to Wayne. Wherever you might need him, he suddenly turns up. I think he also has a lot of courage, and he’s good with the other players.”

Monday morning, interviewing Cassandra Hall on the telephone in Canberra, she mentions Chaucer – author of The Canterbury Tales – in the same breath as she mentions Richmond and it’s perfectly apt. One is a football club based in Melbourne with a fan base longing for success. The other is a Middle English story about pilgrims on a spiritual quest. The two, truly, are the same.

“As soon as I started reading Chaucer I just connected with it, it became a passion,” she says.

“It’s the same with the Tigers. I could never barrack for any other team, even after all the heartbreak.”

Oh Richmond, our common lament, our shared hope and mutual desire. “If gold rusts, what then can iron do,” asked Chaucer, in his verse storytelling, ruminating on imperfections and fallibilities. In 14^th century literature, why couldn’t there be the answers to the football?

Smiling Tigers: Cassandra at a bus-stop break with another stalwart (and foundation member) of the Capital Tigers, Alison Neil.

Cassandra Hall is a Richmond supporter who I met two seasons ago, sharing a Saturday morning bus trip with an ACT supporter group travelling to see Richmond play GWS in Sydney, and we spoke about pilgrimage and football. Raised in country Victoria, she moved to Melbourne as a young woman to study mediaeval languages. She watched Richmond’s last Grand Final in the outer with her mother and sister. Sometimes, she sees the game as a parable of life, entwined with magic and despair. 

“I just love the football, I love everything about Richmond,” she says.

Born in Heyfield, a timber town in north Gippsland, Cassandra is the eldest of two daughters to an old Tiger. Her father, Len (“79 this year”), lined-up at full-forward for Richmond’s reserves in 1959, when they finished fifth of the ladder and Doug Reynolds, who played in Footscray’s sole flag of 1954, was voted best and fairest.

In his one season at Punt Road, Cassandra’s dad kicked 23 goals to top the team’s goal-scoring . He was a player. “He just went along and asked if I could have a run,” says Cassandra. “He was in the amateurs at Melbourne High Old Boys’, and working at the time for the National Bank as a clerk in South Melbourne.”

A job came up in the Heyfield branch, and so Len was a gun recruit for the town’s football team – and a few years later Cassandra was born into the home-and-away rhythms of the Latrobe Valley League.

“Every Saturday night after dad played we ate spaghetti, and mum and dad would sit down to watch the footy on the telly,” she says. “Our friends across the road barracked for Carlton and dad and mum were Richmond. There was a bit of rivalry happening, and I just always barracked for Richmond since then.”

At high school in Sale, a 45-minute bus trip down the road, Cassandra’s pin-up player was centre-half forward Allan ‘Butch’ Edwards (66 games for the Tigers between 1975-79, before moving to Collingwood, then Footscray). She went to games often with a school friend, Sue-Ellen Johnstone, from Maffra, whose parents made the two-hour drive to the MCG or VFL Park.

“We’d all get decked-out in our black and yellow. We got all the badges and name tags, and after the games we’d go and get their autographs and it was just so exciting,” she says. “Sue-Ellen’s mum and dad were just as crazy, and they still go, too.”

Cassandra missed Richmond’s 1980 premiership, overseas on a year-long Rotary exchange to schools in northern California (“mum sent me all the clippings, all the photos from all the games through the year and the Grand Final”), so ensured she would be there two years later. In first year Arts at Melbourne University, living on campus, she bought standing room tickets for herself, her mother Joan, and her sister Kirsten (“she’s even keener than me”).

A full life lived, and returned to Heyfield and working as an early childhood educator at the local primary school, five years ago Cassandra’s life took another turn that leads her this Saturday afternoon to Manuka Oval. It’s Richmond’s first-ever game in Canberra, and she will be there.

“Richmond supporters up here are getting really excited about just being able to go to Manuka Oval to see the Tigers,” she says.

At the gates of heaven: Cassandra and 6-year-old Ruby at Manuka Oval this week (travelling Tigers, please note gloves - forecast minimum on Saturday is zero degrees)

In 2010, Cassandra visited the nation’s capital to help a dear friend who, at 43, became a first-time mother. Catching the bus home, she called her friend, suggesting she return and take-up a job as a live-in nanny. “I came up at the start of 2011 and have been here ever since.”

For all concerned, it’s a wonderful arrangement, although there’s one glaring incongruity: “My friends have no interest in sport or football whatsoever.” 

So on weekends (when not with her Saturday afternoon historical dancing group – polkas, minuets, galliards, etc – but that’s another story!) Cassandra leads a double-life. She puts on her scarf and colours and meets with friends she’s made through the Capital Tigers, a supporter group formed three seasons ago by a band of displaced barrackers. They watch games together. They’ve gone as a group on bus trips to see Richmond play in Sydney. And this Saturday afternoon they’ll sit together on the hill to watch the football in what for most is an adopted hometown.   

“It’s a supportive group with a really friendly atmosphere,” she says. “It gives me a place and an opportunity to hang out with other people who love the Tigers.”

And for Cassandra, the game this weekend is also a return to ritual, to the feel of country football and netball leagues, the open spaces, big inland skies, the green grass and intimacy of regional football.

“In Heyfield, in some families there are boys in every generation who played football, and the same with the netball. It gives a country town a connection with other people in the area. The football brings people together.”

Go Tigers: Cassandra at Manuka, in a dress-rehearsal for a big day for all Richmond fans based in the ACT and thereabouts.   

But a last word on Cassandra goes instead to Geoffrey Chaucer, and choice 14^th century quotes from The Canterbury Tales that may or may not inspire both players and supporters this weekend (and because a football club is a broad church).

“Patience is a conquering virtue.” (As all Richmond fans know)

“Nothing Ventured, nothing Gained.” (In football speak: take the game on!)

“Life is short. Art is long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.” (A message for our younger players, to grasp chances)

“All that glitters is not gold.” (Sometimes, it’s yellow and black!)

Go Tiges! And go Cassandra and her Capital Tiger friends this Saturday afternoon – and a shout-out to their inaugural president, Darren Crick, and best wishes to his wife, recovering in hospital from an operation.

For travelling Tigers: the Capital Tigers are hosting a cocktail function this Friday from 6.30pm in the Bradman Room at Manuka Oval. Speakers include Brendan Gale, Peggy O’Neal and ACT Chief Minister, Andrew Barr. Tickets $80, include a drinks package and food, can be purchased by contacting Sean Gourlay at sean@capitaltigers.com.au or phone 0437 790 513.

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

www.tigertigerburningbright.com.au