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Stories of being Richmond

Robert Jones, 58, Wantirna South

Favourite all-time Richmond player
Francis Bourke – “So dependable and tough. I was at the match at Arden Street when he blood streaming down his face.”

Favourite current player
Dustin Martin – “For the same reasons, he puts his head down, goes in hard, he’s the sort of player who can lift the side with his actions.”

Richmond was on the cusp of its third-successive finals series last year and lifelong Tigers supporter Robert Jones, he was facing imminent death.

His liver was failing, ailed with cancer, and one morning in September he woke with blood clots in his mouth and knew that unless a compatible organ donor was found, time was up.

At best, he hoped to get through to Christmas.

In this season of despondency, in this loveless week, maybe the best us Richmond fans can do is acknowledge all there is to be thankful for. Our football club is financially sound. Our supporters are many, all with a guttural passion. We have Dusty, and Jack, and the best full-back in the land. And on Tuesday, Robert Jones turned 58, and has many more years of barracking ahead.

An organ donor was found (the loss of one life gave the gift of another), and ours is a public health system the envy of many the world over.

Before this season began, Robert Jones contacted the Richmond Football Club to tell his story, to promote Donate Life Week, an awareness campaign running until Sunday, asking all to consider registering for organ and tissue donation.  He was saved by the generosity of others. The least he can do is spread the word, trying and help.

So on a rain-soaked night last Tuesday week I met with Robert at the Wantirna Club, at a player appearance function hosted by the South East Tigers Supporter Group, and we discussed football and Richmond, and life and death.

The son of a chief petty officer in the Royal Australian Navy, Robert was raised on a heel of the Mornington Peninsula, at Merricks; his father based nearby at HMAS Cerberus. His family was transferred to Darwin in 1963 for two years, and on return he was introduced to football. Richmond was coming good. They won the 1967 flag; and Robert’s father told childhood stories of watching the Tigers play from gaps in the fence at Punt Road Oval.

The 1969 Semi Final against Geelong, he says, is the first game he remembers. An uncle, an MCC member, took him along. Richmond had finished fourth and humbled the Cats (167 to 49) on their way to winning a second flag in the Hafey era, and Robert was 12, and among 101,232 other fans and in awe of what he witnessed.

After graduating from Rosebud High in 1976, he got a job as a computer trainee operator for an insurance company, moved to the city, beginning his career and his habit of watching the yellow and black wherever they play. “I was living in Prahran and I had some mates who were Richmond fans and we went to games most weeks,” he says. “We got on the cheer squad bus a couple of times to go to Geelong, and we went to every ground except Victoria Park.”

A standing room ticket to the 1980 Grand Final is among his life’s treasured moments and, oh, yes, meeting his wife-to-be, Linda, on a bus tour of New Zealand the following winter. She’s from Mackay in north Queensland, was living in northern NSW, and joined the tour at the Bay of Islands. They married a year later and Linda moved to Melbourne, and his two loves were as one when he took her to the 1982 Grand Final.

“He dragged me to it,” she says. “I’d never been in a crowd that big.”

Raising three boys together, a working sojourn to England lasted 10 years, and on their return six years ago Robert went back to the football. He signed-up as a 3121 member two years later, and joined the South East Tigers Supporter Group soon after they formed in 2013, and was elected onto their committee.

And then, the chest pains.

Scans in hospital found spots on his liver, the body’s largest internal organ, but no diagnosis. “There was obviously something not quite right,” he says. “I was retaining a lot of fluid, and my skin dried out and I couldn’t stop scratching.”

Further tests in 2014 at Box Hill Hospital’s gastroenterology clinic confirmed the spots were a tumour, but physicians were unsure if it was malignant or benign. Then came two bouts of hepatic encephalopathy, a condition caused by a build-up of ammonia in the bloodstream (with the liver unable remove the toxins) resulting in confusion and forgetfulness.

Then early last year, the hard news: definitive liver cancer.

“The doctors said it would be terminal without a transplant,” says Robert. “They said if a compatible donor liver wasn’t fond within twelve months, either you won’t be here or you won’t be in a condition to receive the transplant.”

Not surprisingly, Robert didn’t get to the football at all last year. His season was consumed with doses of chemotherapy, and drugs, and the emotional wrench of nearing death. By August’s end, all was going downhill.  “My liver was packing it up at a great rate of knots.”

Richmond lost another Elimination Final in early September but a Tiger at his home in Wantirna South faced far greater loss and grief: facing his own mortality.

Called one afternoon into the Austin Hospital, the only facility in Victoria to do adult liver transplants, he was given a lifeline. Surgeons were on their way to examine a potential donor liver. At 9pm that evening he was wheeled into the operating theatre, and wheeled out at 8am the next morning. Four days later he woke up in intensive care, before being trundled into a ward.

“I was out of hospital thirteen days after I went in.”

Not yet a year since the life-saving surgery, Robert pauses, trying to find the words of appreciation for the Austin medical staff, and to the family of the unknown person whose liver he received.

“Eternally grateful,” he says.

“I spent about three weeks trying to write a thank-you letter to my donor’s family, and that’s probably the single hardest thing I’ve done in my life. I am alive now only because of the donor family. We have a grandson in England who’s just turned two, and without the donor I would never have nursed him.”

“It’s amazing what donor families do. It truly is a gift of life.”

Team effort: Robert and Linda Jones (standing, far right) with part of the yellow and black faithful at a South East Tigers Supporter Group last Tuesday week, attended by Alex Rance, Dylan Grimes, Jacob Townsend and Oleg Markov. (Photo generously supplied by group member, Steve Green).

Postscript: Robert returned to the football this season; is treasurer of the South East Tigers Supporter Group (they’ve raised about $30,000 for the Richmond Football Club) and having faced death says he has a new appreciation of life. “I’m more conscious of wanting to live and do the things that give us joy,” he says. “Like travelling, spending time with family, and going to the football.”

He asks all other Tigers to consider signing-up to the Organ Donor Register during Donate Life Week (runs until Sunday 7 August). See www.donatelife.gov.au for details.

Go Tiges! And happy 58^th birthday to Robert (& hoping he has many more of them).

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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