Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
Robyn Meggs, 55, and Emily Meggs, 24, Burwood East
Robyn’s favourite all-time player:
Michael Roach – “High flying, exciting, an accurate kick for goal, and a really nice bloke as well.”
Robyn’s favourite current player:
Jack Riewoldt - “Jacky boy. He wasn’t my favourite, but he’s become a brilliant player, and a great leader. He works so hard, both ways. Love him.”
Emily’s favourite all-time player:
Matthew Richardson – “He was the heart and soul of the team, through the good years and bad.”
Emily’s favourite current player:
Brett Deledio – “He takes our team to an extra level, and he’s stuck it out at Richmond. He could have gone anywhere, but he chose to stay at the club.”
“The pain is physical,” texts Robyn Meggs, at 10.33pm Saturday, on the train home from a night so many of us wanted to forget. Four words between two Richmond fans, homeward bound, tails between legs, and all is understood. A grief shared is a grief halved. Times like these, we need group therapy.
This is a story about Richmond; about a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, about loss, but also about enduring love – between people, but also for a football club and its team.
“Now that I’m older I love these players like they’re my kids,” says Robyn. “You hurt for them when you see they’re hurting. It’s a maternal instinct. I feel for Cotch so much at the moment because I don’t have any doubt he’s trying his hardest. And what he’s copping is just horrendous.”
I met with Robyn and her daughter, Emily, at half-time at the football on Saturday night (she wasn’t confident, I was still hopeful) to take their photograph, and I met with them both at Forest Hill Shopping Centre last week, to talk football and family. About what it might mean; about Richmond; about all those emotions so common among Tiger people.
“It’s never dull being Richmond,” she says. “You have extreme highs and extreme lows, and there never seems to be much in-between.”
We meet in Forest Hill Chase for a reason; it’s where her mother, Tossie, met regularly with a group known as the ‘Tiger Grannies’, until earlier this year. She died two weeks shy of turning 83, and three weeks before this seasons’ opening game. Numbers have thinned in her friendship circle, formed from the Save Our Skins campaign and including Lil Wood, mother of four-time premiership player (three for Richmond) Bryan Wood, but their fervour is undiminished.
The Tiger Grannies: they meet once a month in Forest Hill for high-level talks about Richmond.
“Mum was a passionate barracker,” says Robyn. “And that love of Richmond never left her until the day she died.”
She left this world in her colours: her football scarf on her coffin, beside a wreath of yellow-and-black balloons; the service ending with the club’s theme song. All sang along. Robyn delivered a eulogy wearing her cherished Richmond scarf, and told stories about her mother and football.
Last rites: there was no doubting Tossie Ford's true colours at her send-off earlier this year.
“Kevin Sheedy was mum’s favourite player of all time, she just adored him,” she says.
“When he went to Essendon she buried the framed photo she had of him in the back garden. But she dug it up again when she forgave him.”
Faith, loyalty, passion, and a little eccentricity: oh, how very Richmond.
Robyn’s Tigerland story began on 8 April 1961 at the Bethesda Hospital (now part of the Epworth) where she was born, the younger of two daughters to John and Tossie Ford, living nearby in Waltham Street, on Richmond Hill, before moving to Forest Hill.
John was a policeman, stationed at City West, who had played for Fitzroy (“a very skinny winger,” says Robyn), mostly in the reserves, but one senior game at Brunswick Oval in 1953, a loss to Melbourne. The closest he came to Tigerland was wearing the yellow sash when representing a combined police team, led by Captain Blood, Jack Dyer, who joined the force in 1934, three seasons after his Punt Road debut.
Tiger lore: John Ford, Robyn's father (second from left in front row) lined-up for a combined police team, led by the redoubtable Captain Blood.
Robyn’s mum was the Tiger of the family. She was a barracker, taking her daughters to the football every Saturday afternoon to watch her beloved team, and her husband when he rostered-off work shifts. “Dad used to tell everyone he was Richmond by marriage.”
The barrackers: John and Tossie Ford at Moorabbin Oval, 1977, watching Richmond play and both showing their emotions.
Robyn’s first memory of going to games was in 1967, a premiership year, when she was six. “I was indoctrinated early.” She saw the flags of 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1980, and was at the 1972 and 1982 Grand Finals, both lost to Carlton. “I went to them all, all through the halcyon days. I remember what it’s like to win a premiership, and win them repeatedly.”
Here Emily interjects: “I don’t”.
And herein lies the great generational divide among Richmond supporters, between the baby boomers and all who’ve followed (Gen X, Gen Y , Gen Z). Between those who “had it all”, and those who’ve been without.
The last hurrah: Champagne flutes before the 1982 Grand Final ("l-r, Mum, me, surrogate daughter Lissa and my sister Julie").
“I only got serious about football in 2001 when I was 10 and we moved back from three years in Queensland,” says Emily. “We were winning, it was a great year. Nanna bought me a membership, she took me to every match, I had my face painted and dressed up in all our colours.”
Richmond fans need no reminding of the barren row that’s been hoed since the century’s turn, of all the hope that hangs heavy in so many lives all through autumn and winter.
“When I was younger I used to ask mum why you made me barrack for Richmond,” says Emily. “It hurts, it’s not fair.”
Rubbing salt in the wound is the ambivalent allegiance Robyn’s husband has to his team, St Kilda. He goes rarely to the football. He’s not fussed if he doesn’t see the Saints play. “It really wasn’t fair when St Kilda kept making the finals and the Grand Final,” says Emily.
Badges of honour: the highs and lows of the RFC.
After being sidelined from attending games for many years by early motherhood and ill-health (a rare sympathetic nervous system pain problem, and then blood cancer, stage four non-Hodgkins lymphoma), Robyn was able return in 2008, and Emily came with her. A mother-daughter bond, through good times and bad. “It’s our thing, it’s what we do together, it’s quality time we can share,” says Robyn.
And so a maternal love passes to the next generation. Not that they necessarily always see the game in the same way. “Emily doesn’t like to talk about it when we lose, but I do,” says Robyn. “I want to analyse it.”
The common denominator is a shared affinity for Richmond, and all the longing and excitement that comes with it. “It’s strange and it’s very strong, and I’ve just known from the moment I was born that football was important, it was part of family life,” says Robyn. “I see something that’s yellow and black and it stirs a passion I cannot explain.”
In a season that so far has brought little joy, for Robyn and Emily there are fond memories, and always the hope of better days ahead. A mother and grandmother has died – a woman who rattled tins to help save her club, who set up a stall at the Melbourne Show to raise funds – and the Elimination Final loss to Carlton was the last game the three of them went to together, when all of us walked from the ground with heavy hearts.
Three-generations of Tiger women: Robyn and Emily wearing their colours (and Tiger ears) with Tossie, at what would be her last game - the 2013 Elimination Final.
But in those final years there was always the football to talk about, and Richmond, and how Jack was playing, or how the new recruits were doing, or the upset win that would make spirits sing for the week ahead.
Robyn texts again on Tuesday morning. She says Emily is turning 25 on Friday and has only one birthday request: to go to the open training session on Friday morning. A mother, a daughter, at Punt Road Oval, watching footballers, and a private celebration. The football, it means something; as it always will, and it always will, and it always will.
Go Tiges, and happy birthday to Em for this Friday!
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
