Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
Fran Doughton, 40, Marrickville, Sydney
All-time favourite player:
Michael Gale – “I love Micky Gale, I just love that he was rough and he was hard, and back in the day I liked his long, blond hair. I loved that he did ballet to improve his strength, I loved how courageous he was.”
Current favourite player:
Shane Edwards – “’Titch’ has developed into such a smart player. When he gets the ball, something’s going to happen, you can feel it. He’s always exciting to watch.”
Monday morning, I call Fran Doughton in Sydney. “Obviously it’s been disappointing,” she says. “Nobody wants to see the team perform badly, especially after last year when everything looked so positive.”
Talk is about last Friday night. She was away for the weekend, at a work conference in Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, checking score updates at a delegate dinner. At three-quarter time she excused herself, the night still in the balance, and rushed back to her hotel room.
“I feel like I mozzed the whole thing, by turning my television on,” she says. “As soon as I turned it on it all went downhill.”
Don’t say us fans don’t take it personally; that we wouldn’t do anything we could to help turn the fortunes of our team.
Before this season began I met with Fran at Henson Park, under the flightpath in Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west, a refuge for Australian Rules football in a foreign city. It’s the home of the Newtown Jets, a founding NSW rugby league club – runners-up in 1981 with a team that included Tommy Raudonikis and Phil Gould, then ejected from the top flight two years later amid financial woes.
These days, it’s used mostly for our code of football, including hosting Sydney’s annual Reclink Community Cup, a charity game played between four goalposts at either end.
Brooding Sydney skies: four goalposts, two Tigers and one football love.
“It’s only Sydney, but unless you barrack for the Swans we’re a bit starved of footy conversations up here,” says Fran. “Richmond has become a lot more interactive with the Talking Tigers podcasts and the fan profiles, which all helps us interstate people feel part of it.”
Fran’s football story begins north of the Murray with her father, Peter, and the Albury Tigers, the oldest club in the Ovens and Murray Football League, and reigning premiers, with a well-stocked trophy cabinet. “Geoff Strang was a high school mate of dad’s and he went down and played for Richmond [88 games, premierships in ’67 and ’69], and an uncle was a good friend of Dick Grimmons who also played for the Tigers.”
“They followed the yellow and black in Albury and did the same when dad’s family moved to Melbourne,” says Fran. “If you’re born into the family you’re Richmond, although we’ve got some strays who’ve married in. Otherwise we’re Richmond crazy.”
Fran was born in Melbourne, growing up in Moorabbin, around the corner from St Kilda’s old home. “We watched the crowds going to Linton Street. We’d go down with our milk crate and get in free after half-time.”
As a school girl, and with Richmond upon hard times in the mid-80s, her football loyalties looked to sway elsewhere. “I had a hand-knitted scarf that was white and red and I tried to go for South Melbourne, but it didn’t go down well,” she says. “Dad almost locked me out of the house.”
Little did she know, in 2005, on the cusp of turning 30, she’d move north to Sydney, seeking a change, and later marry a Sydneysider, Bernard, and they’d have a baby girl and live in a heartland of those who support the Swans. I ask if Bernard is a Richmond supporter. “He is now, but he never was,” says Fran. “He’s been a member for six or seven years and we recently found out his paternal grandfather, who he never knew, lived in Richmond and followed the Tigers.”
That is, it cannot be helped: it’s in his DNA.
Little Tiger: Hattie, turning three at May's end, a Richmond member since birth (signed-up by an aunt)
Fran’s story is one also of an expatriate barracker. She’s but one of a large crowd of Richmond fans living far from Tigerland, outside Victoria, interstate and overseas, cheering for Richmond from elsewhere. For so many, the distance makes the heart grow fonder.
For her, a fan connection is fostered through the Sydney Richmond Tigers Supporter Group, gathering regularly to watch games at the Camelia Grove Hotel in Alexandria, in the inner west. “Being up here, it’s just so good to have people you can just talk to about the footy,” she says. “You don’t get it in the workplace, and the newspapers only write about the Sydney teams.”
Talking on Monday morning, Fran mentions a pitfall of being so removed from Punt Road. “Being in NSW we don’t get much on the Tigers in the mainstream media so the easiest way to read things is on social media,” she says.
It’s a medium that’s changed the way the game is discussed, how fans add to a group conversation – but not always for the better. “It’s disturbing to read some of the messages out there, the personal attacks on the players,” says Fran. “I don’t want to preach, but it’s just poor form. Our boys don’t go to a game not trying, not wanting to win.”
“I think some supporters have lost perspective. It’s just a football game. Yes, we’re very passionate, we love it, but that’s no excuse for the personal keyboard venom.
“I watch the football because I love watching the football,” says Fran. “I love the adrenaline I feel when I watch the football.
Despite everything – the form lines, ladder positions, ins-and-outs – this is how so many Richmond fans will feel in the moments before the ball’s bounced at the MCG on Saturday night. Richmond v Sydney, us versus them, with delightful nerves, a pleasing anxiety, the prospect of a win, and for two glorious hours all that matters is the football.
“My Richmond membership says I’ve been a member for more than 20 years, and I’m not going to stop watching the games.”
“I’ve booked my hotel in Canberra already to see us play against GWS,” she says. “Every week I still believe we can win.”
“Every week I have hope.”
Go Tiges!
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
