Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
David Norman, 54, Blackburn (via Richmond)
Favourite all-time Richmond player
Royce Hart – “Royce Hart was Richmond. If he played, we won. The 1973 Preliminary Final was testament to that, when he came on at half-time and we were eight goals down, and we won. A champion.”
Favourite current Richmond player
Dustin Martin – “It has to be ‘Dusty’, I just like his style. I also love Jack’s passion.”
And so it comes to this, Big Dave Norman, the stalwart, a former cheer squad front man who’s still a leader of many who’ll be at the Punt Road end of the MCG this Sunday; a father (to 12-year-old Jack Dyer Norman), a barracker. He casts a broad shadow. If Richmond’s crowd ever named a team, he’d be our centre-half forward.
We meet late on a Wednesday night at a pub. In Richmond, of course, the London Tavern, where for the past 10 years he’s run a trivia night that always includes a few local knowledge questions. It helps that Big Dave lived in Richmond for about 30 years, before moving recently to Blackburn. It helps also that he’s a postie. (Later in the evening he starts the 11pm night shift, at a mail-sorting centre nearby on Church Street.)
Question 1: Which two neon signs in Richmond are classified by the National Trust?* (*see answers below)
Quiz master: David Norman by the bar at the London Tavern, where each Wednesday night he runs a trivia competition.
Sitting down with a beer to interview Big Dave, it feels like I’m in the company of Richmond royalty. He’s seen so much, been involved, heard all the stories, raised a few chants. “Didn’t miss a game for 40 years up until a few years ago,” he says. From Round 3, 1972, to Round 3 in 2012, he was at every game: home and away, interstate, through good times and bad, always in the outer, mostly behind the goals, lending his voice.
Big Dave Norman.
He remembers old Alice Wills, bless her, taking her little money tin to the boardroom, which was the club’s membership department back in the day when it had no funds, and less staff, and an uncertain future. He remembers the cheer squad setting up tents and tables for the club’s family day, and running charity auctions, and sweeping up mud in the old change rooms to find space to make a run-through banner.
“After family day we’d be there ’til five o’clock at night doing an emu bob to clear the oval because the club couldn’t afford cleaners, the club had nothing,” he says. “It was all volunteers. The footy club had a staff of about four.”
And he remembers Dimmey’s Day, when the landmark department store offered discounted Richmond Football Club memberships to customers. “On Saturday morning, they’d be queued up the length of Swan Street,” he says. “It was the biggest membership day of the year.”
Question 2: Alphabetically, what are the last two pubs in Richmond?
David John Norman was born in Sydney, where his father had moved with his job for James Miller & Co., the rope and twine-makers of Brunswick. He grew-up in in Canterbury-Bankstown, barracking for the hard-knuckle boys of Balmain, if only because a school friend’s father was a trainer for them and took him to games. The last of which was the 1969 rugby league Grand Final, when Balmain upset favourites South Sydney. With the 1999 merger of Balmain and Western Suburbs to become the West Tigers, the win was the 11th and last premiership for the Balmain Tigers.
“Haven’t followed Richmond all me life, but I have followed the Tigers all me life,” he says.
His family moved to Melbourne at Christmas 1969, living in Doncaster, where he went to primary school and his eyes later opened to a new game and its social rituals.
“I didn’t know what Richmond was or what Australian Rules was, until I was nine,” he explains. “I came down here in Grade 3 and was swapping the old horseshoe-style Scanlen’s footy cards, but I had the rugby ones. I asked if there were Tigers in the comp, so that’s how I went for Richmond.”
The first game he attended was with a school friend, whose father was an MCC member, and all at once he was hooked. Soon after, he’d catch a train on Saturday’s into Flinders Street, “and find people wearing black and yellow and follow them”. Most times he ended up sitting by himself, behind the goals, with the cheer squad.
He joined the squad in 1974 as a 13-year-old. In 1980 – a memorable year – he became its president, a position he held until 2012. Highs and lows, and in-betweens, he’s seen a few.
Question 3: Name all the roads of Richmond?
The many faces of Big Dave: this one posted by Martin Davis ("2008 after he sent me down to run water for the day as a trainer").
“Football clubs are great melting pots,” says Dave, his deep voice rising, broaching a topic about which he’s a resident authority. He knows about the power of a crowd, strength in numbers, about teamwork.
“Everything from the garbo to the millionaire, we all have one thing that we’re passionate about and in love with, and it’s Richmond. It doesn’t matter about your background, your religion, your sexual orientations, what your politics are or wealth status, you’re a Richmond supporter. And it’s the one thing we can all sit down and talk about on equal terms, together.”
I met with Dave last week when Richmond was in the news, again, for mostly the wrong reasons. The talk was about a boardroom coup, a clandestine meeting; toppling the apple cart. He says he’s seen it all before: people who think they can waltz in and do a better job, who think they have the magic bullet.
What he does know is the club is financially watertight, and robust off the field, and has put itself in a strong position since the days he helped organise the cheer squad to rattle tins and lick stamps for the Save Our Skins campaign.
“And the club have done all this without any on-field success,” he says. “If Richmond has on-field success, everything else will take care of itself because the money will just flow in. We’ve got 70,000 members. We’d be 100,000 easy if we started winning finals and being a fair-dinkum premiership chance.”
“We’re a massive club who’ve been no good for 35 years. People forget how big Richmond is. I can’t imagine if Essendon or Collingwood or Carlton had had the lack of success that we’ve had for so long, if they would even still exist.”
“Yet we’ve stayed big through all of it. It really is in your blood, the Richmond passion.”
Question 4: Which pub in Richmond has the shortest name?
Hero of the outer: David Norman, a heartbeat of the Tigers, at a recent VFL game at Punt Road Oval.
Dave Norman has a love for Richmond, the suburb and the football team, and all its supporters. He tells wonderful stories about the run-through banners he helped make for Kevin Bartlett’s 400th game, and his last game three weeks later (“it was the biggest banner ever made, we had 50 people out there and eight guy ropes and we only just got it up”). Most of his memorabilia, including his old duffle coat, he’s donated to the club museum. He points out the framed Richmond premiership WEG posters on the pub wall. They’re his. He lent them long ago to his favourite watering hole.
Through his connection with the cheer squad, he knows about passion and belonging.
“What I find remarkable is that if you’re not 45 or older, you can’t remember us being any good. There are 35-year-old supporter and they’ve seen nothing. They’ve known nothing but misery. They’ve seen three or four finals series if they’re lucky, and the last three of those have been failures.”
“And yet you look at our young supporters and they’re so passionate about it.”
Much of this, he says, can be attributed to the tribal spirit found down the Punt Road end at all Richmond home games. It is a yearning for better days, for football’s promised land, that he knows will one day come. And he says it also has much to do with the family-orientated camaraderie of the club’s most visible supporter group, the cheer squad.
“If you get them as a kid, you’ve got them forever, and that’s what the cheer squad has always done,” he says. “I think that’s where the Richmond passion comes from. I think we have embraced our supporters, and the cheer squad is a big part of that.”
Question 5: When will Richmond next win a premiership?
Go Tiges! And go all Richmond fans at the game this Sunday who are past and present members of the cheer squad.
Answers: (1) Pelaco and Nylex Plastics (“everyone says Skipping Girl but that’s in Abbotsford). (2) Vaucluse Hotel and The Vine Hotel. (3) Punt Road and Bridge Road. (4) DTs Hotel, on Church Street, opposite Citizens Park. (5) Join Big Dave for trivia on Wed night at the London Tavern and he’ll tell you the answer.
Big thanks to all who’ve been part of the OWFT fan-profiles this season. Big Dave is the last in this series of remarkable Richmond stories. Thanks also to those who’ve nominated supporters, not all of whom I’ve been able to get to. There might yet be next season. And how nice would it be to beat the Cats on Sunday?
