In the sixth of a special richmondfc.com.au nostalgic series celebrating Richmond’s 50 years at home at the MCG, Tony Greenberg turns the clock back to the day talented Tiger full-back Barry Richardson became the first player in league football to keep champion Hawthorn full-forward Peter Hudson goalless.
Barry Richardson faced a mountainous task going into Richmond’s Round 7 clash of the 1969 season against Hawthorn at the MCG.
The talented, versatile Richardson, who had played as a half-forward in the Tigers’ drought-breaking 1967 premiership, was now the team’s full-back – and preparing to line up on Hawthorn’s goalkicking machine Peter Hudson.
The Hawks’ superstar spearhead was coming off a superb 1968 season, where he’d kicked 125 goals, and a sizzling start to the 1969 season, which had netted him 42 goals in just six games, including an incredible haul of 16 in Round 5 against Melbourne at Glenferrie Oval.
‘Bones’, as Richardson was affectionately known during his league playing days, had quickly earned a reputation as one of the best full-backs in the competition, but facing a white-hot Hudson was the ultimate challenge.
Richmond was second going into this Round 7 match at the ‘G’, while Hawthorn was third, so it shaped as an absorbing contest, with the added attraction of the Richardson-Hudson duel.
On a cold wet mid-May Saturday, Bones achieved the unthinkable – he managed to keep Hudson goalless for the entire four quarters of the game.
The magnitude of Richardson’s achievement that May day was even more momentous, when you consider the fact that Hudson went on to kick 120 goals in the ’69 season, 146 in 1970 and an equal-league high 150 in 1971, before suffering a serious knee injury in the opening round the following year. All-up, Hudson booted 727 goals in 129 games of league football at an average of 5.64 goals per match. Only two full-backs managed to keep him goalless during his gargantuan goalkicking league career – Richardson and Fitzroy’s Rod ‘Curly’ Austin.
Being a keen student of the game, Richardson had devised a special plan for playing on Hudson in that Round 7, 1969 encounter.
“Hudson kicked 16 goals against Melbourne two weeks before I was to play on him. Every goal Hudson kicked was shown on the news that night. What I noticed was that most of those goals were of him running into an open goal,” Richardson said in Rhett Bartett’s book, ‘Richmond FC: A Proud History Of A Great Club’.
“They would leave Hudson in the forward line all by himself and then kick the ball to the one-on-one contest, but usually over his head. He would use his big arse to push you out and run back into an open goal.
“I thought I’m going to at least eliminate that one, so he might only kick eight against us.
“When I played on him in Round 7, 1969, I stood around 15 metres behind him.
“Every time he turned around, I just pretended to look around with folded arms and showing a total lack of interest. So the Hawks kept kicking the ball over his head and I kept taking chest marks.
“It worried him, he told me later, because every other full-back had stood next to him.
“The next time we played, he stood on the goal line.”
Despite Hudson being completely shut down by Richardson, Richmond was beaten in a low-scoring affair – 7.10 (52) to Hawthorn’s 8.13 (61).
The Tigers struggled for consistency that season until the final few home-and-away rounds when they hit their straps, storming into the finals, and sweeping their way to premiership glory.
Hawthorn, on the other hand, despite Hudson’s goalkicking exploits for the rest of the season, missed the then final four, finishing fifth.
