Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
BROOK KILPATRICK, 50, GLENELG (SOUTH AUSTRALIA)
Favourite all-time player:
Francis Bourke – “He played for the jumper. Was as tough-as-nails, head over the footy, bit of blood and he just kept going. A champion.”
Current favourite player:
Brandon Ellis – “He uses the footy well. He runs hard. He’s an exciting new player finding his way in the game. I like watching how he goes about it.”
Could Brook Kilpatrick be our lucky charm? Certainly, there’s Irish ancestry – his great grandfather leaving the Emerald Isle, bound for South Australia, to find work as a farrier. And this Adelaide born-and-based Richmond fan has a twinkle in the eye, a mischievous grin, when he talks of the Tigers.
“Your team picks you, you don’t pick your team,” he says, of how he came to barrack for the boys from Punt Road.
Last season, on Brook’s annual football pilgrimage to Melbourne, visiting on June’s last weekend, Richmond were 3-10, equal second-last, and the sky was falling in. On a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon, he watched as the Tigers dismantled St Kilda, kick-starting a run of nine wins that led to the elimination final in his home town. (“We don’t talk about that game,” he says, “I went off the boil”).
Last weekend, he returned to Melbourne for his once-a-year trip, again to see Richmond play. At two-and-four, facing a team we hadn’t beaten for eight years, the odds against us, the voices of discontent circling, I met with Brook at quarter-time to take his photograph. We were three goals down. We’d barely had a coherent inside-50 entry. A blow-out beckoned.
Brook, on right, in the driveway at home with his brother, Gav ("he got to wear the Tiger jumper that day, mine was coming for Christmas").
Then something remarkable happened, and the mood ever since of all Tiger people has lifted, our spirits now sing, and our feet have hardly touched the ground. Forget Lids and Griggs and Dusty and Cotch, and even Big Ivvy. Brook Kilpatrick, our talisman, he was there.
In a home-game crowd of 59,034, he turned up to play.
Brook Kilpatrick was born in Glenelg in Adelaide and has lived most of his life in Glenelg and has only ever barracked for two football teams: Glenelg and Richmond.
As he tells it: “I used to go to the footy every Saturday with my old man and watch ‘The Bays’ (Glenelg Tigers), and we’d get home and mum would toast crumpets and we’d watch The Winners on TV and Richmond had the same jumper, so that was it.”
All these years later, living in a different city, in a different time-zone, with a different football culture where a banana kick’s a checkside punt, and behind posts are painted red, and locals still refer to the matchday footy Record as a ‘Budget’, his loyalty has not wavered.
Not even in 1991 when the Adelaide Crows formed and two former Glenelg Tigers – Graham Cornes as coach, Chris McDermott as captain – headed the charge to win-over South Australian hearts. “You can’t change who you barrack for,” says Brook. “I grew up watching ‘Disco’ Roach, and Lee and Weightman, and Jimmy Jess and I loved it. The Crows were not my team. The Tigers are my team.”
With former Glenelg legend and now Richmond assistant coach, Mark 'Choco' Williams, and Brook's longstanding friend, Jamie Mason, who played SANFL footy for Glenelg and North Adelaide.
A football club’s colours and jumper are something more than a pagan rite. They are a way of life, a representation of who we are and of the memories we hold dear.
In 1973, for an eight-year-old Brook Kilpatrick, it was as if the stars aligned. Glenelg won a famed premiership (Graham Cornes’ mark in the dying minutes is still etched in local folklore) in the SANFL and Richmond won its eighth premiership in the VFL, and the two clubs played before 34,194 spectators at the Adelaide Oval, in the semi-final of the Championship of Australia.
The Tigers v the Tigers, with Brook in the outer, on his father’s shoulders. “Glenelg lost the jumper toss and had to wear yellow, while Richmond got to wear the traditional strip.” The Richmond Tigers won the game (19 goals, 16 behinds to 16 goals, 19 behinds) and later beat Subiaco in the final.
Football is another game now, yet nothing has changed. The Richmond Tigers return to the Adelaide Oval this Sunday to take on the old Port Adelaide Magpies, one of the oldest football clubs in the land, and winners of the Champions of Australia competition on a record four occasions. Of course Brook will be there.
It’s one of his two home games this year (we play Adelaide away, in August) and in a two-team city, a rare opportunity to wear his colours. “It can be really hard and frustrating,” he says. “All the Adelaide media focus only on the two local teams and it can be unbearable, particularly the amount of air-time the Crows get.”
This Sunday night, he hopes a silence descends on a full-house at the Adelaide Oval, most there to see the 300th and farewell game of Kane Cornes (yes, a Glenelg boy), as Richmond in the most respectful way turn out the lights of the Port Power party. It would be a moment to savour; a redemption for all the disappointment and heartbreak of last September.
With a bloke who wears a gold helmet to a game of footy, before the Elimination Final against Port Adelaide last September.
All of us supporters, in our quiet moments, think maybe we make the difference. That our voice in the crowd counts, willing our team to win. It is the irrationality of being a barracker. But maybe also it is true. Maybe it is Brook, just by being there, who helped last Sunday; who was part of a group effort to re-set a season, and help us dream again of wonderful possibilities, when the wind is always at our backs and we find the most beautiful of ways to win games of football.
The bounce of the ball, the oval-shape of chance – and yes Eddie and Bucks, even the umpire’s shrill whistle – it need be on our side.
“Tiger supporters are a bit different from the rest,” said Brook, when I spoke to him high in Olympic Stand of the MCG as Richmond made all the running in the second quarter last Sunday. “Through thick or thin, it’s the passion. We love it. We get upset when we lose, but we celebrate better than anyone else when we win.”
Go Tigers!!!! Eat em alive this Sunday!!!
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
