Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
DONNIE DAVIDSON, 62 BALLARAT
Favourite all-time player: Matthew Richardson
“I always loved Kevin Sheedy, Kevin Bartlett and Royce Hart but I never saw them play live. So it has to be Matthew Richardson, with his passion for the club and to do the best for the team. His aerobic capacity in those last years when he moved up the ground was amazing. Lance Franklin reminds me of the sort of athlete he was.”
Current favourite player: Dustin Martin
“There’s no one who’s better one-and-one than Dusty. He has those thighs like tree trunks that give him so much strength. He knows where the goals are.”
“I can’t remember life without footy,” says Donnie, a Mildura girl by birth, who grew up with football’s weekend rhythms on the flatlands of Sunraysia. Her older brother played for Irymple, her father was the club’s president in the mid-1960s, and the game was a social activity that helped shape the wide horizons of her childhood in north-west Victoria.
“The big day out each year was visiting Robinvale,” she says, of the grape-growing town upstream on the Murray that was the most distant club in the league. “Everyone drove there, and mum would play the piano at the Euston pub lounge where supporters adjourned after the game.”
From Irymple, on irrigated blocks south of Mildura, a young girl’s world was imagined through a game and the places it might take her.
For one of her contemporaries, Greg Hollick, the game took him to Richmond, drafted to Punt Road in 1969 when he completed high school, in a fate that would sway allegiances and change Donnie’s life forever.
In 1968, the Victorian Football League, in a bid to even-up the 12-team competition, divided the patchwork map of country leagues in Victoria and the Riverina into 12 recruiting zones. Twelve VFL club names were placed in the Premiership Cup, and the zones placed in the lid. From the luck of the draw, Richmond was pulled out with zone 10 – Sunraysia and North Central – in a corner of the state the furthest from Melbourne.
The original plan was for this zoning lottery to be held every three years, to redistribute the areas, but when time came for a review clubs were reluctant to leave a region where they had developed the game and established recruitment links.
(left to right) From the heart: Donnie with a cherished signature from 'The Great One'; Sunraysia Tiger: former Irymple and Richmond player, Greg Hollick, and the reason why Donnie and her family now dress in yellow and black.
So by chance, Richmond’s long association with the dry ovals of the Sunraysia Football League began, and a young Donnie Davidson (nee Corbould) became a Tiger. “I followed Richmond because I went to school with Greg Hollick,” she says. “So I’ve been following them since 1969.”
Hollick’s story, as an aside, is a remarkable tale of a young man from up country who made a name for himself in the big city, but was denied a grand final because of something bigger than football. Drafted from Irymple, he played 38 games in three seasons with Richmond from 1970, including the 1972 drawn semi-final against Carlton. He kicked a goal in the replay – which Richmond won – but couldn’t line-up in the Grand Final a week later than usual because of compulsory national service training.
A football journeyman, the game later took him to West Adelaide in the SANFL, and to the Mayne Tigers in Queensland, where in 1981 he won the Grogan Medal for the best and fairest in the QAFL.
For a region that had no firm connection with football in Melbourne, the introduction of country zoning ensured support in Sunraysia was tainted yellow and black. “Mildura didn’t get TV until 1965 so the only footy we watched was local footy,” says Donnie. “My earliest introduction to the VFL was when we came home from games and watched the six o’clock highlights show for an hour on the ABC.”
As with Richmond’s long roll call of Sunraysia players – including Matthew Knights (Merbein/Imperials), Nathan Bower (Mildura), Phil Egan (Robinvale), Mark Lee (Mildura) and Dale Weightman (Imperials) – Donnie would leave Mildura and in 1984 settled in Ballarat. Her husband, and their two children, could only ever be Tigers.
Nowadays, working as a secondary school teacher, Donnie drives regularly to Richmond games in Melbourne, usually with her daughter Kate, who turned 30 this week – happy birthday! – blessing a friendship with the unity of football. They attend the club’s member cocktail nights, and for the past ten seasons have followed the team in good times and bad.
Crowd favourite: a dog, named 'Richo'.
“We drove over to the Port Adelaide final last year, which was a great experience with all those signs cheering Richmond fans along the Western Highway,” she says. “But it was a very dark drive home. And it wasn’t much fun at school the next day.”
On a recent club email, Donnie had to self-assess her level of Richmond support. “I’m not a fanatic,” she says. “But I do follow it all year and I follow my team all year. I never tip against them.”
What she didn’t say is that she has a dog named ‘Richo’, and she once had a doorbell that when pressed chimed the Richmond Football Club theme song. The bell broke. It was sometimes after the 2013 Elimination Final loss to Carlton.
This Sunday afternoon, Donnie and her daughter Kate will again drive down from Ballart to see their beloved Tigers. They will walk to the ground together, with a shared passion for the game and for their team. But this Sunday is to be different.
For one, and as with most Richmond supporters, it’ll be the first time since Gold Coast joined the competition five years ago that we’re playing them at home – at the MCG – and they can see these opponents live. And this Sunday afternoon, Donnie and Kate get to walk on the ground, having won a club competition to be part of a guard of honour welcoming the players onto the arena.
Imagine that? A girl from Mildura, she’s made it all the way to the sacred grass of the Melbourne Cricket Ground!
Go Tiges! And go Donnie and Kate this Sunday afternoon!
ENDNOTE: The Sunraysia Football League, formed in 1945 with six teams – Mildura, South Mildura, Irymple, Imperials, Merbein and Red Cliff (the Tigers) – with the border towns of Wentworth (1957) and Robinvale (1958) added later, looks likely to change next season from its long-held eight-team competition. Following a review by AFL Victoria, the adjoining Mallee Football League is set to be disbanded, with a recommendation that Ouyen United and Walpeup Underbool amalgamate and compete in the Sunraysia League. Ouyen, 110km south on the Mallee Highway, will replace Robinvale as the outlying club in the league.
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
