Oh we're from Tigerland: Kerrie & Vince Morton

Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond

Kerrie Morton, 57, and Vince Morton, 65, Keilor Downs (via Perth this weekend)

Kerrie’s favourite all-time player
Darren Gaspar – “I followed him for years, and I think I’ve always liked full-backs. He had that amazing long-arm reach. We once met him in Perth.”

Kerrie’s favourite current player
Alex Rance – “His athleticism and courage is inspiring."

Vince’s favourite all-time player
Shane Tuck – “We met him a few times on our travels and he’s very down-to-earth. We’re actually seeing him before the game this weekend.”

Vince’s favourite current player
Trent Cotchin – “I love his talent, and again, he’s a really nice guy to talk to, he’s very approachable.”

How far would you go for your footy team? Most travel some distance for the games, even if only to the lounge for the TV remote, but few surely venture as far and often as wife-and-husband Richmond fans, Kerrie and Vince Morton.

In the past six home-and-away seasons, between the two of them, they’ve gone to every Richmond game – except one. Monday night in Perth three seasons ago, a memorable win against West Coast. Kerrie couldn’t get time off work. Vince went alone. And he ended-up helping club steward Giuseppe Mamone, taking drinks onto the ground in the quarter-time breaks.

Clawing back: Kerrie and Vince at banner-making last week (with a photo bomb by Trout, no longer of Woodend)

Such is the travelling life of these two Richmond cheer squad stalwarts, who’ve been part of the club’s most visible supporter group for the past 17 years, and rarely miss Wednesday night’s banner-making. Neither is afraid of the work needed sometimes to be a barracker; nor of the travel.

“As soon as the season’s fixture is released we start looking for flights, looking out for the sales,” says Vince. “Then we book hire cars and accommodation.”

It’s a good thing then that Kerrie and Vince live only one Melway’s page from Melbourne Airport. Since Damien Hardwick’s coaching tenure, they’ve caught 146 domestic flights between them to-and-from the football, clocking-up 128,298 frequent flyer miles. That is, their love for Richmond could wrap five times around the Earth at its widest circumference, or get them more than half-way to the moon (but not back).

From 2010 they’ve booked 20 return flights to see Richmond play in Adelaide (Football Park and Adelaide Oval ), 16 to Sydney (SCG, Showgrounds and Stadium Australia), 15 to Perth (Subiaco, with Kerrie missing one of the games), 10 to Brisbane (Gabba ), six to Cairns (Cazaly’s Stadium), and two each to Hobart (Bellerive), Darwin (Marrara) and Gold Coast (Carrara).

Oh, yes, and they’ve also been twice to Kardinia Park.

Perth, Round 4, before the game: Vince with the travelling Tigers' cheer squad (clockwise from top left), Alarna Sewell, Alicia Almeida, Yogi Thurairatnam, Sally-Ann Delaney, Adam McCormack and Mandy Woodward.

Vince has held up the run-through banner at every interstate ground Richmond have played at for premiership points, as he will again this Saturday night at Subiaco. Their flight departs Melbourne at 9.15am Saturday, and if all goes to plan they get back at 7.30pm Sunday.

Studies have found Australian Rules football fans journey long distances to see their team play for reasons of novelty, nostalgia, relaxation, prestige, education, self-exploration, escapism, but mostly to spend time with family and friends. Other research suggests sports events offer a psychological journey, and the greater the distance travelled the richer the personal rewards may be.

Through football, as with other sports, fans have the opportunity to experience positive stress – the arousal of hope, an anxiety of anticipation – and enhanced self-esteem through team identification and success. For all Richmond fans flying to Perth this weekend, the euphoria of a win could only be heightened by the distance travelled, by sweet memories carried all the way home.

None dare even contemplate the misery of defeat.

Earlier this season, on the Friday night game against West Coast in Perth, Kerrie and Vince booked on the red-eye midnight return flight, joining the players, TV commentators, club staff and other fans for the long trip home after an emphatic loss. The Virgin flight taxied to the runway at 11.35pm as scheduled, then waited, and waited, and returned to the boarding gate. Computer malfunction. All needed to disembark.

The flight eventually departed at 2.30am (or 4.30am Australian Eastern Standard Time). Mind you, volcanic dust once delayed their return from Sydney by three days. They caught a bus home, down the Hume.

Perth, Round 4, after the game: delayed at Virgin Australia Terminal at Perth Airport

It’s not always easy being a flying Tiger. But there are benefits, such as journeying with the team to-and-from various interstate games. “The taller players sit in the exit rows or at the bulkheads so they’ve got room for their feet,” says Vince. “The coaches are normally up the front.”

Kerrie adds: “Matthew Richardson goes business class”.

Theirs is an intimate observation of footballers after a game; fatigued, some injured, burdened by the travel. Most wear compression leggings and tops on the trip home, beneath loose casual clothing, and walk regularly up-and-down the aisle to stave-off stiffness. “The boys, you see some of them limping and stretching their arms,” says Kerrie. “Most of them look pretty sore and aching as they get on the plane.”

But with the travel comes also camaraderie; with the players, with other fans, and often also with the airline employees. “We had one Qantas flight from Adelaide coming home when the captain started singing the Richmond theme song when we all got on the plane,” says Vince. “He was a Richmond fan, the whole plane was singing along.”

Travelling Tigers: On the pines in Darwin, before the bounce (and the lights went out in a game against Port Adelaide)

For Vince, born in Wakefield in West Yorkshire, migrating with his family to Adelaide in 1960, it’s certainly not a life experience he would have anticipated. As a child he barracked for Central Districts, “the Bulldogs”, an SANFL club founded in 1959 with a strong British migrant identity. They wear the colours of the Union Jack – red, white and royal blue – and are based in Elizabeth, a model workingman’s suburb of north Adelaide with a car manufacturing industry that attracted UK migrant labour.

Working in telecommunications for the RAAF, and later stationed at Perth, he also took on South Fremantle as another of his teams. He had no VFL affiliations until meeting his wife.

“I was born and bred Richmond,” says Kerrie, who grew up in Merlynston, a pocket of Coburg North. “My father was North Melbourne and my mother was a Richmond supporter and she took me to the games and that was all I knew. I went Richmond with her.”

From a maternal bloodline, the Morton’s have one son, one daughter, and four grandchildren (“they’re all Richmond”) and a love that knows no limits. “We love the team, and we always will love the team, and we’re not going anywhere without the team,” says Vince.

Yellow and black: Punt Road Oval, Wednesday night, before banner-making.