It’s 86 years today since one of Richmond’s all-time greats made his senior debut with the Club.
Dick Harris, recruited by the Tigers from Warrnambool, played his first game in the opening round of the 1934 season on Saturday, May 5 against Melbourne at Punt Road.
The 22-year-old, small forward/rover, booted two goals in an encouraging display as Richmond romped home by 41 points.
He would go on to kick an extremely impressive total of 51 goals in his debut season of league football, including three in the Grand Final, which the Tigers won by 39 points against South Melbourne.
Harris provided Richmond with magnificent service up forward throughout the next decade, utilising his clever football brain, innate goal sense, first-rate kicking skills (the torpedo punt and drop kick) and toughness. He formed a highly potent, two-pronged attack alongside Richmond’s champion spearhead Jack Titus.
In 1937, Harris was the competition’s leading goalkicker at the end of the home-and-away season with 64.
Six years later, when the Tigers won their next premiership, Harris finished with the most goals by a player for the entire season – 63.
His superb, seven-goal performance in the 1943 Grand Final against Essendon enabled Richmond to secure a thrilling five-point win.
That came three years after Harris had kicked five goals in the Tigers’ 1940 Grand Final loss to Melbourne.
Harris’ last game was in Richmond’s 1944 second semi-final defeat at the hands of Fitzroy.
He copped an injury during that match and missed the return clash with Fitzroy two weeks later in the Grand Final.
Harris had scored 63 goals that season for the third successive year and bowed out of VFL football at the top of his game.
At the end of that year, when the ‘Sporting Globe’ newspaper published its list of the best league players of the 1944 season, leading football scribe of the day, Hec de Lacy, wrote the following about Harris . . .
“The best forward pocket was undoubtedly Dick Harris, the Tigers’ vice-captain. He got goals when there wasn’t daylight between the posts and peashooter space between the defenders.”
All-up, Harris kicked 548 goals in 196 games for Richmond from 1934-44. He was a three-time winner of the Tigers’ leading goalkicker award and is in sixth place on the Club’s all-time goalkicking list.
His career-high goal tally in a match with the Tigers was 10, against Essendon in Round 3 of the 1944 season at Windy Hill, and he scored five goals or more in a VFL game 38 times.
Harris later coached Richmond’s reserve-grade team from 1956-65 and he also assisted Jack Titus with the Club’s senior coaching duties during the ’65 season after Len Smith was forced to step down due to ill health.
Fittingly, in 2004, Dick Harris was inducted into Richmond’s Hall of Fame.
