In the wake of the passing yesterday (April 7) of great Richmond servant Alice Wills, we republish an excellent, in-depth feature that journalist and Tiger fan, Cheryl Critchley, wrote about her in late September 2012.
Alice Wills has lived through all 10 Richmond premiership and hopes to be around for the next one. In the lead-up to a 30th consecutive league Grand Final without Richmond’s participation, the Club’s only female life member has a clear message for Tiger supporters – there is hope.
“I say to everybody, ‘when you’ve been around as long as I have you’ve seen them down, you’ve seen them up, you’ve seen them down, you’ve seen them up. This goes on and it’s happened over my 80-odd years and it will happen for these people’,” she said.
At 92, Alice Wills is Richmond royalty. In the early 1960s, she started the Richmond Supporters Group and set up the Richmond Cheer Squad. Then, in 1990, with the Club on the verge of extinction, she organised volunteers for the critical Save Our Skins campaign.
It subsequently raised $1 million, much of it from grass-roots fans, saving the Tigers from going under and enabling them to claw their way back, on and off the field.
Alice and other Richmond stalwarts, who had had seen the good times, wanted to ensure younger Tiger generations would also enjoy them in the future. And, hopefully, they will soon.
When Club president at the time, Neville Crowe, launched the Save our Skins campaign in 1990, Alice rallied about 70 volunteers to rattle tins and raise thousands of dollars.
“I was there day and night and I would spend all day counting money,” she said.
Fellow volunteer Marlene Garrett would go after work and when Alice called her in.
“She’d tell every one of us what we had to do,” Marlene said.
“I got home one Friday night from work and there was a message to ring Alice. I rang her and she said, (it was a long weekend) ‘You working Monday’? No. Well you are now, nine o’clock at the Club, and bring your lunch.”
Born in 1919, Alice has lived through all Richmond’s 10 (league) premierships – 1920, 1921, 1932, 1934, 1943, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1980. Now residing in Hawthorn’s Victoria Gardens aged- care facility, she proudly displays stuffed tigers and Richmond colours in her room. Despite recent hospital stays, her health is okay.
“I feel sorry for the kids in the Cheer Squad today,” Alice said.
“They’ve never seen success. I’ve seen years, where we’ve worked all night making banners, we’ve worked all night painting things around the fence, we’ve worked all night doing all sorts of things for the Grand Final or the finals. The kids wouldn’t know what it was today.”
Alice attended her first game at Punt Road more than 80 years ago and saw Jack Dyer play his first match in 1931, when she was just 11. At the time, nobody had any idea how big a name in the game he would become. Back then, new recruits attracted little media attention.
“There wasn’t any of that in those days,” Alice said.
“He was Jack Dyer, another player. He was just another footballer. He learned to make his mark. He used to be a very strong player, but I mean, there was a lot of Richmond boys that lived in Richmond and played with Richmond.”
Alice went to the same school as another tough Tiger player, George Smeaton, in Brighton Street, Richmond.
“His sister (Kathy) and I were in the same grade,” Alice said. “They (the players) used to come and visit and they’d talk to us and play games with us. Football was different in those days . . .
“We didn’t take any notice of it. Today, you’re sort of carrying on. In those days, they came and they played volleyball or whatever it was and off they went. They were mostly local players. Those who played for Richmond, mostly lived in Richmond.”
Alice, who had seven brothers and three sisters, moved to Richmond when she was five. She lived there until she was about 12, before moving around, and then returning to Richmond.
“I went to a business college in Melbourne. I learnt typing and shorthand and never used it in my life,” she said.
In the early days, Punt Road Oval had a cricket club stand and a badminton court. There were few social functions and the main events were training and games.
“After the home-and-away game, they used to have a thing at night in what was the visiting players’ rooms. They had a fellow playing a piano and the ladies would be there and they’d serve drinks and this sort of thing. But I never went to those because they were for the adults,”Alice said.
When she was in her 20s and 30s, Alice gradually increased her role at the Club, helping with mail- outs and administrative tasks. She worked in the city and never married, so was able to devote plenty of time to her beloved Tigers. Apart from the president, secretary, coach and trainers, there were few other Club employees. Media and marketing staff were decades away.
Most helpers were volunteers. Alice worked closely with Club secretary Maurie Sheahan and president Harry Dyke, setting up the cheer squad and her own Supporters’ Group. The cheer squad emerged in the late 1950s and was formalised in 1963.
Alice and her friends used to sit in the old Punt Road stand and observe a group of teenagers, who stood behind the goals watching the full-forward, changing ends each quarter to follow him.
“And they got called the Richmond Cheer Squad, that’s how they started,” Alice said.
“They came to me one day and wanted to know could they be part of the Club. So I went to Graeme Richmond . . . and he said ‘Yes, as long as they have you for chairman and have a committee and a constitution and have everything correct, then we will do it’. And they did, so it’s been like that ever since.”
In the early days, there were no floggers or giant run-throughs, but they did have flags.
“They had flags and there used to be banners that went around the fence and one of the committee- men bought the first material for that for us, for the Cheer Squad,” Alice said.
“It was ‘Ruthless Richmond a Team of Talented Tigers’.”
Run-throughs, as we know them today, didn’t emerge until the 1970s. Before then, cheer squads decorated the players’ race with crepe paper. At the 1967 Grand Final, the Richmond players almost ran through a giant tiger head, but a step that could have tripped them up put paid to that idea.
“Kyneton, the Tigers, had won the grand final the day before. I rang Kyneton and they sent me down their tiger, which was a big tiger’s head that the players ran through,” Alice said.
“Then we found out it had this step, and the players wouldn’t have known, so we couldn’t use it.”
The Supporters’ Group had more mature fans, who enjoyed meeting socially and voting each week for a player award. They still meet today.
“We had a sealed tin and we used to put a dollar in with a player’s name, who we thought was the best player,” Alice said.
“It might have been $20 a game and there might have been 10 games, so it might be $200.”
When Richmond made the Grand Final in 1967, Alice was charged with organising tickets. It was the days when fans would line up at the ground for days to secure their place.
“People were coming down 10 days before and putting things in queues to mark their spot. They’d come back every night, and this got out of hand,” Alice said.
“So . . . I got raffle tickets and, as people arrived, I gave them a raffle ticket and told them to produce this. We organised the queues and this went on every time we sold tickets. It worked very well.
“I got all very expert later on and I had little cards printed with a number on and I’d give one to each person. They’d put their things there when they wanted to and then they didn’t have to come back until six o’clock on the morning they were sold. There seemed to be endless (people).”
For many years, Alice and her Supporters’ Group friends, like Marlene, helped at Richmond social events, such as family days. Marlene remembers lugging urns onto the ground, powered by a long line of electrical cords coming from the rooms. “They were extended and extended and extended,” she laughed.
Before family days started, the Club had pleasant Sunday mornings, which often involved a keg of beer. Alice heard some great stories about players in the 1960s and 70s ending up the worse for wear. Luckily for them, there were no iPhones or YouTube and Alice refused to name names.
“I know one player, who shall remain nameless,” she confided.
“They got back to the rooms and they couldn’t find him. They knew he’d had too much to drink, so they searched all night, the whole of South Melbourne and all around. They found him in the water viaduct, curled up asleep.”
Mick Malthouse also was quite a character, according to Alice . . .
“He was always in strife. I’ll tell you one thing he did. They started to complain about this terrible smell. And the players were saying it’s in the clubrooms. Anyway, eventually, when it all got boiled down, one Micky Malthouse had found a dead possum in the park and he had locked it in a locker and this was the smell. It was days after,” she said.
In the 1980s, Alice organised Cheer Squad bus trips to Adelaide and the SCG and was involved in almost everything at the Club.
“I used to go around there on Thursday nights, when the under 19s trained. We used to do a tea for them, scones and coffee and whatever there was, and we got to know every one of them,” she said.
Alice doesn’t get to games now, but stays in touch with her Richmond family. Kevin Sheedy, Tommy Hafey and Kevin Bartlett all call to see how she is. When she was ill recently, Sheedy sent a card. “Kevin Bartlett and I talk to on the phone often,” she said.
Graeme Richmond edged Alice out when Richmond’s Servant of the Century was announced, during the Tigers’ league football centenary celebrations in 2008. Alice said he, and Alan Schwab, were both excellent administrators and thinks Brendon Gale is doing a good job now as the Club’s CEO.
Last year, this dedicated Tiger finally gave up her official positions with the Cheer Squad and Supporters’ Group, at the ripe, old age of 92. Gerard Egan, whom Alice has known since he was a child, has taken over most of her Cheer Squad duties.
Alice thinks Richmond fans are right up there among the most loyal in the competition, and urges them to buy memberships, reminding them that footy is easier to watch now.
“Our supporters stood from the beginning of the game to the end of the game in the pouring rain,” she said.
“I can remember we played Geelong once and the players were in mud up to their ankles. That was at Punt Road. It poured.”
If the Tigers do make another Grand Final for Alice, she will do her best to be there.
As a Life Member of the Club, she already has a ticket.
“We’ll worry about it when the time comes,” she said.
“I’ll ask Brendon Gale . . . I’ll say ‘what have you worked out Brendon?’ I’m all packed, ready to go’.”
