It’s a strange game, our code of football.

As Irish comedian Jimeoin once said, it’s the only sport in the world where they reward you for missing the goals. What must those from elsewhere make of our flag-flapping umpires, our run-through crepe-paper banners, our changeable rules, and our lexicon of support? (And, as an aside, at a game between Melbourne and Norwood in July 1880, a field umpire first distinguished himself by wearing a white shirt and shorts, hence giving rise to the now-redundant invective: “white maggot!”).

In February, a letter published in The Age compared different football codes. Written by David Moore, of Hurstbridge, it read: “As an American who grew up with gridiron, I find it difficult to argue with Peter Waterhouse (Letters, 6/2). He says it is “near impossible for regular Australians to admire” that game. As a 24-year resident of Victoria, I have come to enjoy Aussie Rules. However, it took some time to appreciate the intricacies: ducking under tackles, feeble attempts to get rid of the ball, obviously deliberate over the line most of the time, having time to pull up socks before most scoring kicks and spectators screaming for holding the ball.” 

David then signed-off his missive with two words clear in their meaning: “Go Tigers”. His colours were clear, his support unambiguous.

In sharp air at the MCG on Sunday, I was reminded of this foreign perspective, sitting beside Louise Murray, 31, a Scotswoman, who says “it’s 27 degrees in Glasgow right now”, and who, in her 18 months in Melbourne, has fallen head over heels for the Tigers. “We’ll definitely make the finals, I’ve decided that much,” she says. “I have this dream we make the Grand Final and I’m crying a lot.”

I watch the first half of the game with Louise and three of her friends, including her flatmate, Kathryn Cowe, 29, who she’s known since they studied midwifery together in Glasgow, and who signed up on Sunday as a Richmond Football Club member. “Last year she was on the verge of becoming a Bombers fan because she liked the colours,” explains Lou. “But then she discovered Jack Riewoldt and became a Tiger.”

What does she like about Jack? “He’s ginger.”

**

In Melbourne’s coldest day in seven years – the temperature as miserly as the half-time score (our four goals, their two) – Sunday’s game was one to warm Tiger hearts. For the first time this season, our team beat a mob higher than us on the ladder. They tackled with a ferocity that stirred the soul. They kept the opposition to a parsimonious eight goals. They broke Ross Lyon’s 10-game spell he’d cast on Richmond – the teams he’s coached having never before lost to us.

The tables, they’re beginning to turn.

Not that Sunday’s game, played in deceptive wind and under bright sun and cool shade, looked for any length a certainty. For much of the second quarter, it seemed a flashback to the Essendon match; our players going sideways and backwards to move the ball forward. It’s a high-skill, high-possession tactic that for Richmond fans, on a day like this, with memories like that, might have brought on cold sweats.

Then, with 11 minutes left in the last quarter – the Tigers up by eight points, the game in the balance – Brett Deledio outmarked his day’s shadow, Ryan Crowley, on the defensive side of wing. Here was a turning point. This one-on-one contest perhaps encapsulated the day. It may well have swayed the result, and could yet define a season.

Two players stood together, in a rare moment of space, each of them club Best and Fairest recipients, each 188cm tall, weighing about the same and, on this day, destined to be together in a match-up the whole crowd talked about. The ball was going Fremantle’s way; the two players locked arms, and held their feet, and at the last moment, our man Deledio slipped the contest, flung out his left mitt, and clutched the mark. Crowley smiled in disbelief.

Bravo Brett Deledio! If it were a game won by inches, then here we won the contest by an arm’s length.

**

As Louise tells it, when she arrived in Melbourne she knew nothing about our home-grown game, so picked a team based purely on its initials – RFC – matching those of her beloved Rangers. She went to a Richmond game last year and by Round 10, after our thrilling win against St Kilda at Etihad Stadium, was hooked. “I came home hoarse that night and I knew it was a matter of life or death,” she says. “I went alone, as my friends were busy, and ended up sitting with a group of Tigers of old, all who wanted to set me up with their nephews or sons. I wore my colours, I belonged, I was welcome.”

Before the bounce, we talk about Rangers and Celtic, about the deep-rooted rivalry between these Old Firm clubs, about the experience of being in an Australian crowd, and about what Richmond player she likes best. “I will say ‘Cotch’,” she says. “And it’s not just because he’s gorgeous.”

I ask how long she intends to stay in Melbourne, and she says: “Until Richmond win a flag or AC/DC tour. I might be here for a while.”

**

No game is played in isolation, with each season being the sum of its parts. In the second half on Sunday, it looked as if the previous game’s win against Gold Coast in Cairns was worth more than just the four points. Collingwood lost to Gold Coast on the Saturday night, putting Round 17’s narrow win in perspective. If it’s true that in the past, Richmond has found many ways to lose a game of football, now it seems the Tigers are finding new ways to win.

We won ugly in Cairns, in difficult conditions, in a dour contest. Each win is a learned experience; for the players and us supporters. We learned against Gold Coast how to win a tight and low-scoring contest, played in confined spaces, in difficult circumstances.

Fast-forward to Sunday afternoon, and even on the expanses of the MCG, here was a tight and low-scoring affair, played in congestion, on an eerily cold day. It was lock-down football, a physical contest – the ‘total football’ that teams coached by Ross Lyon are wont to play.

For this reason, the day’s highlight was a passage of play seven minutes into the third quarter, initiated by Matthew White and finished with a Dustin Martin goal. It came in the context of the second quarter, when Richmond had the weight of possession, but used it mostly to go sideways or backwards, playing safe football that for us supporters looked full of peril.

Apart from several notable tackles, one of the few highlights of the second term was Matty White’s roving snap on his left foot for a goal – the only from either team for the quarter. It was great to see Matty White – especially after his late-game heroics against the Dockers in the heartbreaking one-point loss in Perth – get a good run at it in his 100^th game, and kick a goal when they were at such a premium.

Early in the third quarter, in blunt sunlight on the Great Southern Stand wing, he then did something that seemed improbable. He took the game on. He rolled the dice, trusting his chances. Corralled on the boundary, deep on the defensive side of wing, ‘Whitey’ handballed around Garrick Ibbotson, into space before him, backing his pace to win the ball back.

His intention was clear. That it didn’t work entirely to script did not matter. A flukey bounce ensured Richmond maintained possession, scooped up by Shane Edwards, who started a daisy-chain of handballs (to Vlastuin, to Grigg, back to White, to Martin) that ended with a rousing team goal.

It seemed the day’s most fluent ball movement, this passage of run-and-carry-and-handball tight against the boundary, and it was reminiscent of the week before in Cairns, playing to the conditions and hugging the wing. If a game of football is a puzzle, my team looks to have found new ways of unlocking it.

**

In the fresh north wind, in the cold air, Tiger fans on this day could believe in the extraordinary. Halfway through the first quarter, when Jack Riewoldt smothered Lee Spurr’s kick, to dob a goal from inside the centre square, anything seemed possible. In all my years watching Richmond, I cannot remember a Tiger’s goal like this – kicked from so far out, with the entire 50-metre arc devoid of players. It were as if it were an empty stage, waiting for Jack’s perfect drama.

The other individual highlight of the day’s undertaking was, of course, Trent Cotchin’s long-range effort after the three-quarter time siren (a ‘captain’s goal’, his fourth for the season, so pleasing for him). 

But there was also Tyrone Vickery’s overhead marking and his long, incisive handballs; the composure and grit of Chris Newman and Ricky Petterd in defence; Ivan Maric’s mark and quick hands to Deledio for a goal; Shane Edwards’ crumbing off the pack for another; Jake King’s cameo goal on his left; Nick Vlastuin’s courage over the ball; ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s bullocking work in the packs; and just about everything Alex Rance did all afternoon.

Each football team needs a finely-balanced mix of players of different ages, and body shapes and sizes, and skills sets. And, each football team also needs the right mix of personalities; character traits from the introverted to the extroverted, the bombastic to the cautious, whereby each player learns something from another, with the group working in cohesion – in simpatico – to achieve a group task.

Seeing the Roar Vision documentaries posted on the Richmond Football Club website, it would seem Alex Rance is the team’s court jester. He is a clown of the group, the practical joker – light-hearted in his demeanour, confident in his abilities, as expressed by his outgoing personality.

But when Alex Rance steps across the white line on match day, his body language transforms. All that energy is focused towards the contest. None could doubt his courage. When he’s playing at his best – as he has done for the past few weeks – he looks one of the most redoubtable full-backs going around. He’s a study in desperation.

On Sunday, he took a staggering 16 marks. Behind ‘Cotch’, he was the second-highest possession winner on the ground. He stood steadfast in defence, valiant with his spoils, and adding a memorable exclamation mark to a passage of play midway through the second quarter. Brandon Ellis collared Tendai Mzungu in a tackle, then Chris Newman clawed Matthew de Boer, then finally our ‘Trossman’ mauled an unsuspecting David Mundy to win a free kick.

The crowd roared in appreciation. Our backline, it could take a bow.  

**

This parochial game of ours, with its own rules, idiom, iconography and curiosities, it is open to all. The other week, for instance, I met up with Natalia Garcia, 35, from Colombia, who’s lived in Melbourne for five years and through her partner (“He was born in Richmond, he’s seen five premierships”) has adopted the Tigers. She’s a member, attends every game in Melbourne, and barracks with a passion the likes of which I’ve rarely seen before. At the game, she is a knot of nervous energy.

And, on Sunday, I met Andy Crawford, 39, an Englishman from Plymouth, who moved into an empty house on the river flats of Richmond on the day Ben Cousins arrived at Tigerland. He remembers it well; he ventured to a service station on Punt Road to buy milk, and was dumfounded by the presence of Tiger supporters and TV cameras watching him train. “I live in Richmond, I drink at a Richmond pub, and I’m a great believer in where you live is who you barrack for,” he says.

“When I arrived in Australia, I was told that to pick a team you have to find out who won in the year of your birth,” he says. “I was born in 1973. That makes me a Tiger.”

**

This Sunday, our Tigers play in Sydney and I will be there. For all others going to the game, a reminder that the Sydney Tigers Supporter Group is holding a pre-game function at the nearby Paddington RSL, where Mark ‘Choco’ Williams will be a guest speaker. Doors open at 12.30pm. For details, see www.sydneytigers.org.au.

For the best part of 14 years, I lived north of the so-called ‘Barassi Line’, and was at the SCG in 2004 when the Tigers last beat the Swans in Sydney, with Matthew Richardson, in greasy conditions, kicking seven of the team’s 10 goals. He was unstoppable that day. I will never forget it. I drank afterwards at every pub on the way home, not wanting the moment to end.

This ground, for ‘Richo’ and Richmond supporters, must hold bitter-sweet memories. It was at the SCG where Richardson, in 1995, hurt his left knee before cannoning into the boundary fence, missing the rest of the season and the Tigers’ finals push. And, it was at this ground in early 2009, where Richardson kicked what would prove to be his 800^th and last career goal – a milestone enshrining him in the pantheon of legends, reached by only 10 other players in VFL/AFL history.

He tore his hamstring badly later in the game, never to play again.

Here is our season of putting demons to rest, of banishing curses, of putting history to bed. This emerging team of ours looks to be creating its own stories, its own legends to pass on to future generations. Now, this Sunday, they come up against the reigning premiers, in the winter gloaming, as the final act of the sixth-last round. The finishing post is in sight.

Expect the unexpected. My hope is that they put these Swans to the sword. I hope this game is a rude punctuation to the weekend of football. I hope these Tigers return to Melbourne in stilled darkness on Sunday night, to awake on Monday morning to a commotion. I want the whole city to talk about them. Our Tigers, they’ve mauled the premiers. They’re on the prowl. There’s no stopping what they might do.

Tiger tiger, burning bright.

dugaldjellie@gmail.com

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