Football is family; it is a community of strangers, a company of hope. That’s what I’ve learnt this season, writing about what it means to be a Tiger, and receiving much correspondence from readers. Is there any other feeling we have in our everyday lives quite like when our football team wins, or loses? These emotions transcend who we are, and are shared with others, together in the crowd. We are never alone watching a game. Tiger love is all around us.
My last match report, for instance, concluded with an observation about ‘Dusty’ grabbing his jumper after kicking a goal late in the last quarter in the game against Adelaide. “You just made me grab my jumper!” emailed James Taylor, in response.
Captain Adam Dobney, about whom I wrote in an earlier report, emailed again from Afghanistan: “The few guys watching with me went nuts at that point – we loved it. Really espoused the team-first mentality that’s growing week-by-week at the club.”
Peter Ryan, in Mount Gambier, wrote: “Loved it. Supporters are forever – players and coaches are transient. Satisfaction lies in the historical contemplation of success, past and future. The Tiger team of 2013 is closing the gap. See you at the ‘G in September.”
Matt Keegan, 34, the son of a Nullawarre diary farmer, who lives in Warrnambool, emailed: “I bawled my eyes out during the song after winning against the Crows, as I just wish my late father could have seen it. He died six years ago. He just loved the Tigers, and the long hours of solitude, milking cows, gave him a lot of time to think about them, I suppose.”
On that day, at that game, Dustin Martin’s emotive footnote was a simple gesture seen by Tigers in all parts of the world – readily understood, and shared among others who hold the belief. Soon after the game, I received a tweet from ‘Richard’, who I knew only as @TigerInAdelaide. “I’m going to try and go south of the border for the match this Saturday,” he wrote. “Catch up at the game?”
My partner was expecting our second child on the day the Tigers played against the Bulldogs, but match-day came, with no sign of baby. Text messages were sent, and on the Saturday night, three minutes before the bounce, I found myself on the third tier at Etihad Stadium, higher than the goal posts - in aisle 45, seat F – meeting Richard Miles, 26, from Myrtle Bank in Adelaide, a bloke who stands six foot-five, who played in the ruck for the Adelaide Lutheran FC (“the last of the church league clubs”), is the youngest of four siblings sired by a father who grew up following Royce Hart and Kevin Bartlett (“Richmond is in the blood”), and who that afternoon had flown across for the game and otherwise would have watched it alone. We shook hands, exchanged greetings. The ball bounced, Ivan Maric’s early touches were assured and deft, and I knew we were in for a marvellous night.
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I have only a few of the many stories other Tigers have shared with me. Recently I received a message from Fran Doughton, a member of the Sydney Tigers Committee, who wrote: “As a new mum (our daughter is nearly four weeks old) we haven’t been able to get to Melbourne or our local Sydney pub for any games this year, so I am missing my footy fix and just mixing with like-minded passionate Tigers . . .”
Fran attached a photo of Hattie (already a Richmond FC member) to her email, which I am glad to share among the Tiger extended family.
Fran would like it also known that at 1.30pm on Sunday, July 28, the Sydney Richmond Tigers will host a pre-game function at the Paddington RSL (a five-minute walk to the SCG). For ticket details see www.sydneytigers.org.au. Michael ‘Disco’ Roach and Dale ‘The Flea’ Weightman will be there, and a Tiger assistant coach will preview the clash with the Swans. For what it’s worth, I’ll be there, too, keen to meet baby Hattie and other Sydney-based Richmond supporters.
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A few weeks ago I received a long email from Cameron Howard, 15, who, among other things, said this: “I feel the mutual respect that exists between Richmond supporters, and there is nothing better than having a footy conversation with a fellow Tiger on the train home, or with the person next to you, or behind you at the game. It is the true Tiger spirit that unites us all.”
Another email arrived that week from Matthew Frost, living in London for the past 15 years, who grew up in Monbulk in the Dandenong Ranges, playing junior football against Damien Hardwick at Upwey. “He was a handy player, and was very stylish, and had amazing skills, even in the under 11s,” recalls Matthew. “He only really turned into a hard-nut player when he played in the VFA and then, obviously, was a bit late to it, so he certainly worked hard to become a dual premiership AFL player. What readers mightn’t know is that Upwey are also the Tigers, and play in Yellow and Black, and so he was a Tiger before most of the current Tiger cubs were even born.”
As with Hardwick, Matthew was born in 1972, into an era when Richmond reigned, the youngest of four children to a Tiger. “My father John is a great supporter and still a member, although he’s not always able to afford it,” wrote Matthew. “My best gift to him was paying for his membership from afar on a couple of occasions. He’s a proud and courageous man. This is something he loves. I don’t want him to miss out on being part of it.”
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At the away game against the Western Bulldogs I introduce myself to a man sitting alone and beside me. His name is Alan Stewart, he’s 41, was born in Echuca, but lives now in Preston and works as a security guard, doing eight-hour shifts stationed mostly at the public housing estate towers in North Richmond.
At half-time at that game, I introduce myself also to the two women sitting behind me. One, Maggie Lam, 24, is a Vietnamese-Chinese Australian, who lives in St Albans, is doing a PhD at Melbourne University in biomedical research, blogs about food (see theycallmemaggie.tumblr.com) and on this night wears a Bulldogs scarf. Her friend, Emily Chuon, also 24, who lives in Carnegie and works in marketing, is warmed by a Tigers scarf. The two met at school, at Mac. Robertson Girls’ High.
I ask Emily how she came to barrack for Richmond and she says her parents, when they arrived in this city in 1980 (Richmond’s last premiership year) as refugees from Cambodia sponsored by a Melbourne family, their first home was a flat in the public housing towers in North Richmond. “My family adopted Richmond,” she says. “My mother always says, ‘It doesn’t matter who you date, or who you marry, just so long as they are Richmond’.”
**
A few weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, I went looking for a match and found one near a bend in the Yarra in Clifton Hill. A reader of this blog had contacted me, and I had learned about his son, Otto, who played in one of Fitzroy Junior Football Club’s three under-14 sides; this one coached by George McEncroe, a stand-up comedian, who rouses her troops at half-time with humour. A good joke can lift a team. Football is, after all, a funny game.
For two hours on this Sunday morning, I was consumed by a game and its spectacle. I met a goal umpire, who otherwise is a secondary school drama teacher. And a trainer, Fiona McGlade, a medical doctor specialising in Aboriginal health, who’s done about every job at the club (“most weekends in winter I come home smelling of sausage fat”). And I met Mick Creati, from Coburg, whose son is playing in the opposition Fitzroy team, and who for now stands outside the clubhouse wearing a woollen Richmond jumper and plays the Star Wars theme on a trumpet.
Whenever his son’s team kicks a goal, he plays a tune. A lot of tunes are played that Sunday morning.
Like probably all Richmond fans, who were at the MCG on winter’s last Sunday in 1996, to watch Fitzroy play its last game in Melbourne, I find it impossible not to be fond of the old Roy Boys. Richmond won the game in a rout (28. 19. 187 to 5. 6. 37), but few victories come so hollow. A Melbourne football tradition as old almost as the game itself was lost that day.
After the siren, the two teams gathered in the middle of the MCG in fading light. I recall seeing a Fitzroy fan burn the club’s flag in a gesture of lost dreams. The Fitzroy theme song was played as its players ran a last lap, and all us Richmond supporters stood in unison and support. There but for the grace of God go I. We had only imagined what it was like to lose a club, to lose such hope.
One of my heroes of that Richmond team of ’96 was Michael Gale, older brother of Brendon, the current Richmond CEO. After moving from Tasmania, he played 105 games for Fitzroy, before joining the Tigers.
Another of my favourite players of that time was Paul Broderick, who played 93 games at Fitzroy, before his 169 games for Richmond. Paul Broderick comes from the Western District town of Camperdown, in the heart of the old Fitzroy recruiting zone, and was born the same year as I, and a cousin of mine, David Hay, who is two days older. David went to a one-teacher school in Weerite, in dairy country that’s a good torpedo punt downwind of Camperdown.
David was a handy footballer in his own right, and he played with Paul, and says he was a small kid who could kick further than all others. He remembers Paul’s father coaching his junior team, walking around the deep clods of the picturesque Leura Oval in gumboots. On school holidays, I would watch David play.
All these years later, and on this Sunday morning at an oval in Clifton Hill, there is Paul Broderick. He’s coach of Fitzroy Junior Football Club’s U14 Gold team, playing next against Park Orchards, and undefeated. His son Josh plays in the team. It’s a family affair.
**
Two weeks ago, my partner gave birth to a boy, and our lives never again will be the same. On the night he was born, I sent a text message with an attached photo to an immediate circle of family and friends. It read: “This little beauty was born at 5.46 this arvo. Clare was magnificent. We think his name is Marcus, but TBC. We are both so very happy. Love d xx”.
Our new arrival has a brother, three and a half, who was born during the 2010 pre-season, when Damien Hardwick took charge of the Tigers. Not until late on the last Saturday in autumn, in Round 10, in pouring rain at AAMI Stadium after a game against Port Adelaide, did our first-born first hear his father sing the Richmond song.
Our newest arrival needed wait less than a week, when on the last day of June, Richmond beat St Kilda. His life, it could be blessed.
In the hour after the birth, he had no name. In the lists of boys’ names we had discussed, I had argued the merits of Tyrone, Brandon, Reece and Trent. I had looked them up in a book about baby names borrowed from a library. I particularly liked the idea of having a little Dustin. In those cherished hours after the trauma of labour and birth, there he lay in the hospital, as composed as a cherub, clothed in a jumpsuit, swaddled in wraps, at peace in this new world of his, with his parents looking at him and falling in love all over again.
This little boy of ours, I knew he was a Tiger.
Tiger tiger, burning bright.
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