“The Royce Hart Story”, published in 1970, caused quite a stir in football circles at the time due to the forthright comments of its author, the brilliant Richmond centre half-forward.

Hart had just completed his third season of VFL football with the Tigers when he wrote the book, which today has become something of a sporting collector’s item.

Most of the publicity surrounding the book at the time revolved around Royce Desmond naming himself at centre half-forward in his “perfect side.” He copped some flak for being so bold and brash to do that at age 21, with only three years’ experience at the game’s highest level. 

It didn't take long, however, for Hart to silence his knockers. By 1972, he was Richmond's captain and, by the end of the 1974 season, he had led the Tigers in superb style to back-to-back premierships.

When he retired midway through the 1977 season, he had 187 games, 369 goals, four premierships and two Best and Fairests to his credit, plus the acclamation of the football world as one of the greatest players in the game’s history.

In 1996, Hart was inducted into the AFL's Hall of Fame. Three years later, he was named at centre half-forward in Richmond's Team of the Century. On the eve of the 2002 season, he became one of 24 inaugural inductees into the Tigers Hall of Fame.  Then, in March 2008, Hart received Tigerland’s greatest individual accolade, when he was elevated to ‘Immortal’ status.  

Fair to say, therefore, that Royce has more than justified his place in his own best-ever team. Perhaps he had foreseen his own fame - just as he'd accurately foreshadowed, in The Royce Hart Story, so many of the changes that would take place in league football over the years.

It’s amazing how many of Royce's suggested improvements to the competition have taken place.

Here’s an example . . .

• “If the game is to get any bigger it will need more money ploughed into it. And the only way to get that money is to think big, act big and be big - which means Professionalism with a capital ‘P’.

• “To start with, you need crowds. We must attract the paying customers and pack them in by serving up a better standard of play - and more of it. Games should be played midweek, interstate - even in the bush - and we should develop a promotion and relegation system and a national league.
• “Following the British soccer system, we should have a national league. Over there, a team from Manchester or Liverpool travels to London for matches. Here, two teams from Perth could fly to Adelaide and Melbourne and vice versa. In this modern jet age, it would only take a couple of hours flying time between each capital city. Teams could arrive on Thursday, have a couple of training runs and play on Saturday. Victoria would lose its stranglehold on football supremacy, but the whole of Australia would reap the benefit. It would be good for the sport and we would get more even competition rather than the one-sided interstate exhibitions that fans now have to put up with.

• “Professionalism would improve playing standards. Nowadays clubs only train a few days a week during the season, with only a sprinkling of summer preparations. At Richmond, we train three nights a week and on Sunday mornings, a program not far removed from professionalism. If we were pro, we would be able to train every day and still have plenty of time to discuss tactics.

• “At training camp we could develop our skills. Richmond have just started one at Torquay, a holiday resort on the Bellarine Peninsula, 60 miles from Melbourne. A professional team could make better use of such facilities, living together for three or four days to do nothing but talk, eat and sleep football. Full-time coaches would be essential with, perhaps, a head trainer. At present a League coach is almost full-time. He would just have to give away his job and put in a couple of extra hours. Part of his time would be devoted to keeping a comprehensive record of every player, a detailed file of every kick, injury or mistake in his career. These cards could then be fed into a computer to discover faults. Even though at Richmond we do study each player individually, a part-time coach, with perhaps 50 players under his care, cannot have sufficient time to discover every weakness in the side. And we don't see enough of our teammates to uncover bad points. But if we were together throughout the week, flaws in our game would soon show up.

• “With professionalism we could, perhaps, employ our own cameraman to shoot film of specific players to show up their weakness. This could be projected in slow motion while the coach pointed out where he went wrong.

• “I think a top team should have at least four coaches - one each for gymnasium, sprinting, kicking and general play.

• “Gambling plays a big part in the promotion of any sport. Look what the TAB has done for racing, trotting and the dogs. Imagine what it could do for football. Victoria has a far too parochial outlook on football gambling. I know some people say that it would open up more vices for the public, but already offices and factories run their own football pools, and someone goes around with a tipping card at 20 cents a go. This ‘under-the-table’ money could be ploughed back into the game if only the Government could see the light.

• “Our game has a big following and more effort should be made by the clubs and the League to channel the funds from the fans into the game, and a big percentage of it into the players' pay packets. Australian Rules has one of the biggest followings of any sport in the world and it seems to me there is far too much money going under the table. It should be ploughed back into the clubs and into the League.

• “A good player is worth his weight in gold. Top players should receive $200 a week (okay, allow a little for inflation down the years). A full-time footballer still has to support his wife and family, and if he is going to be interstate and in the country regularly, he needs a fair bit to compensate him. Payment should be on a sliding scale. Those at the top should naturally be paid the most. Obviously a captain with 10 years service to the club should get more than a first-year recruit. Every player should be on a contract, just like any other professional performer. It should be for a maximum of three years, because beyond this period you could not predict what a chap's form would be.

• “The interchange of players between states would even up competition. Bigger crowds would be attracted to matches in hitherto less footy-minded states because they would be seeing the cream of Australian Football in action.

• “I want to see football mature into a full-time, well-paid professional occupation.”

Of course, not all the book was devoted to Royce's views on future changes to the competition. He also wrote about his formative football years in Tasmania; his early days at Tigerland; the 1967 and '69 Grand Final triumphs; touring with the Australian team, the Galahs, who took on Ireland in a ground-breaking Gaelic international series; the day he met the Queen; life in the Army; how to succeed at the top level; and legendary Richmond coach, Tommy Hafey.

His thoughts on Hafey make for fascinating reading. In part, this is what he wrote about the man, who at the time was a dual Tiger premiership coach, and went on to become a four-time premiership coach . . .

“Tom Hafey is a quiet man who gets results. Meek in manner, as a coach he has no peer. Hafey is a keen boxing fan and he likes us to play our games as if we were prize fighters . . . go the full distance. He compares the last quarter to the last round of a fight. It's do or die and he expects us to get the pat on the bell. A boxer has always ‘had it’ when he has finished his bout and this is the way Hafey expects his team to come in after a game - exhausted.

“Training with the human dynamo is murder! As a matter of fact, in pre-season cross-country runs we don't see much of him - he is always way out in front. Tom runs five or six miles along the beach every morning, then goes for a swim (more than 40 years later, that's still his daily routine, along with a plethora of push-ups!). Consequently, when we start training, he is so fit he can outrun almost any player in the club.

“It is not his style, but his fanatical will-to-win. Tom's attitude has won the confidence of the Tigers. We will do anything for him. The fact that he speaks our language makes all the difference. Rather than say anything behind your back, he will come right out and tell you man to man. He is very straightforward. What makes Tom Hafey better than any other coach is not so much his skill at football, but his ability to bring a player to his peak. He is like a motor mechanic working on an engine; he gets it going smoothly and everything runs well by the end of the season.

“Confidence is the key to Hafey's success. This is why he's the only coach for me. He has so much confidence in his players. Before the 1967 Grand Final, Tom said: “There's no known way Richmond can be beaten”! This was contrary to the views of all the critics who said that a young side with no finals experience could never win. But Tom had so much faith in us that we didn't dare let him down.”

Next time you're in one of those second-hand sporting bookshops, or a collectables’ establishment, check to see if they've got a copy of The Royce Hart Story.

It's still a darn good read, four decades on . . .