To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Tigers’ 1980 premiership, Richmond Media is transporting Yellow and Black barrackers back in time throughout 2020 to follow the Punt Road path to that fantastic flag triumph. Today, we take a look at ‘The Age’ football writer Trevor Grant’s review of Richmond’s 1980 qualifying final clash with Carlton at VFL Park, which took place on Saturday, September 6, before a crowd of 59,014.

“Intense rage can be the most precious additive to a football team’s impetus if it is carefully manipulated to advantage. There can be no better example than Carlton’s revival after Collingwood’s Stan Magro felled captain-coach Alex Jesaulenko on his own turf last year.

It gave a side, which looked on the way to a beating, a cause for which to fight. The day the Blues let the dust settle, and after some well-chosen words from a calculating coaching panel, channelled their emotions towards victory.

But if the anger is allowed to run out of control, even briefly, it can mean trouble. It was for Carlton in Saturday’s qualifying final against Richmond at VFL Park.

Just for a few minutes new boss Peter Jones, who has closer ties with his players than most other VFL coaches, forgot his role as the semi-detached team co-ordinator and blew his stack at what he believed to be Richmond’s unfair use of brute force against his smaller players Ken Sheldon and Rod Ashman.

As he ran out to address his players, who were 26 points down, at quarter-time, he continually screamed and gestured wildly at the Richmond gathering. He continued the abuse as he left the ground, and his opposition coach Tony Jewell foolishly charged at him.

The crowd of 59,000 was stunned into an eerie silence; almost disbelieving what they had just seen. The two men who are supposed to be the disciplinarians of their respective sides having a stand-up shoving match. And having to be dragged off each other by a team of officials.

Jones would vehemently deny this but in that frame of mind he was vulnerable – and there was an example soon after his distasteful incident which suggested that fury had momentarily brought confusion to the Carlton camp.

Early in the second quarter ruckman Warren Jones strained his hamstring and signalled that he wanted to depart from the ground. Suddenly there was panic.

As Jones, limping and scratching his head in confusion, left the action and moved towards the boundary line, Carlton supporters looked on in horror at the thought of being left with 17 men. The coach had just taken Ashman out of the game and Sheldon was too sick to return after colliding with Richmond’s Graeme Landy.

The runner finally got to Jones and ordered him back into the play until Ashman could be recalled a minute or so later. As all this was going on Richmond went on building its lead. The five goals the Tigers kicked in this second quarter ended any chance of a Carlton victory.

The Tigers, in this mood, are a match for any side, and even before the Jones-Jewell clash, they had Carlton’s measure. This was mainly because of three players – ruckman Mark Lee, centreman Geoff Raines and VFL record-breaking half-forward Kevin Bartlett.

Throughout the day, Lee won the knock-outs, Raines won the loose ball, Bartlett won the goalkicking and Carlton lost the game.

Bartlett’s rehearsal for his record 337^th game began in his backyard on Saturday morning. As he did when he broke Jack Dyer’s club record of 310 games last year, Bartlett had breakfast in bed and then went out for a warm-up kick with his three young children.

He felt extra sharp because he’d been to bed the night before at 9.30 p.m. “I’ve never been to bed that early since I was a kid on Christmas eve,” said Bartlett, who kicked six goals.

We all knew how well he felt at the nine-minute mark of the first quarter. He steamed away to take a mark, turned and faced the goals 50 metres out on the boundary line and shot it through for his team’s first goal.

By quarter-time he had kicked 3.2, given rover Robert Wiley a goal through a handball and given his opponent Wayne Harmes the run-around.

Harmes was forced to endure the embarrassment until Alex Marcou took over at half-time. Another couple of goals to “Hungry” and Ashman replaced Marcou in the toughest job on the ground.

Life was no easier for Harmes when he left Bartlett’s side. His next post was to try to subdue the dominance Geoff Raines had set up in the centre. The barrel-chested Blue had as much success there as he had in the first half.

Raines’s superb ability to read the ball’s movement at the centre bounces consistently outwitted his opponents. Even when Mark Lee lost the knock-out, Raines seemed to spring into the right position immediately and take off with the ball.

The biggest attraction of his game, though, is that he thinks carefully about placement before he kicks the ball and then is able to deliver it properly. This puts him in a small bracket of VFL footballers these days.

Peter Jones tried everything to cut off this lifeline to the Richmond forwards. But with Raines, and Bartlett, and Wiley and Weightman all so effective, even if he had been able to plug one leak, another would have cropped up somewhere else.

All Carlton could do was simply hope that it was one of those days that a top side sees very seldom and be thankful that it has the double chance.

Probably the most striking evidence that Carlton was on a day-off came late in the third quarter when it trailed by 10 goals. The Tigers had kicked a point and Blues full-back Geoff Southby, who would be the steadiest player at Carlton in the past decade, tried a gentle 20-metre pass at the kick-off. It missed the target by 15 metres and went out on the full.

That was the sign which ironically gave Carlton the comforting reassurance that this was simply too bad to be true form. A bad sign for Collingwood.” 

Match details

Richmond         6.3       11.4     16.7     18.8 (116)
Carlton             2.1       5.5       5.8       10.14 (74)

Goals – Richmond: Bartlett 6, Weightman 4, Wiley 2, Jess 2, Roach, Wood, Bourke, Scrimshaw.
Best – Richmond: Raines, Bartlett, Wiley, Weightman, Lee, Malthouse.

Goals – Carlton: Catoggio 2, Klomp 2, Armstrong, Ashman, McConville, Marcou, Harmes, McKay.
Best – Carlton: Austin, Southby, Klomp, Armstrong.