Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
MIKE PERRY, 71, CARNEGIE
Favourite all-time player:
Jack Dyer - “He was an icon when I arrived. I got to know him after I finished. He was so resilient, over 300 games and crook knees. A terrific bloke, a really funny man.”
Favourite current player:
Dustin Martin - “When he’s on song, he’s so fearless and hard and tough at the ball. He’s a bit like an old-style footballer, a bit of bash and crash. I’m also a big fan of Ivan Maric. He does so much hard work around the place.”
When Mike Perry arrived at Richmond in 1964 as a 20-year-old footballer, fresh from dual best-and-fairests playing in the ruck for Old Scotch in the amateurs, he wasn’t truly a Tiger. His father, military brass who was commanding officer at the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia, was a Melbourne man, and his mother’s side all supported Geelong.
“I probably leant toward Geelong,” he says. “Both those teams won premierships in the years before I joined Richmond, who struggled down the ladder.”
But when Perry left Tigerland in the early 1970s he was Richmond through-and-through. He had played with many of the great names in the club’s history; was coached by Len Smith (“the father of modern football”) and Richmond Immortal, Tommy Hafey; and he had a starring role in the club’s break-through 1967 Grand Final win.
Then again “Big Red”, as he was affectionately known, has never really left Richmond.
Nowadays he’s president of the Former Players and Officials Association, is regularly master of ceremonies at Tommy Hafey Club functions, and certainly he’ll be at the club’s Homecoming gala on Saturday week. And oh, yes, he’s never far away when Richmond play, barracking hard for the club he once proudly represented.
Coach and player: Mike with a portrait of his 1967 premiership coach, at a Tommy Hafey Club function held last year in the final days of the great man's life.
“I don’t miss many home games,” he says. “I go along often with my brother and son, and his grandsons. They’re all mad Tigers.”
So from a little Cat, the former 191cm premiership centre-half-back who played 53 senior games from 1965 to 1969, was scrubbed-out of the 1969 Grand Final in controversial circumstances, won a Richmond reserves pennant in 1971, has become something bigger still. He’s a Tiger. He barracks for the Tigers. His heart skips a beat for the Tigers. And he always was a bit of a Tiger.
“There were some good larrikins in that team of 67 and I was one of them,” says Perry, who with his post-game Saturday night celebrations never truly endeared himself to Hafey’s strict regimes. “TJ, Mike Patterson, Freddy Swift, Graham Burgin, Dick Clay. And Alan Richardson, Matthew’s old man, he was also one of the larrikins.”
Sitting on a wooden bench high in the old Jack Dyer Grand Stand by Punt Road Oval, Perry recalls his playing days when he earned about $70 a game (“money didn’t really come into it”), and the team gathered for a steak and egg breakfast cook-up in the old social club before walking across to play at the MCG.
“The club moved its games to the G the year I arrived, so I never played on Punt Road Oval,” he says. “All the grounds back then were mud heaps. Every ground you played on – Arden Street, Brunswick Street, Glenferrie Oval, Windy Hill – had a cricket pitch in the middle. At least at the G the mud was only in the centre.”
When Perry arrived at Richmond, the Tigers had finished 9th, hadn’t played in the finals for 17 years, and were mired in mediocrity. “Until Graeme Richmond arrived [in 1962], Richmond weren’t terribly good recruiters. I was a pretty good schoolboy footballer at Scotch College and lived in Richmond’s zone, but nobody came knocking. They were running around the bush picking up players, but I don’t think they targeted local boys, the city kids.”
Winners are grinners: Perry in his playing days in the '60s with (from left), Graham Burgin, Mike Perry, Geoff Strang and Roger Dean.
After two stand-out seasons in the VAFA, an invitation to Tigerland came Mike’s way and the rest, as they say, is history. Memories of his playing days are mostly fond – the camaraderie, the coaching of Len Smith and Hafey (“He kept you on your toes”), and the ultimate success of a young playing group in 1967, ending a 24-year premiership drought (“We just came from nowhere, we weren’t household names at the time”).
Honour and glory came also from playing with and against some of the greatest footballers of an era. In the 1967 Grand Final alone, the playing lists include Kevin Bartlett, Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer, Royce Hart, Doug Wade, Francis Bourke, Billy Goggin, Dick Clay, John Northey and Gareth Andrews.
Billy Barrot, Richmond’s bustling centre man, in Mike’s eyes was his standout contemporary. “He was a wonderful player. He basically won two flags for us, in 1967 and 1969.”
But with the highs, came also lows. Most notably, a first and only visit to the VFL tribunal, after playing Ted Whitten’s lowly Footscray in the last round of the 1969 season. “I was playing really good football that year, probably my best football,” he recounts. “I was playing a lot in the ruck, mainly because up against Nicholls and Farmer [the former great Carlton and Geelong ruckmen], I could match it with them in strength.”
But after playing seven of the last nine games of the season (six wins and one loss, to Essendon), and kicking all six of his career goals, in the final round he retaliated to Bulldog ruckman, Tad Joniec. The field umpire didn’t see the incident, and the tribunal offered no clemency. “It was a love tap, if anything,” says Perry. “There are a few bitter memories about what happened.”
We're from Tigerland: Mike Perry in the early 1960s learning the club's new theme song with (from left) Neville Crowe, Kevin Smith, Mike Perry, John Ronaldson.
Four weeks was the resultant penalty, consigning Perry to the sidelines for Richmond’s 1969 Grand Final triumph over Carlton. It also proved the last game of his league career. He injured badly a knee in 1970, and played reserves football in 1971 before being delisted.
“It was a disappointing way to finish up, but you can’t always write your own ending.”
As with most footballers of his time, restricted by the Victorian Football League’s Coulter Law which imposed a uniform maximum individual player wage on all clubs, Perry left the VFL for more lucrative playing ovals. At first it was a year at Dandenong in the VFA (“I was getting more than anybody was at Richmond”), then a stint as player-coach at Portland in the Western Border League. He returned to Melbourne to captain-coach Power House, and then Old Geelong, in the amateurs, before hanging up his boots at the ripe age of 40.
“The love of football kept me going. And every club needs a ruckman, there was always someone asking.”
Back at Punt Road the other week, midweek on a training day, with his old team playing the sort of inspired football that reminds him of Richmond’s glory year of 1967 – a team with their tails up, playing for each other, each man doing his job – Perry has pangs of nostalgia.
“It’s a big part of my life, this club,” he says. “I had eight years here. Especially when you win a flag, you’ve got that bond that’s lifelong. We have a premiership reunion every year in grand final week and we get a terrific turn up. It’s a real sense of togetherness.”
“I’ve been associated with a lot of footy clubs over the years,” says Perry. “But this is the one I always come back to.”
Go Tiges!
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If you would like to nominate a Richmond fan who has a story to tell about their barracking please email Dugald Jellie with details: dugaldjellie@gmail.com
