An open letter to Richmond fans (about Simon Matthews, recycling, and this Saturday afternoon).

None of this is easy to write. Not now, when the bottom’s fallen from the bucket. A legacy has been squandered, an opportunity lost. What we had has gone, and there’s no guarantee it’ll ever come back.

I write this because of a curious convergence of events.

And because a truth need be told.

But first, the good bits. Chris Rees, a collaborator of mine, a friend to many, a man who’s done so much for the cultural capital of Richmond through his art, he called recently. Said he’s coming to the Dreamtime Game. With one of his boys. From Hobart. Wants to catch up.

I’ve not been to a game all year, but if Chris Rees is in town, count me in. Others feel the same way. We are gathering at the Cherry Tree Hotel in Cremorne (beside the walls of the old Rosella factory) from 3pm, this Saturday.

Please join us if you care. The football brings us together.

We are united by the game.

And a few weeks back there was this. Someone called Simon Matthews posted a friend request with me on Facebook. I know of only one Simon Matthews, and he works at the Richmond Football Club, and he might be many things, but he is no friend of mine.

*

I’ve written not a word about football since I was delisted by the club at the end of the 2017 season. Since then, my life has gone through many upheavals. A separation. Work difficulties. Housing uncertainty. It is a path I’ve chosen, in part, because all of us need to be true to ourselves.

Last Sunday night, my brother uploaded to YouTube a little film that the two of us have made (with the help of Chris Rees, who made the title graphic and animation), about the sort of things I get up to. Community work. Trying to help others.

Here’s a link, and a request: before you read any further, please have a look (it’s 5 min and 50 sec) and if you like it, please share it with others. Pass it along. All my best work is grassroots; I’m hoping this is no exception.

*

I’ve turned my back on football this season.

That part of my life is over.

I’m still a fan, but not for now.

And I didn’t intend to write any of this, until I came across a YouTube clip the other night on Footy Classified, of Caroline Wilson talking about Simon Matthews being a mooted successor to Brendon Gale. The preferred internal candidate, et cetera.

The thought of it makes my blood boil. And this is personal.

Caroline Wilson, in her way, endorses Simon Matthews, and of course she does. Theirs is a relationship of mutual benefit. They mix in the same circles, part of football’s inner club, an elite, scratching each other’s backs, looking out for their own.

In those seasons of writing about football, about Richmond, I did so from the outer, and that was fine, and where I needed to be. By myself, in a crowd. I found those in the football media a curious mix. Guarded, protective of their territory. They seemed incurious, even unimaginative, about so many parts of the game – including the crowd.

But not all.

Those who embraced what I tried to do through my writing, an enquiry, were those who I think are most comfortable within themselves, with who they are. Mentors, teachers. They lower the drawbridge, rather than pull it up.

Greg Baum was one of these, unafraid to include others. As was Richard Hinds. And Craig Little at the Guardian, and Paul Amy, and Francis Leach, and Tony Wilson – all of them happy to share, to embrace, include. And Channel 7 commentator Hamish McLachlan, he once mentioned my name in a broadcast, because he’d read something I’d written, and thought it worthy, and was unafraid to acknowledge. He didn’t have to – but did.

You don’t forget these things, these people.

*

My involvement in the Richmond Football Club, for a few seasons, was essentially a labour of love.

I am a fan, a lover of team sport, and a great believer in the power of storytelling. I had moved back to Melbourne, with a young family, and here was an opportunity, a way I could contribute. I was not a football writer, but I’ve played the game, and enjoy learning about the game; and I know about fire in the belly, fear, anxiety, family, community, and am curious always about what it might mean.

As one Richmond fan once said, what I was doing was ‘subversive’. His word, and it was the right one.

I gave voice to the crowd. I told their stories – one at a time, in various ways – to try coax our club to greater deeds. I believe in the power of words; and hoped that it might help our group of young men be the best they could be, giving them a shot at winning the whole thing.

And that’s what they did.

The players are the ones who made it happen, and none can take that from them. Coaches helped. Earlier decisions of recruiters were vital. Bean counters needed to create financial stability. We needed luck on our side (with injuries, with a readymade ruckman becoming available in the draft). A lot of little things needed to go right.

And they did.

For several seasons, culminating in 2017, I wrote as best I could, with all what I had, to try and have that group of young men believe in themselves, in us. I lowered the drawbridge, to let others cross. Some within the club ridiculed me for this. Maybe I made them feel uncomfortable. Maybe I challenged them. What they could see – in the numbers, the engagement – was something that to them was in part a danger. The voice of the crowd.  

For coaches (Dimma and his “four walls”), for administrators like Simon Matthews, I was someone to be wary of. Football clubs pretend to embrace the crowd – talk of the 19^th man, the ‘Tiger army’ – but often it’s no more than a stance. They employ people to engage with the crowd, trying to manage what essentially is uncontrollable; in its size, in all its viewpoints, its variegated nature. They know they need the crowd – its benevolence helps pays the bills, got our club out of financial strife – but they also do all they can to keep it in its place. On the other side of the fence, at arm’s reach, on the outer.  

For those on the inside, people like Caroline Wilson and Simon Matthews, football is an industry.

For people like me, football is community.

*

Some players read what I wrote, I know they did. As did their girlfriends and partners and parents. They contacted me, correspondence was shared, trust was built. And this is so important to any footy club, any organisation: trust.

I travelled out of my way to tell as many stories of Richmond as I could. Richmond people invited me into their lives as I invited them into mine. I gave bits of myself away, so others felt safe to confide in me. I sat at kitchen tables with Richmond people. Rode my bicycle to the homes of Richmond people. Broke bread with them. Joined Richmond people at banner making. Stood in the outer at the Punt Road end with Richmond people. All the while asking questions, giving my time, an acknowledgement.

I made a public spectacle of myself – dressing up, making signs, playing a performative role, the fool! – not because I necessarily wanted to, but because I understood the worth it might offer. To help galvanise a crowd, a club. To get people talking, have them think in other ways. There was a deliberateness in the actions, and oftentimes it was designed to assist the players in subtle and untold ways.

Did it work? We’ll never really know.

I have no interest in corporate writing, or public relations. Truth is what matters, it’s what we carry with us to the end.

My skill was to tell a narrative, to try and harness the power of the crowd.

It was a privilege.

And for a while, it was so much fun.

*

Writer Konrad Marshall was invited into the club – good luck to him – and enjoyed the windfall of a few best-selling books. But ask this, if you’ve read what we wrote: was he generous enough to acknowledge what I was doing – what we were doing – what no club had done before? Did the crowd, and all the stories we entwined, have any role in finding on-field success?

Dimma jumped ship, has got himself a nice pay cheque up north, further feathered his nest, as is his entitlement. He was always cautious of me; that is his nature. Control all the controllables, and all that. But what I know is this: at some point, he embraced the power of storytelling, and there were times when I helped put words in his mouth. Things I’d write, and a day or two later, at a press conference, it was an idea he voiced. I helped give him, and the club, a narrative. Whether he knew this or not is immaterial: it happened.

I sat beside Peggy O’Neal at a luncheon in the week after we won in 2017, as the whole city seemed to celebrate with us, and I asked her how she got involved. Through money, she said. Throw money at a club, and it gets you a place on the table. And one day that got her to the head of the board, and then an AO, and now a plum job as the chancellor of RMIT university, on a salary upward of a million a year.

Lawyers, they’re good at leveraging.

Benny Gale is off to Hobart. Back home, of sorts. A nice gig, and it suits his career trajectory, and I admire Brendon Gale, and he knows it, and I’ve said it, but I’ve always harboured doubts, and sometimes voiced them. It’s frustrated me that he’s never left his seat up high at the game and come and joined the crowd. Once, I invited him to sit with me in the cheer squad. Not so much for me, but for him, for them, for us. I wanted him to experience the football from another perspective, knowing the joy it would give so many who bleed yellow-and-black.

But we are who we are, and this is not who he is.

Also, if it is true he has backed Simon Matthews as his successor, in my reckoning, that’s a misjudgement. I think the club could do much better, I know it could.

But who am I to question? I’m just some mug in the outer.

The music has stopped, the jig is up, and all of us have had a great time, and so many have moved on – are moving on – pockets have been lined with the success, and what so many of us have from those short few years is something money cannot buy.

The fondest of memories.

*

We won a premiership, the drought was over, and I was delisted from the club.

Fair enough.

Once the club got what it wanted, I was surplus to needs.

The club did what corporate entities so often do: socialise losses, capitalise the wins.

It drew itself tighter, made itself smaller, became more insular, erected higher walls – including the total folly of a temporary security fence around Punt Road Oval before the 2018 prelim final – dividing the inner circle, from those on in the outer.

It started to believe its own hype.

But three-out-of-four, that’s nothing to quibble about, that is a fine accomplishment.

But now this, and last weekend. A flogging on Saturday night, followed by a belting at Sandringham on Sunday.

Time has come for change. Nothing stands still in football. But the great disappointment is this: our club was unable to do what Geelong and Sydney have done, find sustained success. It needed to be more imaginative, make bolder decisions, if it wanted a chance to be the first Melbourne-based club to crack that puzzle. Renew at the top.

It could not find a way.

*

Creative types always have been attracted to football clubs – writers, artists, actors, musicians, poets – and football clubs often draw them in, use them for their own purposes, but have rarely wanted to fully embrace what they do. Just ask comedian Danny McGinlay, and how it ended up for him at old Footscray.

The men in suits, the corporate types, they win out.

Simon Matthews is a man in a suit. Football has served him well, as it has his brother, David Matthews, the CEO of GWS. They are part of the AFL ‘boys club’; the inner circle, full of self-interest, lining their own pockets, greasing the connections, yes men, hollow men, good at scratching their own backs.

Please let me know if I am wrong.

Simon Matthews once put me in my place, admonished me, lied to me. He insulted my integrity, my character. In doing so, he also insulted my family, and all who I’d written about, all what I was trying to do, what I believed. He insulted us all. And he did it in a way that I recognise, that has all the hallmarks of a bully, of a boor.

I know his type.

I’ve been around for long enough, am big and ugly enough, to stand my ground, call it out, not be cowered by blokes like him.

It’s what a true Tiger does.

And those who know me, who long ago played footy with me, know I’m willing to play the man – fairly – if that’s what the team needs. Go in hard. And I’ve backed into enough packs, put my head over the ball, knowing others will help me out.

It’s what Benny Gale, at centre-half-forward, did as a player. And I reckon it’s what he needs to do now, as a parting gift.

Simon Matthews threw his weight around. He played the man, with a cheap shot. He put me in my place – he put all of us in our place – without knowing who we are, what we can do.

Yes, he brought me back into the fold, for a while. Not because he really wanted to, but because he needed to. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.  

For a while, it worked. It suited us both, and it suited the club. But he never truly believed in what I was doing, in what we were doing, and he understood it divested those within the “four walls” of power. I was an outsider, an unknown proposition, a danger, to be managed.

And then a premiership was won.

I was no longer required.

He made the decision, and with it, I can add one more character trait to his resume: coward.  

He never had the heart to pick up the phone, make that call.

Got others to do his dirty work.

And now someone called Simon Matthews has recently tried to follow me on Facebook.

*

I’m going to the Cherry Tree Hotel on Saturday afternoon before the game, to be with friends, and if any who’ve known Chris Rees or myself through our long-ago contributions to Richmond, if they’d like to turn up, they are welcome.

It’s the least I can do. Give others the opportunity, the chance.  

A Richmond man – I won’t name him, he doesn’t need to be drawn into this – he called this week, we talked, and he’s offered me a load of tools from his shed. He knows a bit of what I’ve been through, he wants to help. He said he’d recently lost his job and is soon to turn 60. He understands what it’s like to have your back to the wall.

This week, I published a film with my brother, and it made me think of me and him, people like us, what we do, how we include, and why.

And it made me think also of Simon Matthews, and his brother, the two of them, the chosen ones, the privilege that has come their way, and what they choose to do with it.

I see Simon Matthews trying to position himself for the top job. Photo ops, building bridges, networking. He is welcome to join me, and others, at the pub this Saturday afternoon. But if he does, he better be ready to do some explaining.

Cross a Tiger – a wounded Tiger, a passionate Tiger – and it doesn’t come without repercussions.

I am not that man to go quietly into the night, not without a fight.

I wish the boys well on Saturday night.

Our new coach has been dealt an impossible hand.

This season can be one only of transition.

I’m not following the football this year – my energies need to be elsewhere; with my boys, with other pursuits, with earning enough to pay the rent, with trying to solve a housing problem – but my heart is still in the crowd, and always will be.

I will return to the game someday, because the game has given me so much.

But if you know of any on the Richmond board, let them know this. I will never be back at Richmond if Simon Matthews is in charge. Never. I’ve been around long enough, had enough life experience, to know those who I respect. My advice to the board: make changes, rejuvenate, move Simon Matthews on.

Footballers have no security of tenure – theirs is not a job for life – let him find some humility in a hard choice. Trust me, it’ll be better for everyone. Including him.

And what have I been up to since my football writing days ceased?

Washing dishes at a café in St Kilda.

Building chicken house with children who have trouble in class.

Raising funds through recycling to help welcome and support a refugee family.

I’ve found my peace, away from the game.

And this week, I’ve had the great honour to tell part of my story on ABC Radio. I was asked questions, I answered. I talk a bit about football, but nothing about my experience with Richmond. That’s for another time.

The power of the extra dad – ABC listen

Tyger tyger burning bright