Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

Stuff about football & community & belonging

Rnd 4: An insider’s club – the AFL media cabal

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Craig Hutchinson, Hutchy, gives the game away. 

“That’s Simon Matthews you see there with the coach,” he says.

Then he can’t help himself, so pleased with what he’s done.

“Smart media positioning, that,” he says. “Hats off to him, I thought that was clever.”

Watch the footage – from the 7 min mark of this Footy Classified clip, broadcast a month ago on Channel Nine – and let’s unpick what’s going on. 

Caroline Wilson, Caro, is in on the act. 

She’s Matthews’ shill – he’s likely her deep throat – the two of them in bed together, backroom dealers, dealing the cards mostly for themselves.

She sets it all up, has been doing so for months, running a soft sell campaign for Simon Matthews in The Age newspaper, and from her spot on the table on Footy Classified. She’s eased her plant into the conversation, put him in the spotlight (ever heard of Simon Matthews before?), keeps aligning him with Brendon Gale (rightly or wrongly, I need to get to the bottom of this) knowing it’ll confer him a status he hardly deserves.

In all my dealings with Matthews, he came across as an ungracious man. 

Rude, belligerent, a bully. One of those blokes who throws his weight around, needs to show others who’s boss. Because he can, because mostly he’s always gotten away with it.

I am not cowered by him. 

If he wants a scrap, he’s no idea who he’s up against.

You can cross a wounded Tiger once, Mr Matthews.

But not twice.

Caro has talked him up to all her audiences. 

Hers has been a long marketing campaign, selling an unremarkable product (look at him on the Footy Classified clip and tell me otherwise). She frames him always as Brendon Gale’s “longtime lieutenant”, his “preferred candidate”, as though this association is a measure of his worth. 

It’s all a PR push, of course. A boys’ club marketing campaign, touting their own interests, which are not necessarily the best interests of the Richmond Football Club; its coach, players, fans, its integrity, and now its future. Caroline Wilson is pulling the strings, Hutchy gets a guffaw out of it, and likely the other two panel members are happy to go along for the ride, because their man Matthews has done them favours, and now’s a time for payback.

Please tell me if I’m wrong.

Matthews sees an opportunity, down at Sandringham Oval on a windy Sunday afternoon at a VFL game – the day after the seniors got flogged by Brisbane by 20 goals – the club’s marketing manager sidling up to the coach, anything to help put himself in the frame.

Least he could have done is take his hands from his pockets.  

All of it is stage managed, a push in cahoots with Caro, and Hutchy – and Matthew Lloyd is likely even in on the act, and Kane Cornes is not stupid enough not to know what is going on, but he doesn’t have skin in this game, and is happy to go along with the hustle. All the smiles, the laughter, it’s so awkward, so fake. And they think they can get away with it – aren’t we clever? – because they mostly always do.

The boys’ club.

They pull the strings to help their man get the job, paid for – on this occasion – on the purse of others.

This is how the AFL media cabal works. 

How it conspires to choose one of its own. 

All gotten fat off the largesse of the biggest game in town.

Caro hardly realises who she has become.

Endorsing a blockhead.

A short while back someone called Simon Matthews tried to become friends with me on Facebook. 

Is he that stupid?

I know of only one Simon Matthews, and he is no friend of mine.

Why would he want to reach out to me?

A few weeks later came an answer. Because he’s vying for the top job at Tigerland. He wants to climb a bit further up the ladder, line his pockets a bit deeper. He wants more. More power, more control, more money, more of everything. And to do that, maybe he thinks he ought to create alliances with those he imagines might help get him there.

I am not one of those people. 

I had an alliance with the Richmond Football Club for several years that ended soon after the breakthrough 2017 Premiership. I was sacked, delisted. Simon Matthews was, ostensibly, my boss, but it’s true to say I wrote for about everybody else at the club except him. I wrote in spite of him, because my memory is not that short.

I could never forget how he treated me; so unfairly, rudely.

Back then I never believed the reason the club gave for terminating my ‘services’, and I don’t believe it now (and I’ll articulate this elsewhere, to demonstrate how self-serving ‘our club’ can be). 

I’ve held my counsel for six-and-a-half years because life is too precious to be dragged down by mean-spirited people. I’ve gone on and done other things, always trying, putting myself up for public criticism, trying to benefit other communities, help other groups in other ways. 

But then Matthews pops his head above the parapet – I have a clear shot, my friends! – and life is also too precious not to stand in the way of those who’ve done you wrong.

Do not reward a bully. 

Do not promote a dullard. 

The club only gets one chance to make the right call at a critical time in its history (have we ever been in this position before, from first to last in four years, a quite spectacular fall from grace?), and Simon Matthews is not the answer.

Not by a long shot.

At heart, I am a generous man.

I give a lot to others, to things I believe in, to causes, to campaigns that mostly have no great financial benefit to me. It is because we all crave for community – it is why we wear the colours, feel a belonging in the crowd – and likely I crave for it more than most.

The reasons for this, they are personal. 

I gave a lot to the Richmond Football Club, to all its people – the players, mostly the players, but also their parents and families, and us barrackers, with all the stories we can tell – because this is what I do, how I thought I might be able to make a difference.

The other week I walked the streets of Dandenong, knocking on doors, looking for a rental home for an Afghan refugee family soon to arrive in Melbourne, when my own housing situation has no surety, no certainty. 

We can all give more, especially to those without a voice, those in the outer. 

Caroline Wilson, if you are reading this, enough.

I’ve got some things to say about you, but not here, not now. 

Some truths. About someone born into Richmond – her father, Ian Wilson, was part of an administration that near bankrupted the club, driven by ego – someone who ought to know better than most how to spell nepotism. 

The first lady of football? 

She is not immune from criticism (though nor is she guilty of the sins of her father), but she is compromised in all of this.  She’s played the game, is protective of her turf, is part of the product, has created her empire, built-up all her boardroom alliances, might never really know what it’s like to be on the outer. 

Could this be called entitlement?

Certainly, her judgement is compromised.  

No football club I’ve ever known has been run as a meritocracy. 

Simon Matthews is a case in point.

Watch the Footy Classified clip and Caroline Wilson does give all us Richmond fans something to cheer about. 

She’s voiced a possible endgame. 

“Simon Matthews is, I think, probably Brendon Gale’s preferred candidate, and he’s set up the succession plan,” she says. 

“But it won’t be his call.”

“But if he doesn’t get the job, Simon, then you would think he leaves.”

Trust me, this is what ALL us Richmond fans should barrack for in our race for the bottom.

It is something I will get behind. Never mind the players, their contract talks, discussions about their worth, whether they have another year in their legs, let’s give Matthews the BOOT!

This club of ours needs some truth-telling. It’s made some mistakes and lost its way, all for the benefit of who?

For those in power, the gatekeepers of its culture, who are mostly hellbent on monetising it for all they can. They are blinded by the beauty of the game, by the bigger picture, a greater meaning.

They are shortsighted by their own self-interests. 

And Simon Matthews is the most shortsighted of them all. 

Someone with his name tried to friend me on Facebook. 

Does he think we’re all that stupid?

Bovver boy Craig Hutchinson on Footy Classified obviously does.

And an endnote. Another YouTube clip. This one made by my brother and I.

It’s a 5-minute little film about the sort of stuff I get up to these days, and I’d be very appreciative if you could watch it and share it with others.

It’s a long way from football, but also it isn’t.

One Richmond fan, who I’ll write about soon, has donated to this cause.

Two other Richmond fans have contacted me recently, offering to donate tools for the sort of work I do now do in schools. They know the worth of community. The value of giving. The contributions I have made.

This is now my greatest contribution to a club: to help it facilitate the cultural change it needs, the handover it requires.

Could you imagine Simon Matthews ever being so imaginative to do something like what I have done?

The clod, he’d have no idea where to start. 

Tiger tiger burning bright 

Rnd 3: the good, the bad, and the ugly, of the Richmond Football Club.

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Don’t argue: the people’s champion, on the game’s biggest arena, as depicted by local artist Nick Howson

They stood seven deep in standing room for you, Dusty. 

Clung on the balustrades.

Breathless, in anticipation, awe, respect.

To see you one more time, this time, forevermore. 

Nine deep, Dusty. Not a spare seat in the house.

We all wanted to be there, Dusty.

Twelve deep.

All of us.

For you.

A friend sent screen shots of a text exchange he’d had with a friend of his.

About me, what I’m up to.

“Hey XXXXX is your mate dugald ok? Publicising his feud amidst Dusty week doesn’t seem very rational,” he texted. 

Maybe it’s not, but now is no time to sit on the sidelines. Too much is at stake. The custodianship of our club, for one. Its future is at a crossroads. 

What follows is a text exchange that encapsulates what I am trying to do, and what I might be against. 

One voice in the outer, versus so many vested interests. 

A whole city came to watch you, Dusty.

A crowd in numbers that tell of your worth. Never before and never again will so many gather to see a team sitting so lowly on the ladder, with prospects so uncertain.

It looks such a chasm, getting back to the top. 

And you kicked the first goal and made it look so effortless, as if on script, on cue, and you are mobbed, adored, and all in the stands go crazy – there are tears in eyes – you are ours, everybody’s. 

You will live forever in memory, in folklore, as an idea, possibilities. Of what a footballer can make of himself, what he can be. 

In you is all what’s good about the Richmond Football Club. 

A few weeks back a person called Simon Matthews tried to friend me on Facebook. 

Soon after I learned, through the spruiking of Caroline Wilson, and others, he is jockeying for the top job at Tigerland. 

I have lived a life and met many people, am open to others, and consider myself a good judge of character. In all my dealings with Simon Matthews, the club’s director of communications and marketing, I found him to be discourteous, rude, obstinate, and in one instance, he displayed the hallmarks of a bully.

He didn’t need to be, but was. 

For six years I have held my counsel, moved on to other pursuits, engaged the world in other ways, happy to have no dealings with a man like him. 

But now a snake has moved in the grass.

He’s popped his head above the parapet. 

I am under no obligation to hold my silence. 

For the rest of this season, for as long as it takes, I will prosecute my case against him.

He misjudged who I am, what I am capable of. 

You can cross a wounded tiger once, Mr Matthews, but not twice.

And heaven help all who stand in my way.

Light towers were ablaze, but the spirit waned. 

The game slipped away from us. Bit-by-bit, it was gone.

And Dusty goes into the record books, again, as the only player EVER to have played 300 games who’s lost game number 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, and 300.

This is our lot. We’re on a losing streak, and there’s no hiding from the raw truth.

A legacy has been squandered. For whatever reasons, the club was unable to find a way to rebuild a team at the top of the table. So many little things have gone wrong. But maybe it is also this: the club didn’t have the imagination to try and do things differently.

The strong and the bold? 

More like the timid and the old. 

This is the bad of the Richmond Football Club. 

Here I am, this is me, a long time ago, when I started an association with the Richmond Football Club. So much beckoned. So much could be done. With words and ideas, the stories of others, I believed I could create a narrative for a football team, its club, through an idea of inclusiveness. 

Bring us all into the circle, make us as one.

Did it work? Others can be the judge of that. 

But I know what I did and what I did is this: I did the work. Put in the time. Made the effort. I tried in every way I could. And if @MarkRomage on Twitter has not “heard of me” and suggests I “move on” my reply is this: I have, and I don’t care. 

This is not about me.

This is about the culture of the Richmond Football Club. This is about standing up for what is right. What is fair. This is about challenging a club, how it could be, asking the hard questions, and finding some uncomfortable truths. 

Simon Matthews is one of them. 

Apologies I’m yet to reply to emails that have come my way. I will. Probably in this bye round.

If you choose not to receive the weekly mailout from me, please let me know, or delete the emails, or block my email address. A few have. Notably, all with a Richmond Football Club email address. Have they been told to? 

Again, it’s more of the same. An inwardness. The four walls. A we-know-best mentality. A small-mindedness. Unable or unwilling to see the big picture, to look outside the box, to find other ways, listen to the voices in the crowd.

For reasons only they might know. 

The ugliness of the Richmond Football Club?

Simon Matthews played the man with me. He tried to bully me; the club ridiculed me, and in doing so, it ridiculed us all. Community engagement? It does it on its own terms, when it suits, when it needs to cushion its own pockets. 

There was nothing generous, nothing kind, in so many of my dealings with the club. 

This is a truth, and here is its ugliness. 

People like this, in positions of power, in an organisation so many of us cherish and hold dear, and will do until the day we die. 

I returned to the football on Saturday for a first time, rode my bicycle to the MCG, tied it up, stood in the outer, unbelieving of the size of the crowd, how many had turned up, then found a seat beside two friends who, with others, I long ago invited to my home. 

It is no longer my home – so much in my life has changed – but what I once did, how I contributed to our football club, is there for all to see, and remains steadfast. 

Now is no time for blind faith. 

Only a fool would have blind faith in our club. 

Because it can always do better, be better.

Only a fool never questions. 

There is only one thing that deserves our unequivocal belief, and that is the colours.

Yellow and black.

And Dusty. 

He has our unwavering respect, and always will.

Tiger tiger burning bright

There’s nothing more tigerish than a wounded tiger

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On a Monday morning, I wrote a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), about a bloke called Simon Matthews. He works for the Richmond Football Club. I posted a photograph of him, pulled from the club’s website. 

This is who he is.

I’m squaring up to him, letting him know what’s coming.

And yes, it’s personal.

Because Simon Matthews long ago played the man with me. He was rude, disrespectful, ungenerous – to me, to my family, to all who I had written about, all those voices in the outer, barracking for a team – a club – we hold as one. His behaviour came from a position of power. A big bloke, throwing his weight around.

He didn’t have to, not with all I was doing for him, for so many others.

I’m not afraid to stand up to one like him. 

He ought to know this.

Cause there’s nothing more tigerish than a wounded tiger.

It’s how it is and always should be in Struggletown.

Just ask one of finest, maybe our greatest.

Dusty.

Has he ever taken a backward step for the yellow and black?

Readers and contributors and friends of Tiger Tiger Burning Bright – click to enlarge

I am emboldened. By all who joined Chris Rees and I and others at the Cherry Tree Hotel in the backstreets of Richmond before the Dreamtime Game. It was a beautiful crowd. By all who’ve emailed and texted, made contact, offered support. And especially by those who posted comments on my recent Tiger Tiger Burning Bright post. 

If you care to read them, look here: An open letter to Richmond fans (about Simon Matthews, recycling, and this Saturday afternoon). 

Two pieces of correspondence illustrate the range of responses.

One, from Mark Romage via X, read:

@MarkRomage

May 25

Wow! I don’t know you and don’t even think I’ve heard of you, so to read of your contribution to the 2017 flag was a bit of a surprise. You come across as bitter that you got no recognition. 1/2

May 25

I also don’t know S. M, but if BG endorses him, that’s probably good enough for me. I’m sure he wants the club to flourish in his absence. You’re not the 1st bloke to be sacked from a footy club, (what is it you did?) and you won’t be the last. Move on and let Richmond do the same.

The second, from Judith Taylor, was written as a reply to the post, and sent as a comment:

I’m so sorry to hear that you have fallen on hard times, Dugald. I don’t know you personally but I wrote to you to do a story on my dad Jack Lanigan who lived in Port Fairy. You could not get to Port Fairy but you rang him up. I think he told you some poetry. I just wanted to say, I loved reading your stories about how much people loved Richmond. My father has passed away and not having the best time in his final years the 2017, and the 2019 premierships made his life so much happier. He never made it to see the 2020 grand final. But reading your story made me think of him, Jack used to say that football used to bring people together and it meant so much to him. He used to hate the off season. I am still a mad Richmond supporter and going to the first match of the year, down at the Gold Coast I love the Richmond Supporters. We were getting a belting and in the third quarter we all came together yelling and shouting to spur the boys on. For that third quarter when the Tigers made an effort, it was like we were all family.
All the best and I hope things get better for you.
Take care.

This is what I did for the Richmond Football Club.

I acknowledged people, gave them my time. 

I listened to their stories, and then shared them, wove them into a greater narrative.

One of togetherness. 

I telephoned an old man who lives in Port Fairy, to respect his story, who he was, to let him say what he needed to say. And my goodness I gave him the opportunity to entertain me with his poetry!

For no financial gain, no personal aggrandisement. 

I did it because I believe in the crowd, in the power it can harness, in what it can do. Every voice counts. And I know of my capacity to help, on what I could do to help turn the woebegone fortunes of Richmond. 

We have to believe in ourselves, in our abilities to make a difference.

In answering to Mark Romage, this is part of what I did.

And in time I will make contact with Brendon Gale to ask if he does, indeed, endorse Simon Matthews as the club’s next CEO.

And if he does, I will disagree with this decision.

And explain why.

Week-by-week, for this season, I’ll write about Simon Matthews.

And the politics of our football club, how it has chosen to undertake its business.

But now is not the time for that.

Ours is a week for celebration, rejoicing.

A great win away in Adelaide, and a distinguished milestone game for the greatest ever warrior for our footy club. 

Nobody will ever again do what Dusty has done.

It can never be taken from him. 

But a reminder to Mark Romage, and all others: our Dustin Martin once did toy with leaving Punt Road. 

Simon Matthews was implicated, through his brother, the CEO of GWS.

An AFL appointee.

It was in the 2013 off-season, and Dusty caught a plane to Sydney, and all our hearts were in the air, and I wrote an open letter to him, and will never have any idea if he or his manager ever read it, but it doesn’t matter, because the putting down of the words is sometimes enough. 

I’ve not read it again, but others might like to: An open letter to Dusty | dugald jellie (wordpress.com)

This Saturday afternoon I’ll be going to my first game of the season, alone, for him.

Tiger tiger burning bright

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

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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 19th 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

10 of the best: Brenda Palmer

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Social distance: Brenda at her front gate with persimmons (“My husband used to eat them”).

Brenda is going okay.

She’s doing a lot of crosswords, and gardening, and watching replays of old footy games – presumably ones we won. (Does anyone watch replays of a game lost?).

I knocked on her door yesterday afternoon to surprise her with a delivery, five plump homegrown persimmons from two trees I planted for each of our boys.

She opened the door, called out my name – Dugald! – and this was Brenda: personable, matter-of-fact, warm-natured, engaging with the world, and in her slippers.

I asked for her photograph. “Wait a minute, I’ll do my hair”.

For all who don’t know, Brenda is maybe Richmond’s most fabulous supporter, although she’s known more widely as the longest-serving supermarket employee at Coles.

Or as she says: the “oldest check-out chick in Australia”.

You may have heard her on the radio, seen her on the TV, advocating for mature-age employees, for working until later life. She is a treasure, and a total character.

Welcome mat: Brenda with her collection of scarves sewn into a bedspread, as she showed me in May 2016.

I first knocked on her door in the depths of the 2016 season, on a Sunday morning after a half-hearted Richmond loss the night before, and her pragmatism cheered me, her perspective, and back then I couldn’t imagine where we are now: two premierships and a pandemic, and me delivering a handful of persimmons to her door.

*

Since writing about her, a few things about Brenda I ought to share:

She’s now a sprightly 88.

A few weeks back, asking how she was, she said Coles have paid her not to work, news I found heartening. Her age and her job put her in a high-risk category for the virus. She is one in the community who needs to be especially cautious. She is also a great asset to her employer. To all of us. She teaches us things about ourselves, sets an example, shows us how a life can be lived. I am thankful to Coles for looking after her.

(And she tells me many customers have asked after her, asking when she’ll be back, concerned for her welfare).

After interviewing Brenda four years ago I returned and fixed her front gate. It’d dropped on its hinges. Needed to be lifted over the latch before it could be opened. When working, Brenda leaves home in the morning dark to start her early shift. I asked if it was a nuisance. She said it was. I returned on my bicycle, then rode to the hardware store for a few coach screws, and took me two goes at it, was a bit trickier than it looked, but it was done and now swings freely. She was grateful.  

Young and old: Brenda at the Bowderbird launch party.

Late November I launched my new venture, Bowerbird Gardens, a calling to keep me gainfully employed, and many gathered in our back lane and Brenda came along with a few other Richmond friends – bless them all – and she interrupted my speech.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” she told the crowd.

When I spoke with Brenda for her fan profile (republished, below), she said I told her how I’d once taken our two young boys to school by wheelbarrow (true), and had said if Richmond ever won a premiership I’d take her for a ride in it, too.

Was a promise made when I thought Richmond might never win another flag. Not in my lifetime, and certainly not in hers.

I have several wheelbarrows, I told Brenda and the crowd, and I was willing to uphold my promise and take her for a ride.

Where would you like to go?

Sharp as a tack, her reply: “Oh, I haven’t been to Albury for a while”.

*

One last thing about Brenda.

We vote for opposing political parties and probably always have and will.

When I visited her house she had a calendar on her fridge, from the then local Federal MP for Higgins. I commented on this. Her being a Liberal Party voter. Told her how my beliefs are at the other end of the political spectrum. She shrugged her shoulders, poured me a cup of tea. Was a nice brew.

I love the way football does this. It brings us together.

It reaffirms that despite all our differences – political outlook, belief systems, education and income levels – we are all roughly equal before the bounce of a ball. We all love the game, our club, it’s players, in much the same way.

These are things to hold onto in times like these.

I have much respect and admiration for Brenda, and surely always will, and know she is loved deeply by the broad church of the Richmond family.

Barrack for Brenda?

Where do you join the cheer squad?

Oh we’re from Tigerland: Brenda Palmer

Brenda Palmer, 84, “a Malvern girl”

Favourite all-time player:
Royce Hart – “There was always something happening when Royce Hart was on the field. A friend of mine who barracked for South Melbourne said to me, ‘when Royce Hart runs on the field he just speaks football’.”

Favourite current player:
Dustin Martin – “I love them all but there’s no one who stands out. I think I’ve got a fixation with who wears number four. Matty Rogers was the homecoming hero last week and I was very fond of him. I used to call him ‘dreamboat’. And I do have a real soft spot for Dusty.”

A family affair: at the game with two of her grandchildren.

Half-time at the football on Saturday night, three goals down, a forlorn season on a precipice, and I find Brenda Palmer at her usual seat on the fence with a smile. The happiness comes with being there, with her family and friends. “Where there’s life there’s hope,” she says. “What they did in the first half, we can do in the second.”

Sunday morning and I knock on her door, where she’s lived for more than sixty years, beside where Kevin Sheedy’s childhood home, and she offers the perspective of someone who’s seen a bit of football in her time. She remembers Jack Dyer as a player (“he seemed to stand over everyone else”), the lean years of the 1950s (“before the miracle happened in Tommy Hafey”), and knows of all the grand finals and wooden spoons.

“We’re all hurting and feeling dejected,” she says. “But the sun will still come up in the morning.”


Th day after the night before: “the sun will still come up in the morning”.

Listening to Brenda talk about football, about Richmond, about her family and her life, it’s a tonic. She offers the moderation of experience, of a full-life lived, of the pluck and tenacity of what it is to be a Tiger.

“In the last forty-odd years you could just about count it on one hand how many games I’ve missed in Melbourne,” she says.

Not surprising when you consider this: just after six o’clock each weekday morning she walks up to the Coles supermarket in Malvern to start her work shift. “They’ve worked out I’m the oldest check-out chick in Australia,” she says. She took a job when the store opened in July 1967, and 49 years later she’s a local celebrity, still serving customers.

Brenda Palmer (nee Schofield) was born in Deniliquin (Sam Lloyd country) in 1932, the youngest of five daughters (Mildred, Beryl, Sybil, Winifred) to a returned soldier, a builder by trade who moved his family to Melbourne in 1939 when war broke out.  They bought a house near Malvern station and as a young girl, catching the train to the city, Brenda’s eye roved toward Richmond.

“Coming past in the train, I could see them in their yellow and black jumpers, and I thought it looked interesting, what those men are doing there,” she says. “I thought I’d come back one day to find out what it was all about.”

Return to the ground she did, as a teenager, when Captain Blood was still playing, when Melbourne’s suburban grounds were like churches, when Richmond was known still as ‘Struggletown’ and the game was played between hard men with bare knuckles. “Players back then had a bit of mongrel in them,” she says. “You don’t get anywhere being a gentleman all the time.”

Brenda married in 1952, to a grocer (“he was born and bred in Port Melbourne”) who on Sundays played football for the Graham Family Hotel, in Richmond’s colours on the Lagoon Reserve oval. Together they bought a house on the other side of Glenferrie Road, in Armadale, and family life took hold with three children and a busy social schedule.

It was Brenda’s only daughter, her eldest child, Carolyn, remembered fondly by all in Richmond’s cheer squad, who brought her back to the football. It was 1967 and their next-door neighbour, Kevin Sheedy, a De La Salle boy who played for the Prahran two-blues in the VFA, moved to Richmond amid controversy and Carolyn took her mother along to see him in the big league.

For the two of them, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“We were right on the cusp of a glorious era,” she says. “Sixty-seven, sixty-nine, seventy-three, seventy-two, we played in all those finals. It’s wonderful. You have to live through a period like that to know how wonderful it is.”

Badge of honour: part of Brenda’s collection of Richmond badges.

On Sunday morning, the sports pages of the newspaper spread on a table, Brenda makes a cuppa tea, and talks about football and I could listen all day. She says she liked visiting St Kilda’s old ground, the Junction Oval, and “the little Hawthorn ground”, both “just a tram ride away”. Of Glenferrie Oval, she says: “It was so small if they kicked it one way it landed on the railway line and if they kicked it the other way it landed in the street. And one day we were there it landed in the fish fryer.”

Her least favourite ground was Victoria Park. “It was like stepping into a different world going over there.”

She also didn’t much like visiting Kardinia Park. “It was never very friendly down there. They used to always open up the gates for all their members, and we would be the last in, and we had to sit in a designated section. And if there wasn’t enough room for us, well, bad luck.”

What she remembers most about Punt Road Oval, and the Western Oval, is the mud. “The Footscray ground was notorious for it,” she says. “The players would be so covered in mud you couldn’t even read their numbers or hardly tell who they were.”

Richmond, a dish best served hot.


R

In 1970 her daughter Carolyn met under-19s Richmond player Graham Gaunt at a BBQ at Punt Road Oval. Six years later they married, and Richmond literally became part of her family, and weekends were spent at the games, and afterwards at the clubrooms for player roasts and mock weddings and fundraising events.

“None of my family barrack for anything else except Richmond,” she says. “Except for my son Bruce’s wife, who says she barracks for Carlton, but she wouldn’t know what a football was. Almost the first word all the children say is ‘Tiger’. Half of them say it before they say ‘dad’ or ‘mum’.”

Of Richmond’s immediate concerns, she’s philosophical. Brenda has known good times and bad, and knows how quickly they can turn, and how life’s full of hurdles. In the past 10 years she’s lost her husband, Alan, two of her sisters, one of her sons, and a little more than two years ago her most loyal football companion, Carolyn, who died not long after being diagnosed with cancer.

But still there is the football, other family and friends, and her front row seat in the Olympic Stand pocket.

She said she has read some of the “nasty things” some Richmond fans have posted after Saturday night’s loss about the team or club on Facebook. “That’s not them, that’s the hurt coming out,” she says. “You’ve got to get rid of that hurt somewhere, and that’s how those people do it.”

Each room of her house is adorned with Richmond memorabilia, keepsakes, trinkets, with boxes full of badges and framed photographs, and there’s no doubting her loyalty to something that’s been a part of her life for the longest time. “For Richmond to be so unsuccessful since the early eighties and still have 70,000 members is a credit to both the club and the supporters.”

Brenda will be at the game on Friday night, as she always is. And like the rest of us, she hopes our performance against Hawthorn, with backs to the wall, is a credit to each and every player.

Go TigesI

10 of the best: Monty!

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Sibling rivalry: Monty Anderson, aged 5, when a golden future beckoned

Children inherit the world. They are the future, our greatest hope.

They are seers and soothsayers, with a clarity of mind, an innocence, that might make anything possible.

The moon is made of cheese? Why not. Can we fly there? Of course, when we are ready.

_

The art of football (1): Captain Cotch with his quiff, and Dusty in the soon-to-be premiership jumper.

A few footy seasons back I wrote a series of fan profiles published on the Richmond Football Club website. It was an exercise in community-building. Telling a story from the ground-up, one fan at a time.

Every football fan has a story, about the game, their club, and how it entwines with their life. It doesn’t really matter how passionate you are – there is no heart-fold test for such things – nor how long you’ve been a supporter.

The main thing is inclusion, and a sense of belonging.

In little ways, each week, it’s what these fan stories tried to do.

_

Smiling tigers: Sam Lloyd (back when he was ours), Trent & Jack.

This season is one like no other. Winter beckons with no football. When it returns, as it must, it will be crowdless, which is something less than half the game. Can our heart really be in it without a crowd, without us?

Partly to fill this void, a space the game occupies in our minds, I’m pleased to revisit 10 of these profiles. Week-by-week, I’ll select the ones that resonated most with me, for whatever reasons. Maybe look the fans up again, tell a story behind the story.

There is no ‘best’ really, they all had meaning for me, but maybe these are the ones I might remember fondly for the rest of my days.

First up, Monty!

Why? Because in the eyes of a child there is clarity. Because as the regular season came to a close in 2017, he foresaw what would happen. He tipped it! He told me – us – Richmond would play Adelaide in the Grand Final before a finals game had even be played!

Then he went and made a banner saying we would be premiers!

Backyard prophet: Monty and the banner he made on the eve of the 2017 final series

He BELIEVED what most of us could only dare to dream.

This is the gift of a child. They are unencumbered by the weight of history. A ‘premiership drought’ meant nothing to him.

Where is he now? Home schooling, of course. Doing grade 3.

What does he like about home schooling? “You don’t have to be at school on time,” he tells his mum, who emails me. “You can go bike riding at recess and lunch. You can eat whatever you want.”

Are there any drawbacks, Monty?“I miss my friends a lot,” he says. “I miss talking to them and playing games with them. And my mum shouts sometimes because we are being silly and not doing our work at home.”

(Note to mum: as a home-supervising dad, I have just now raised my voice with a 6-year-old, a little refusenik).

Monty’s mum is an architect who has remade herself into an artist. I like this. A reinvention, a renewal. We can all learn from this. Every footballer is only a footballer when they are playing the game, then they become something else. And each of us anyway, have different parts to our lives.

Monty and his mum made art the other day, part of the home-schooling process. He painted a love heart. It was an exercise in which he had to express how he feels about his favourite piece of music.

And what was it? Clue, it begins:

Oh, we’re from Tigerland…

**

Oh we’re from Tigerland: Monty Anderson

Monty Anderson, five years old, wide-eyed, alive to all the game’s possibilities, just might be the future of the Richmond Football Club. If so, it’s future burns bright.

Monty Anderson, 5, Prahran Junior Football Club

Favourite Richmond player
Jack Riewoldt – “He’s a good kicker. He can kick fifty metres.”

Monty (on his older brother): “He’s more a dinosaur and animal person.”

Campbell (on Monty): “He’s definitely a sportsman. He wants to be a Richmond footballer. We have a million balls outside.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of five-year-old Monty Anderson. He barracks for Richmond. Loves the game. Has Richmond player cards arranged carefully on the first sleeve of his footy book. Knows all their numbers. Jack is his favourite. Then Sam Lloyd and Alex Rance.

“Number eighteen. Fullbackman”.

Monty’s off to the game this Sunday and is sure they’ll win.

Life’s nearly perfect. But there is the pesky problem of his older brother. That’s Campbell. He’s seven years old, in grade two, is missing his two front teeth, and is sometimes a bit annoying. It’s not that he doesn’t share his toys. He does that. The problem is he goes for Hawthorn. Yes, Hawthorn. Why, Campbell, why?

“Because they won three premierships in a row.”

Oh, Mister Monty, our flaxen-haired future, our great hope, how glorious it must be to be five years old at the football, with those big brown eyes of yours, sitting with mum or dad, enthralled by the size of it all, an open book of curiosity, and blessedly so unknowing of all the emotional scars to have beset so many Richmond supporters.

Through a child’s eyes, anything is possible. Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, a Richmond premiership…


Beyond bedtime: Monty and Campbell and their friend Will at the Anzac Eve night game against Melbourne.

I meet with Monty and his brother – and their parents, Cressida and Dave – on Saturday morning after Auskick to talk football and Richmond. It is, in Monty’s words, a simple story: “In Sydney, we supported the Sydney Swans, but when we came to Melbourne, Campbell supported the Hawks and I supported Richmond and mummy and daddy still supported Swans.”

His parents elaborate.

Two-and-a-bit years ago, Cress and Dave moved from Sydney to Melbourne for work, and soon after they learnt of ‘footy colours day’ at their local primary school. Dave, a burly Scotsman raised on a dairy farm halfway between Dundee and Aberdeen, and a former rugby union second-rower, suggested their eldest boy wear his Waratahs top. Cress thought otherwise.

“We’re in Melbourne now,” she says. “I didn’t want him ostracised just yet.”

So, lunchtime in a new city and Dave’s life depended on sourcing a Swans top for a five-year-old. Cress is a native Sydneysider. That’d be their team. The matter was solved. All he needed was a Sydney top. In Melbourne.

Two sports stores later, he found the goods. “I bought one for Campbell,” he says. “But I couldn’t buy for one boy and not the other, and the shop assistant upsold me, so I left with two Swans tops and two Swans shorts and two pairs of Swans socks, and a ball each.”

Both boys left home the following morning in gleaming red-and-white, socks pulled knee-high. A proud father returned from work that night, keen to find out how it went.

“‘Oh, it was good daddy’, replied Campbell, ‘but I actually support the Hawks, and Monty said, ‘daddy, I support Richmond’.”

Turns out Monty had already chosen his team. A child’s elastic mind, it knows what it wants.

“He’d been doing a lot of research in the post office with the songs,” says his mum, Cress.

While she was posting mail, a little Monty sampled all the football-themed merchandise at arm’s reach. Footy books, greeting cards, flags, and a toy tiger with a button any curious child would press. Press it he did, and out rang a chorus: “Oh, we’re from Tigerland….”

“I loved the song,” explains Monty. Who could blame him?

Two seasons later and young boy’s wonder has not dimmed, and it wavered not once last year despite his team’s indifferent performances (“he re-watched the last bit of the Swannies-Richmond game every morning before kindergarten”). He’s been to four games already this season, for three wins and the narrow Swans loss.

“That was the game you burst into tears and we had to carry you home,” says his dad.

“That was the day mummy switched her team,” says his brother.

“I did feel his pain that day so I got behind him and cheered for Richmond,” says his mum.

One game of football, all three of them barracked for Monty.


Football family: mum, Monty, Campbell and dad at the Richmond v Swans game earlier this year.

Because they adore his bright-eyed enthusiasm, but also because he’s Richmond, so his is a passion as mysterious as childhood itself. He puts on his colours after school most afternoons and kicks a football the length of their backyard. Right foot. But he’s practicing also on his left.

“I’m practicing closing my eyes and trying to kick a goal,” he adds.

I ask each of them what they might like to be when they grow up.

Campbell answers, wistfully: “At school we do this thing where you write down all the things, and you have questions, and the bottom question was what do you want to be when you grow up and I wrote down ‘zoo keeper’”.

Monty’s reply: “A Richmond player”.

His second career choice, should this whole football thing not work out?

“Painting the field,” he says.

He’s thought about it, being the person who chalks the lines – the centre square, boundary, goal square, 50m arcs – and thinks it’d be awesome. He’s already in training. His Texta football drawings include one shaped as an oval with all the lines marked on it, and black dots peppering the grass.

“All those dots are the studs,” he explains.

His family suggest we turn a large square of carpet in the living room upside down to see more of his handiwork. He’s laid-out the lines of a rugby field using electrical tape.

“It changes all the time,” says his mum. “It’s been a tennis field, a soccer pitch, an AFL ground. It’s what Monty does.”

His father adds: “Every time I go to the hardware store I have to stock-up on electrical tape.”


Monty’s field of dreams: “All those dots are studs”.

This is the magical mind of little Monty Anderson, a boy who goes to bed each night in a sports top, sometimes two – choosing between Richmond, Lionel Messi, the Waratahs, Scotland’s rugby team, the Lions – dreams wonderful dreams, of Richmond playing Adelaide in the Grand Final this year, and winning. If it comes true he thinks he’ll take a day off school.

Make it so, Monty. But first, the game this weekend and a win over your big brother’s team would be nice.

Go Tigers! And go Monty!

PS. The second sleeve of Monty’s footy book is filled with St Kilda cards. Why? “Because Jack Riewoldt’s cousin plays there, Nick Riewoldt.”


Monty our mascot: sitting on the fence with friends at the Richmond v Hawthorn fixture last year.

dugaldjellie@gmail.com

ends & beginnings (& all the stuff in between)

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Monday afternoon, I thought of Yeatesy. Wrote about him. Look me up if you”re on Facebook, have a read. This is football, this is life. See the comments. The crowd gathers around one of us. We’re all in this together.

Yesterday I did something I’d been meaning to do for the longest time. Published a website for my latest venture. It’s a work-in-progress, but it feels right, building other communities in other ways, doing something to try and make a difference. Many have helped along the way, and none of this is forgotten. I Posted about it also:


Hasn’t been easy since being de-listed from footy writing, but I’ve found a way. Have had to. Nobody likes being pushed, not when they think they’ve still got a few more words in them, a few more stories.

Endings are not always of our choice.

Last night, celebrating a new beginning by sorting-out loose ends, I came across a folded piece of paper that I’d long forgotten. A sting of words put down, an idea in the telling. Reminded of tomorrow night, of what a game of football might be; a series of contests, each of equal importance, needing to be halved or won for the ball to go the right way.

Straight from the jottings – and please excuse my scrawl – it reads like this:

31 seconds left in the third quarter

Richmond 7 points up

Dave Astbury mops up a loose ball in defence and on his right foot chips to the wing,

On the head of Dusty

4 against 44

“Now that’s a fifty-fifty maybe, Stewart vee Martin”

Dusty drops an overhead mark, Stewart leads the ball to the boundary, overruns it and it lands in Dusty’s lap.

Element of luck.

As Stewart doubles back, Dusty – our Dusty – clutching the ball in his right, hunched, turning, extends his left arm, pushes an off-balance Stewart on the shoulder and all the possibilities of the game open up.

Bruce goes guttural.

“Dusty, awww Dusty, that is classic Dusty.”

Two bounces in space, running up the outer wing, all us Richmond crowd roaring him on, a crescendo, a release – the game in the balance, a whole history of defeat and despair and loss to be cast aside – a single act, a dance, making space, a moment of the sublime – him, it had to be him, all power and grace in open terrain, thumping the ball into the ground with each bounce, his Geelong counterpart sprawled on the grass, outwitted, outplayed, outfoxed by our main man.

Jack Riewoldt cameo: spearing pass to Dion Prestia, unattended at the top of the goal square, and the crowd behind the posts at the Punt Road end are on their feet, erupting in untrammelled euphoria.

All the emotions, all that star-crossed history, is released and banished there and then.

We have Dusty. We have this football team. We have all the parts of a beautiful sum.

On this night, for this moment, we have the whole world at our feet.

A scribbled down idea, a beginning, an end.

**

Cleaning up the house this afternoon I came across a photograph of me, running. Soft golden light, the long shadows on a late Saturday winter’s afternoon. A last game for an old team of mine, the Cooma Cats. Snowy Oval, remember it well. A friend took the picture. She’s now back home, in Canada.

That’s me running from the backline, head up, maybe raising my voice, wanting to be heard.

We all get old.

Do it while you can, and do it for as long as you can. Run, run, run.

Playing days: me in the middle ground, a tiger wearing a cat’s clothes.

**

Our boys will win on Friday night, not because we are cocky, but because a fire of regret burns still inside. The lived experience of last year remains raw. What does not kill us, etc.. An opportunity lost, a season unfulfilled.

Our boys will win because enough of them are still hurting, and all the others are hungry, and because as a group they have confronted and overcome adversity. New players have been given an opportunity and all have risen to the occasion. Most of the older players are playing as well as they ever have, some even better.

Run, run, run,

New bonds have been forged. Respect and admiration is renewed, again and again. It comes from courage, and grace, and humility. It comes from each player playing for each other, as a team, which in turn means each of them plays for us.

Our boys will win, not because it is written in the stars, not because it is a right, because they are entitled, nor because many expect them to, but because they know every little moment matters and none of it can be wasted. Time runs out. Not a moment can be lost.

This Friday night, it will all be gained.

Short statement on Chris Rees’s sticker stocktake sale

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We have a problem. Demand has exceeded supply.

We’ve run out of stickers!

Chris has organised for a FINAL PRINT RUN of stickers: 300. Previously it cost him $357.50 to do 300, which he sold for $5 each. It was my idea to sell some at the ground, to share the love. He agreed, and set a ‘stocktake sale price’ of $3. Do the maths. He’s not making much money out of it. But money isn’t everything.

What price passion?

Blood brothers: our two beloved Grand Final blood nuts, arm-in-arm

Talking to Chris today, he said this is the last print run.

“There’s only so long we can continue celebrating a premiership.”

I politely disagreed. The beauty of this design is it’s such a muted ‘celebration’. There’s nothing ra-ra about it. As mentioned, it’s more a documentation, an acknowledgement, of a day and of a time in our lives, and of the ending of something, and beginning of something new.

It is Richmond togetherness.

And our togetherness is in trying to get this sticker to as many who might enjoy and appreciate it.

What we’ll do is this: all who have requested sticker payment and pick-up at the ground this Saturday (either under the elm, or in the cheer squad at half-time) will get their stickers. Haven’t done the final sums yet, but think there are enough to go around. Just.

All who have requested a sticker that needs to be posted, will receive stickers from this new batch (so the wait might be a week or two, depending on production). As advertised, these stickers will be sold for $3 each, plus $1 postage. But Chris has changed the design a little bit, with some of his branding. Hope you don’t mind.

See this link for a sneak preview:

bumper_2018RD_fa_v3

 

Orders have now closed.

All future sales of this last batch of stickers will be for $4 each (plus postage), until sold out.

I will be selling whatever is left over of this last batch of stickers at the ground at the season’s last home-and-away game, for $4 each (each slim profit goes to the artist).

Then I am done with stickers.

Unless we win another premiership….

(Which is what we all quietly want)

Stickers & friendships & togetherness

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The pillar of a premiership: the broad shoulders of no. 25.

Excuse me, the words are rusty.

Hard news first.

Before the bounce this Saturday I’m selling stickers on behalf of another. Three dollars each.

Like one, find me beneath an elm across from the Tigerland Superstore entrance, on the walking path from the railway station. I’ll be there from 12.30pm. To reserve a purchase (as many have done already via my Facebook page), please contact me. I’ll also be in the cheer squad at half-time, fulfilling orders.^

The stickers measure 200mm × 40mm.

They are the artwork of Chris Rees, whom many know from his creative football designs, all of which can be found and purchased via his http://www.reesdesign.com.au/ website. He is also the other half of this blog we created a few years back – and thank you Malcolm McKinnon for contributing a match report this week.

Chris is also a friend*.

Which is why I’m on a sticker-selling drive this Saturday. It’s also because this sticker gives me much joy and pride, and I cannot understand why every car in Melbourne driven by a Richmond fan doesn’t have one. I want to help make this happen.

Before the bounce: made Adelaide’s choreographed poses look juvenile.

Why a love these stickers? They’re understated, timeless, modest. They capture the essence of a day – of an experience – all of us might cherish until the end of our time. I don’t much fancy the Herald Sun’s cartoonish car sticker, emblazoned with ‘2017 Premiers’ and the caricature of a triumphant tiger. I find it a bit, well, boorish. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t go much for football chest-pumping, especially not once a deed is done.

Maybe it is all those years of yearning and frustrations.

Or maybe it’s just all those Hawthorn premiership stickers that’ve shouted in my face for so long.

Winners ought to be humble, respectful, modest.

This sticker is all those things. It has no date on it, no words, and none are needed. See this sticker, and all Richmond fans know exactly what it means, and all other football fans might only be envious, or quietly respectful.

Arm in arm: one common goal, one belief

It is a sticker that is about togetherness, unity, teamwork, family. In that line-up of numbers, in the shape and size and stance of those bodies, there is a documentation of a day, a season, a moment, that gave us unfettered joy. Still does.

We know our players – love them for what they have done, continue to do – and in their body language see so much of the personality they express through their on-field feats.

I’ve never had a sticker on our family car, until Chris produced this one.

It’s on the back window, and my heart still does a little skip when I see it.

Because I, we, us, were all part of it.

dugaldjellie@gmail.com

 

^If you’re not going to the game, or live in regional Victoria or interstate, I can arrange to post stickers with a $1 postage charge. Please contact other Richmond fans in your community, see if they would like any, and act as your region’s distributor. This is just another way these stickers might bring our Richmond crowd further together. Paul Frederickson, a Tiger in Queensland, for example, has ordered 20 of them, and will be distributing for fellow Richmond fans in his part of the world.

*Chris was going to give the rest of these stickers away, but I said no. I’m a big advocate of paying those in the creative industries (artists, writers, musicians, etc) what their wares deserve. All the money I collect from these sales will go to him, reimbursing his time, design and production costs.

Three dollars, for an eternal thrill.

Reflected glory: the back windscreen of our family car, where these stickers belong

Saturday afternoon Dusty dreaming

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Play on! Dustin Martin,
on the sweet September grass

Last Saturday at 3.18pm I was looking at Dusty. His left armed fend-off, tattooed limbs, ball tucked under his right arm. None could get close to him. Play on! gestured the umpire.

The game was about to go our way.

Dustin Martin was in the middle of the MCG running amok, mesmerising everyone – one man in the eye of a storm, time stopped, like a puppeteer pulling all the strings.

Last Saturday at 3.18pm I wasn’t at the game, but in a rear room of the Australian Galleries on Derby Street, Collingwood, looking at the art of Nick Howson, an oil on Belgian linen, titled Dusty premiers. It is beautiful, in its colours, its playfulness, in the long lope of Trent Cotchin in the foreground, in all the faces of the crowd, and is that Bachar on the bench?

Last Saturday at a gallery in Collingwood I called the artist and admonished him for not inviting me to the opening (he said he did, said there must have been a mix-up in the mail-out), and congratulated him on the show, and said his painting of last year’s Grand Final ought to be hanging at the MCG. I said I would contact the curator at the MCC on his behalf.

This is a painting of significant public importance. It is about place, social participation, culture, belonging.

Dusty premiers 2017-18, oil on Belgian linen, $12,500 (and priceless)

▰▰▰▰▰▰▰

We talked briefly about the theme of his new show, Suburbia, its muted colours, the patterned repetition, all those red hipped rooflines, quarter acre blocks, conformity. I said the motif reminded me a bit of Howard Arkley’s art, but without the day-glo vibrancy. This is more understated. Modest. Introverted.

Was it last year I was in his studio behind a shopfront on Swan Street in Richmond and saw these works progressing? Back then we talked about football, and place, and the visual cues of Richmond, and I remember him enthused about “all the red bricks, the red dirty bricks” of his neighbourhood. A redbrick Federation-era factory wall is an object of beauty. As are the suburban brick veneer dreams of Nick’s latest series.

I desire them.

▰▰▰▰▰▰▰

Last Saturday I was to ride my bicycle to Collingwood to the opening of a friend’s art exhibition on Cambridge Street, and then go and see Nick’s work, and then pop into the football. But a cloudburst, hailstones drumming on the roof, changed plans.

And I called-up a friend, Josh, an American, from Washington DC, a remarkable chess player, who was at a loose end. Said I’d pick him up in the car, by the Church Street Bridge. Let’s go see some art.

Nick Howson is a Collingwood fan who’s probably best known in Melbourne for the large mural he painted of a long-sleeved Richmond footballer, flying over all the petty squabbles and sawtooth factory rooves of old Struggletown, adorning a wall beside the main entrance to Richmond Station. It ought to be heritage-listed, preserved forevermore.

On Saturday afternoon we spoke about Collingwood’s fabulous win on the Friday night – they were inspired, did you see the Brodie Grundy goal, how far he ran? – and Nick asked if I’d seen the score in the Richmond game. I hadn’t. He said the Lions had yet to kick a goal.

I said it was time I better go.

Dusty’s door, Langridge St Collingwood: unbreakable.

Back to the car. Quick stop on Langridge Street to take a photo of Dusty’s No. 4 painted on the roller door of a mechanic’s garage. Right onto Hoddle Street. An awkward conversation with Josh (do you mind terribly if I dropped you off at Richmond Hill, etc). I had a game to be at.

Last Saturday afternoon I ran to the ground, got there huffing and puffing, stood under the concourse on a wing, took it all in, all the grass, the wide expanse of green, the players running here and there, and shafts of bright autumn light, then sheets of light rain, and saw Dylan Grimes running back with the flight of the ball to spoil a marking contest beside their goal square. The desperation. A quest. We hold no malice to the Brisbane Lions, old Fitzroy, but all of us at that ground on Saturday afternoon, seated sparsely in the open, huddled under the rooflines, wanted to keep them goalless.

This is what happens when yours is the best team.

You find other ways to set a challenge.

And on Saturday at the MCG, this afternoon like no other – I cannot remember another game like it – was punctuated with the exclamation mark of Dusty’s last goal.

A run, that chest of his puffed out, a sidestep, snapping on his left, the  Punt Road end, the delirium of the crowd. Nothing thrills us so much as a player like him, running in space, with all his confidence and pomp.

MCG, Saturday afternoon, still life.

▰▰▰▰▰▰▰

This coming Saturday, Richmond are not playing. Nor on the Sunday.

It is the last weekend of Nick Howson’s exhibition, a last public viewing of his Dusty.
Get along, go! Go see the garage door on Langridge Street, also. If you know anyone with deep pockets, a love of art, and a love of Dusty, tell them they must see it. The price tag? $12,500.

I can only dream. But dreams can take you anywhere.

Go Tiges! Go Nick Howson, you beauty!

Nick Howson
Suburbia
Australian Galleries, 35 Derby Street Collingwood
Open daily 10am-6pm
Exhibition closes this Sunday.