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
Thanks Dugald, a good description of the day- so much to be amazed at, but also to be sad about. Sorry you have been treated so badly by the club.
Good on you, mate. Passion and honesty. We should all be so frank,.