A TIGER WITH HART
AFL Record -ROUND 13, JUNE 17-25, 2005
As a player Royce Hart was among the very best, achieving just about everything in the game. Together with Wayne Carey, he has been the most influential centre half-forward of the past 50 years. He talks to Ben Collins.
LEARN to make do with what you have.
If we had a footy, we were lucky. I only ever had one footy as a kid, and when the bladder wore out I stuffed it full of newspaper and kicked it around. You learnt to take care of what you had - there's no way you'd ever lose your footy because it meant so much to you. A lot of players in junior footy also didn't have footy boots, so they'd hammer wooden stops into their school boots and play in them.
My older brother Lance was one of the few players to keep Peter Hudson goalless.
Hudson was only young and starting off his TFL (Tasmanian Football League) career for New Norfolk - a few years before he went to Hawthorn - but it's an achievement that a lot of full-backs would have loved to claim. Lance played about 100 games for Clarence. He's five years older than me. I went to Clarence High School and always followed the club.
I was a rover in the Tasmanian under-I5 schoolboys team.
The carnival was held in Hobart. No one gave us any hope of winning our first game against South Australia and we ended up beating them. Playing as a rover was a real benefit for me for later on when I played at centre half-forward because I learnt to play on the ground as well as in the air. I tried to keep my ground play sharp throughout my career.
I grew a foot (30.5cm) in a year - 1964 and 1965.
I went from being a rover to a key-position player almost overnight. It was terrific - it opened up a new world to me. We played a lot of kick-to-kick at school and I found it hard to get a kick when I was only five-foot (152.4cm), but it was a lot easier when I was six-foot (183cm) - I started out-marking the same players who had towered over me only months earlier.
I held a junior high-jumping record for about 20 years.
I had natural spring, but I still worked hard on it - I did a lot of athletics at school- and I'm sure that helped my marking. Particularly flying in from the side to take marks. You don't see a high-jumper walk up to the bar and try to do a standing jump; he runs in from the side and jumps.
If you can handle playing in a higher age-group, go for it.
I went to train with Clarence's under-17 side but they weren't scheduled to start training for another couple of weeks, so I trained with the under-19s and ended up playing for them. I got best first-year player and, the next year, won the best and fairest for both the club and the competition. I really started believing in myself and I reckon the fact I skipped the under-17s had a lot to do with it.
I wanted to play at the highest level I could - I didn't want any regrets.
Whether that meant playing in Tasmania or in Victoria, so be it. A guy by the name of Harry Jenkins was a recruiting scout for Richmond and he recommended me to (Richmond secretary) Graeme Richmond. Graeme came to have a look at me on the Sunday, but we were scheduled to play on the Saturday, so he didn't actually see me play. But he caught up with me for a talk. I didn't take much convincing - playing in the VFL was the ultimate. In those days, you had to sign a Form 4. I signed it on the Monday and posted it back to Graeme. I was working at the Commonwealth Bank at the time and I only had one suit and a couple of shirts. Mum said: "You can go (to Melbourne) if they give you some clothes to wear to work." 50 the lucrative transfer fee was six shirts and a suit!
I needed to put on weight - there weren't too many skinny key-position players around.
I was still growing in height, but I had to put some beef on my bones. I was far too light - only 10 stone 12 pounds (69kg). Graeme Richmond told me: "You'll have to build yourself up. You'll need to be 13 stone (82.5kg) if you want to play League football." I spent the first six months of my time at Richmond pushing weights and doing gym work in (Australian tennis great) Frank 5edgman's gym under (renowned fitness trainer) 5tan Nicholes, who became the fitness
guru for Australia's Davis Cup tennis team. After a couple of years in the gym, I weighed 13 stone four pounds (84.4kg). I trained in the gym in the off-season every year from then on.
I kicked the winning goal in the 1966 reserves Grand Final.
Late in the last quarter we were a point down. I took a mark and lined up from about 60 metres out. One of my teammates, Barry Teague, said: "For heaven's sake, kick a point - there's only about 30 seconds to go!" I hoofed a torpedo, got on to it pretty well and it sailed straight through the middle. The ball went back to the centre, the umpire bounced the ball and the siren sounded about 10 seconds later. It was fantastic to do that in front of 100,000 people - it was the curtain-raiser to the 5t KiIda-Collingwood Grand Final.
My first season could not have gone any better.
We finished on top of the ladder (with 15 wins and three losses) and won the premiership, which is the ultimate, to break a long drought for the club. Personally, I was named the (VFL) Rookie of the Year, I played state football for Victoria, won the club goalkicking (with 55 goals) and played well in the Grand Final against Geelong (he gathered 15 kicks, seven marks, eight handballs and kicked three goals). I didn't think life could get much better for a 19-year-old.
I kicked 3.7 in my first game
- against Essendon, in front of about 60,000 people at the MCG. I could have kicked 10 goals on debut, but my kicking was atrocious. I'd always kicked torpedo punts up to that stage. But, after the game, Tommy Hafey and Graeme Richmond came up to me and said: "You've got to learn another kick - and learn to kick straight." I taught myself to kick a drop punt. There weren't many players kicking drop punts at the time - they either kicked drop kicks or torpedoes.
I made my state debut after playing only four VFL games.
I was originally picked in the Victorian seconds side, which was to play Tasmania in Hobart, while the main team was to play Western Australia at the MCG. About a week before the game, (then Carlton captain-coach) Ron Barassi pulled out with injury and I was promoted to the main side. They played me at full-forward and I kicked seven goals. The West Australian full-back was Colin Beard, who joined Richmond a couple of years later and played in the 1969 premiership side.
The bigger the crowd the better I played.
A lot of people get overawed by big crowds; they think: 'If I do something wrong, all these people will see it.' I was the opposite. I thought: 'All these people will see me if I do something good.' I had confidence in my ability and I saw it as an opportunity to show people how good I was. In my first (senior) final, (the 1967 second semi-final against Carlton at the MCG) I kicked six on Wes Lofts and we won by 40 points.
Our game plan wasn't always conducive to a big game from the centre half-forward.
All (coach) Tommy (Hafey) was interested in was moving the ball quickly and playing efficient football. Like (Denis) Pagan these days - it was all about goals per possession. We didn't have to drill anyone on the chest with a pass; we just had to get it in long and quick. That meant I'd be contesting in packs a lot - just about every mark was a contested one. I couldn't have a set plan about the number of marks I wanted to take or the number of goals I wanted to kick because I could never be guaranteed what would happen.
I played centre half-forward like a ruck-rover.
I wasn't really big enough to be a key-position player so I had to adjust my game had to play in front and be on the move, just as Tommy insisted. I soon learnt why. The opposition would plonk a ruckman in front of you who wouldn't go forward of the centre. They'd permanently station themselves between the centre and centre half-forward and try to chop you off, so you had to either keep moving or settle for the odd kick. The only way I could match the bigger players who were dropping back was to run in from the side and jump. My philosophy was that the bigger players find where the ball is going to land, so if you stand off them and run and jump in front of them you can cut the ball off before it got to them.
It was always two-on-one - and I was the one.
I expected that every time I played. Now when I hear commentators say: "He's forced to kick to a one-on-one," I have to laugh because I hardly had one-on-one in my whole career! I would've loved it if it was only one-on-one. Normally a team's best and most valuable players are on the forward line, so you only need a 50-50 or 60-40 chance to get the ball.
A key forward shouldn't just rely on winning the ball in the air.
Getting the ball on the ground is as good as getting it in the air - the main thing is getting it. A lot of players, when they drop a mark, or the ball is punched away, don't give a second effort - but the ball is still there to be got. The attitude should always be: 'If I don't get it the first time, I'm going to get it the second or,third time or however many times it takes.' You've got to keep going at the ball until it's out of your area.
I was afraid (Victorian Premier) Sir Henry Bolte was going to sack me for celebrating a premiership too hard.
I worked in accounting in the Premier's department for a while. After we won the '67 premiership, I didn't turn up for work on the Monday and Tuesday. When I finally turned up on the Wednesday, the accountant was really dirty on me. He said: "Sir Henry Bolte wants to see you. He might give you the sack." I walked into this big office and there was this little man behind this big desk. I said: "I'm sorry I wasn't here for the past couple of days, Sir Henry, but we won the VFL premiership and I was celebrating with my tearnmates." Sir Henry looked at me and grinned: "I know, I was at the game. If I was in your position, I wouldn't have returned to work for a couple of months!"
Training under Tommy (Hafey) could be torture.
I can say that now because I don't have to do it any more! At finals time in the late '60s, the journos would go to Victoria Park watch Collingwood train and when that finished they'd come down to Punt Road and we wouldn't even be halfway through our session! The hardest thing he made us do was 10 x 440 (yards - 400 metres) on the first night of pre-season training in the middle of February. You felt like keeling over after six or seven of them; after 10, you felt like you were going to die. We weren't even allowed a drink. Hydration wasn't a word back then - at least, it wasn't in Tommy's vocabulary! But that was the philosophy in those days - don't drink while you're exercising. It's a wonder no one carked it.
I had poor eyesight.
One day in the early '70s, I was walking off the MCG at half-time in a game against Hawthorn and I was talking to Neil Balme as we were walking towards the players' race and he said something about the scores being close. I couldn't read the scoreboard! I said to 'Balmey': "What's the score?" That's the first time I had been conscious of not being able to see properly. I went to an optometrist the next week and he said I was short-sighted and fitted me with a pair of contact lenses. I played the last three or four years of my career in contact lenses. My eyes were at their worst on overcast days or when there was some sun-glare. I can't drive at night because of the glare from car headlights. If I was playing today, I wouldn't have been able to play night footy.
I didn't train once with Richmond in our premiership year of 1969.
I was doing national service and was stationed in Sydney and Adelaide. I'd train one night a week with (SANFL club) Glenelg and fly to Melbourne on a Friday night, play on the Saturday and fly back on the Sunday night. It was very tiring. It wasn't an ideal situation because you'd rather be training with the team you play with at the weekend. It didn't affect my footy though - I won my first best and fairest. I also played one of my best games that year - in the first semi-final against Geelong (at the MCG), they credited me with 28 kicks and five or six handpasses, but I didn't even get in the best players because we won by 118 points and everyone played well.
I played in two league Grand Finals in the space of a week.
Richmond won the flag and the next week I played with Glenelg in the SANFL Grand Final. I was knocked out in the first 10 few minutes of the match. I can't remember anything about it. A couple of years later (1971), we played a practice match against Glenelg. It was the Tigers against the Tigers and we actually wore blue to avoid a jumper clash. We won and I kicked 15.2.
I wrote my autobiography at the age of 22.
It was ghost-written by both Bruce Matthews and Fred Villiers. They approached me with the idea and thought it might sell in the three states I'd played football- Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia. It caused a bit of controversy, unintentionally. People think I named myself at centre half-forward in my best-ever side, but the truth was that I was asked: "Who would you like to play with in the best ever team?" That's a different context. I've copped plenty about it over the years - still do - but I just laugh it off. When Bob Simpson named himself in his best-ever Australian Test cricket team (in the Herald Sun in December 2004), I got phone calls from radio stations who compared it to what I did. But, of course, it was entirely different.
I was weak on my non-preferred (right) side.
But I wasn't Robinson Crusoe there - a lot of players weren't very good on both sides of their bodies back then. I went through a period where I thought: 'I'll turn on to my right foot a bit more: but it was a short-lived experiment as I got caught a lot because the instinctive reaction of most footballers is to cover a player's right side. I soon went back to just turning on to my left foot.
My body took a battering, but that's just part of a centre half-forward's lot.
I trusted Tommy when he said: "Play in front." But if you do that all the time, copping heavy knocks is part of the deal. I got knocked out a few times. Someone wrote that I expected concussion six times a season, but that's not true - if it were, it would explain a few things!
Knee problems ended my career.
After two operations on my left knee, I did a cartilage in my right knee but the doctors couldn't guarantee that an operation would be successful. They warned me there was a possibility I wouldn't be able to get around too well later in life. But by that stage, I was 29 and I'd played in four premierships sides, so the decision to retire wasn't too difficult. If we hadn't won a flag and were close to winning one, it would have been tougher.
Everything stems from a solid technique.
The higher the level of football, the faster the speed of the game, so if you,are taught the correct technique early enough, you won't have to think about it when you're under pressure because it will be an instinctive reaction. I was a specialist coach at Richmond for a couple of years and paid special attention to the bigger forward types like Michael Roach, Jim Jess, David Cloke, Mark Lee and Brian Taylor, who was one of the worst kicks you'd ever see when he first came across from Mandurah (WA). 'BT' would have struggled to hit a barn door! But we improved his technique and, eventually, BT became a very good kick - in fact, one of the most reliable kicks for goal in the competition. The key to it was he didn't have to think too much about it because it became natural.
ROYCE HART
Born: February 10, 1948.
Richmond 1967-77: 187 games, 369 goals.
Glenelg 1969: 1 game, 2 goals.
Total: 188 games, 371 goals.
Honours: AFL Team of the Century (centre half-forward); Australian Football Hall of Fame member; Richmond Team of the Century (centre half-forward); All-Australian 1969; Richmond best and fairest 1969, 1972; Richmond leading goalkicker 1967, 1971; Richmond captain 1972-75; Richmond premierships 1967, 1969, 1973, 1974; Victoria (11 games, 29 goals).
