Richo the reliable maverick
Greg Baum | July 18, 2007 | The Age
FOR 15 years, Matthew Richardson has not merely played for Richmond, but personified the club in all its promise, passion, flaws, yearnings, hopes and failure, and especially in the repeated breaking and repairing of the hearts of the supporters. Richardson, more than any other player in the competition, has been the fan on the field.
Richardson is the son of a Richmond player, grew up in northern Tasmania barracking for Richmond and did not think twice when offered the chance to play for Richmond. He said he regarded periodic speculation that the Tigers would trade him as an occupational hazard, never broached with him. He has never thought about leaving the club.
The trouble is that Richardson's Richmond has been only a shadow of his father's Richmond, his boyhood Richmond, the Richmond with which he fell in love.
In his time, the Tigers have almost gone broke twice, changed coaches five times and played in the finals just twice. His own career has been likewise unfulfilled. He has kicked as many goals as Peter Hudson and Wayne Carey, but never topped the AFL goalkicking, never won the best-and-fairest and never captained the club.
Now the Tigers are last on the ladder again. Characteristically, Richardson's eye is on the silver lining. "If you haven't got hope, what's the point of playing?" he asked rhetorically. "There's no reason why I can't hope to play in finals for the Richmond Football Club.
"Look at Hawthorn now: this time last year you wouldn't have thought they would be second on the ladder. That's how quickly it turns around. I'm still hoping that in the next few years, I'll get to play finals for Richmond. If I do, it will be a sweet moment." Richardson is 32, contracted until the end of next season, but anxious to play at least two more. His sometimes brittle body at last is rallying to his cause.
Coach Terry Wallace said that years of failure, far from depressing Richardson's motivation, had only made him more desperate than ever. Wallace marvelled at his work ethic.
"If you put everything else aside about Matthew — what he's done, what he hasn't done — it's amazing how a guy who's been in the system for so long, who's as big and powerful as he is, can run like he runs," he said.
"We've seen a lot of key-position players over the years who go back to the goal square and start to slow down in the latter part of their careers. We haven't seen that with Matthew at all. It was only last week that his opponent said he was the hardest working player he'd every played on.
"I couldn't believe when I got here how much work he did over the summer months out on the ground. It got to the stage where it was ridiculous. He wanted to do as much as the 19-year-olds were doing. We tried to ease back on that a bit. We've got a bit more common ground now."
Still, half-measures will never be Richardson's way. Every week, he takes fans on a ride, thrilling them with his high marking, frustrating them with his erratic kicking, warming them with his obvious passion, infuriating them with his sometimes ingenuous body language, then endearing himself again with an unexpected ballburster.
They are the parts of the indivisible whole, to be taken or left in its entirety. Mostly, the fans have taken.
Richardson delights and frustrates himself, too, making him the most theatrical player of his time. He launches another kick at goal on a wing and a prayer, then — like a golfer tracking a putt — bends his body this way and that as he urges it to follow a true course. It makes for an irresistible spectacle.
If he scores, he raises his arms, almost self-consciously, still. If he misses, he bangs his fist into the turf in despair. Either way, the fans can be sure of two things, that it at least means as much to him as it does to them, and that his chances are as random as ever. It is ever so at Tigerland.
Richardson makes no apology for wearing his heart so prominently on his sleeve. "That's just the person I am when I'm competing. I get pretty passionate about it," he said. "Over the years I've learned to keep it in check.
"But I don't think I could play good football if I didn't play with some sort of passion or emotion. I think that's how I get the best out of myself. I wouldn't change much."
For a time, Richardson's antics were misunderstood as self-indulgence. Once, infamously, he was dropped for gesturing his annoyance at a teammate's slipshod pass. Slowly, club and fans have learned that it is not half-heartedness, but a surfeit of it.
"As I've got older, and people have watched me more, I think most people see me for what I am," he said.
Wallace is convinced. "Matthew is as good a team player as we have."
His goalkicking will remain a mystery, even or especially to himself. It is because it requires a measure of deliberation that is at odds with the instinctive way he otherwise plays the game.
"The thing is that you can sit out here (gesturing towards the Punt Road Oval) and have 500 shots every day and probably kick 80 per cent, but game day things change," he said. "You can't duplicate it at training. You can work on it as much as you like, but once you get out there on game day, it's totally different."
Richardson and the Tigers have been like a marriage, for better and for worse, now unto death unparted, which is just as he would have had it when he set out. For fans, there is the certainty that if Richardson sometimes has been the cause of their despair these last 15 years, much more often he has been the antidote.
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