Any word on a final contribution to the FTF?
Caro says Mandie wouldn't have wanted others to know how much he donated.
Richmond bids farewell to an enduring and popular patronCaroline Wilson
August 18, 2011Tigerland has lost David Mandie, its most loyal benefactor.
DAVID Mandie's 88-year love affair with the Richmond Football Club was happily bookended by Tiger victories at the MCG - his first game a win over Melbourne in 1923 when he was five, and his last the club's round-seven victory this year against Fremantle.
What happened in between in the context of life is far too broad for these pages. But as a success story Mandie's is epic. In the context of football, Tigerland early yesterday lost its most enduring, loyal and generous benefactor.
Mandie has been Richmond's No. 1 supporter or patron for decades and he would hate the exact amount of his most recent act of generosity to the Fighting Tiger Fund recorded. But it should be remembered that coach Damien Hardwick's oft-spoken request for a competitive football team and department will be brought about largely thanks to the quiet backroom supporter who lived to 93.
Club president Gary March asked Mandie to present last year's Jack Dyer Medal to Jack Riewoldt. ''I'm so glad he did it,'' said March yesterday.
''For me he's up there with the Jack Dyers as a truly great Richmond person. Over the years he employed so many of our great stars and kept them at the club, and I will never forget the unconditional support he has given me.''
My personal memories of David Mandie are highlighted by his great personal charm, a legacy continued by his children and grandchildren. After Richmond won back-to-back flags in 1973 and '74, he presented both my father Ian, who was then club president, and long-time powerbroker Graeme Richmond, a watch and a Parker pen.
Those were happy days at Punt Road, punctuated by the Mandies' love of ceremony and September dinners at Florentino where three couples; the Mandies, my parents and Graeme and Jan Richmond, would quietly toast success - customary then but not seen at Richmond since 1980. That year, reportedly, even Graeme allowed himself a glass of champagne. David's late wife Minnie brought glamour to Tigerland with her fur coats and contagious smile, while David until close to the end would honour every occasion with a small bow and often a speech to mark it.
My father remembers how Mandie knew the numbers of every Richmond footballer dating back to the 1920s: ''Martin Bolger, Basil McCormack, Jack Baggott, he knew them all,'' he said yesterday. ''Whatever Graeme and I did, he gave us his total support, through good and bad times - and there were bad times.''
This was true of every administration, because Mandie was never political, declining repeated offers to join the Richmond board. The closest he moved to controversy in my memory was his unsuccessful attempt to convince Kevin Bartlett to return to the club to unveil the Jack Dyer statue outside the Punt Road Oval - one of his many gifts to Richmond.
Mandie's formal association with Richmond began in the early 1950s when the family bought the James Richardson liquor business in Abbotsford. Just as his mother took him to his first game as a five-year-old, Mandie's eldest son Ian recalls the day his father took him to Moorabbin.
It was 1955 and Jack Dyer jnr was playing on the forward line. ''Richmond was mandatory for our family,'' Ian said yesterday. ''He only had eyes for Richmond in one sense but he had eyes for the game as a whole as well.''
It is true that Mandie is a significant figure in the AFL's history, appointed the chairman of the VFL committee that ultimately established the basis for the transformation of the competition into its present AFL national structure.
But the Tigers, the once mighty football club which has endured so much pain over the past three decades, will always claim the No. 1 benefactor who never deserted them as theirs. Club chief executive Brendon Gale yesterday recalled the forward Mandie wrote several years ago in the Richmond centenary book which referred to his first game, aged five, in 1923. Mandie wrote: ''Since that day as a very young boy staring out enraptured between MCG bodies I have known it always has been and always will be about the club.''
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