Cloke saga sparks Tiger memories Rohan Connolly
The Age
July 27, 2012 RICHMOND supporters are a notoriously romantic bunch, and to some the mere possibility of the return of a name as iconic as Cloke to the ranks at Punt Road will have had them donning rose-coloured glasses and dreaming again of the glory days of the 1960s and 70s.
But to the more hard-hearted of Tigers, any sort of speculation about their club chasing a big name for big bucks, whatever his surname, will instead have inspired a horrible sense of deja vu.
In the on-going soap opera that is the contract negotiations of Travis Cloke with Collingwood, Richmond has, almost inevitably, had the hat thrown into the ring on its behalf, joining a band of candidates now comprising Fremantle, Melbourne, Carlton and, after another former Tiger, Kevin Sheedy, bought into the fray again yesterday, Greater Western Sydney.
Of all the potential suitors, it's the Punt Road connection which is clearly the most sentimentally alluring, Travis' father David being a Tigers great who left the club for the Magpies after the disappointment and recriminations from their 1982 grand final loss to Carlton.
And any hosing down of the prospect will, it seems, have little dampening effect on the speculative fires.
Collingwood had a go at playing the fireman when it announced all contract dealings with Cloke had been put on hold until the end of the season. Richmond general manager of football Craig Cameron subsequently played a straight-ish bat to the obvious poser, while leaving an out-clause should Cloke's situation ''become irreparable''.
Magpies president Eddie McGuire weighed in again when he said Richmond president Gary March had told him in an interview for Fox Sports that the Tigers wouldn't be chasing Cloke.
But yesterday on SEN, Kevin Bartlett was quick to point out that was a line from an interview recorded before Collingwood had put the contract talks on hold, changing the ball game again. He was in little doubt what his old club should do.
''One of the things I've always liked about Carlton is that they have always thought big, always tried to act big, and it was the same thing when [Chris] Judd was available,'' he said. ''Surely, if Richmond wants to be seen as a power again in the game, one of the top clubs and biggest clubs with a big support base, if there's good players available under free agency, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by saying we won't be going after that player. That is absolute rubbish.''
And McGuire's response to that suggestion was predictable. ''That would be fantastic,'' he told SEN yesterday, with heavy irony. ''We could go back to the old days, when they had a crack at Collingwood, and it took them 30-odd years to recover from it.''
That's no mere hyperbole, either. Because the mid-1980s transfer war between Richmond and Collingwood helped plunge the Tigers into debt, as well as failing to prevent its plummet to the lower reaches of the ladder - positions from which, on both counts, they are only of late emerging.
Punt Road was a far from happy place after the favourites blew the 1982 grand final to the underdog Carlton, and less happy still after David Cloke and star centreman Geoff Raines left for the lure of big bucks at Collingwood. Both were denied pay rises and peeved by less experienced teammates, such as star interstate recruit Maurice Rioli, earning more than them.
Young spearhead Brian Taylor, who had missed out on a spot in the Tigers' grand final team, would join them a couple of years later. Richmond, driven by hubris and the influence of old-style administrator and father figure Graeme Richmond, embarked on an attempt at payback.
In the two years after Cloke and Raines left, they lured no less than a half-dozen Collingwood players - Phillip Walsh, John Annear, Craig Stewart, Neil Peart, Wally Lovett and Peter McCormack - into the Richmond den. McCormack was a handy full-back, Stewart a workmanlike key forward, Walsh the VFL's best first-year player of 1983, the other trio not as highly rated.
None of that half-dozen had more than fleeting impact with the Tigers, who, with the departure of veteran Bryan Wood for Essendon in 1983, along with Cloke and Raines to Victoria Park, had lost two former captains and a triple best-and-fairest winner. And the rest, as Richmond fans know all too well, is largely unwanted history.
It's fair to say this Cloke is a far bigger-ticket item than any of the Collingwood types Richmond picked up three decades ago. And with a more-than-handy midfield foundation, the lure of a premium key forward to Punt Road could be tempting, whatever the price tag.
But while Bartlett, who also missed out on that 1982 flag, then as coach for four seasons from 1988-91 was saddled with inadequate playing lists thanks to his club's fiscal disasters, believes it's time the Tigers thought big again and splashed some cash, the scarring from the 1980s transfer war runs deep at Punt Road.
A second-generation Cloke would be a nice, sentimental Tiger tale. But Richmond, more than any of its AFL rivals, knows all too well through bitter experience about that business maxim ''buyer beware''.
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