How Tigers broke the script the win their chance at finals gloryPatrick Carlyon
Herald-Sun
August 31, 2014 BRENDON Gale’s Footy Record is screwed up tightly in his left hand. He crosses his arms and strokes his neck and sighs a lot, as though he has a headache, or has been deprived of sleep, or has been cast as an expectant father in the waiting room in an old movie.
This took place during the first quarter, as the Richmond chief executive’s team kicked five unanswered goals against the Sydney Swans late yesterday. Gale went for a long run earlier in the day, to settle down, to tire himself out. Was he admitting to nerves? Too right he was.
Gale had every reason to be jumpy. He’d been working without a script for the past 23 weeks, when Richmond unexpectedly lost the first game of the year, and then kept on losing. He’d been ad-libbing ever since as a voice in optimism and a pillar of stability in a club that had long specialised in messing with its fans’ heads. And never had Richmond done a better number of confusing than in the past six months.
Last night was a textbook example of the Richmond extremes. The early five goal blitz, for one, did not settle the result of the match. The venue itself deepened the oddness.
Passionate Tiger fans were met beforehand by the emptiness and echoes of ANZ Stadium, a lack of atmosphere that matched the Swans decision to rest Lance Franklin. The game was everything for Richmond, and Gale, perhaps the club’s most vested servant. It was a chance for nine wins in a row and a finals spot. Yet Sydney turned out grey sky and spots of drizzle.
High above centre wing, as the game tightened, Gale took to rubbing his face and scratching his hair. His symptoms described a kind of purgatory. At half time, after checking in with his seven-year-old son Donovan, he spoke of the 60 minutes ahead as an “agony”. At three-quarter time, as Richmond held a slender lead, he admitted it was in large part a product of a very tough year. “Five years into one, this season, I reckon,” he said.
The last quarter test that Gale, along with the Richmond cheer squad behind the goals, was unlike any other quarter of football for the year. Asked before it began for a result, Gale tipped his own team, citing a new ability to hold off big challenges.
This did not mean that Gale did not clutch his head and clasp his hands, as though in prayer, throughout the last quarter. The result, it seemed, amounted to brushing aside this: a 3-10 scoreline after 13 rounds, and the questions he had at the time asked of himself and every decision he had made — a self-analysis demanded of everyone in the inexplicable Richmond conundrum of that time.
When the match fell Richmond’s way, Gale finally allowed himself to let go. He jumped to his feet and pumped the air.
“Gee, they showed a lot of character, mate,” he said.
Before the year began, nothing less than finals would suffice, or so said new club president, Peggy O’Neal, who sat next to Gale last night. A club pass mark, she ventured at the time, would include a winning final. Others spoke of a top four finish.
After five games this year, Richmond had won two. Gale eventually gave up the rhetoric of finals aspirations mid-season and spoke instead of winning games, lest the crowds dropped and club revenues slid.
By yesterday, however, over the past eight weeks, Richmond and Sydney were, through the selective tease of statistical magic, rated the two best teams in the competition.
No matter that Richmond hadn’t won at this ground since 2002, or that Sydney had won the past two clashes, or that Richmond hadn’t played successive years of finals since coach Damien Hardwick was fresh out of nappies.
Yesterday was just another tick in Richmond redemption. Such a middling status, if Richmond goes no further, is less than any Tiger fan assumed back in March. But it is more than any dared hope after these teams last played in June. The good news is that they, like Gale, can hope for something better, and that’s another win next week.
Gale’s grandfather Jack played at Richmond, as did his brother Michael. Donovan Gale plans to one day.
The last time Richmond won a finals game was six years before Donovan was born: as his father said last night, playing in that 2001 game was easily one of the biggest highlights of Brendon Gale’s long playing career.
http://www.news.com.au/national/how-tigers-broke-the-script-the-win-their-chance-at-finals-glory/story-e6frfkp9-1227042532388
