Patrick Carlyon: Tigers must get used to the smell of successPATRICK CARLYON,
Sunday Herald Sun
10 September 2017YOU can squeeze a lot into six minutes. A beer, a couple of smokes, a toilet stop. A psychoanalysis on a lifetime of doubt.
Three-quarter time in the Geelong match was another crossroads in Richmond’s longer history.
We had been here often. The Tigers led by 13 points. Here was a moment to reflect, and to wonder at all the ways that Richmond could lose.
Assumptions defaulted along the usual lines of despair and defeat. This team — my team — does not flower in pressure’s glare. The evidence was compelling. The three losing finals since 2013, the potted finals efforts of 1995 and 2001 that no other teams’ fans remember, and the decades that would be likened to a coma if Richmond were personified.
Would the final term loss be a slow shrink? Or an instant lay-down? Would a defender conjure the kind of rank error rarely sighted in under-12s?
It’s still hard to absorb what did happen. Richmond’s win, and its manner, was unsettling. The mindset of a generation or two was wrenched from our grasp. All the touchstones were erased.
Remember the 1990s, when Gary Ablett seemed to kick a dozen goals each time he played the Tigers, and people half your age teased you for your club, as if they had discovered you loved ABBA? Let it go. Friday has set you free. It doesn’t matter any more.
Richmond surged. It wanted to win. A goal followed a goal followed a goal. Many adjectives have been attached to these opening minutes of the final quarter, dominance and poise chief among the superlatives. These are not typically Richmond labels.
There were comparisons with other teams, such as Hawthorn and, indeed, Geelong in healthier days. Few compared the win with other important Richmond wins, mainly because most people cannot remember important Richmond wins.
Afterwards, the Richmond bond felt strange and new.
The romance was always bathed in melancholy, an affair to be nursed as an ache and a torture. Richmond has always been a burden to be acknowledged, but also a hurt to be hidden.
Friday night always threatened to toss petrol on the pilot light. Yet, instead of exploding the sadness, fear would be interchanged with hope. It now seems OK to believe, and safe to voice the feeling. The love once akin to a sad and sorry affair no longer feels misplaced. Being tethered to Richmond — for the first time since 1980 — feels liberating.
Melbourne was grey yesterday. Junior sporting fields squelched under foot. Yet the world was altered. A Richmond scarf here, a Tigers beanie there, and chatter of a club that could.
An unreality trailed these talks. You’re talking about my club. Few revivals have seemed unlikely. If Geez returns, surely now he’ll be sporting the yellow and black.
So thank you, Richmond. I think. You have finally purged the misery. It may take some getting used to. As Jack Nicholson’s character said in As Good As It Gets: “She’s evicted me from my life.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/patrick-carlyon/patrick-carlyon-time-for-tigers-to-get-used-to-the-smell-of-success/news-story/6ddf5e33dd0ebe835c2272945197d5da
