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Tigers’ winning mantra: ‘I am the Richmond Man’The Australian
October 2, 2017Just before 7pm on Saturday night, Richmond forward Jack Riewoldt charged from the team’s inner sanctum intent on dragging club president Brendon Gale into the private room
Showing as much dash as he had when he grabbed the microphone to belt out Mr Brightside on the MCG stage with The Killers, Riewoldt found his mark.
Gale was corralled from the havoc of the broader Richmond rooms and dragged back inside a meeting place reserved solely for players and staff.
And as the doors closed, the secret to the Tigers’ transition from pretenders to champions was revealed. Plastered inside that room were the words: “I am the Richmond Man.”
Every football club has a theme they keep to themselves. It can change from season to season, week to week, but the best ones commit themselves to it, as Richmond did in 2017.
The triumphant Hawks from earlier this decade made a habit of it. It was a simple message in 2015: “Time to hunt”.
In 2008, Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson had famously drawn a picture of a shark on the whiteboard in the opposing change room.
The message was brilliant. Sharks (or Geelong that year) needed to move to stay alive. If the Hawks could halt the Cats’ movement, the premiership would be theirs.
The key to being a Richmond Man this season was to be fun around the club, an enjoyable presence, but a player who is also selfless and prepared to work as hard as possible for everyone else.
All and sundry talked about a disconnect between players and coaches at Richmond last year and how they needed to mend that to succeed.
It is no surprise that shortly after Riewoldt hailed Gale, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick returned from his media obligations arm-in-arm with a mate and mentor: Clarkson.
The Hawthorn coach had barged into Hardwick’s premiership press conference urging him to hurry up as he had a “frothy” waiting for him.
Hardwick served as an assistant coach to Clarkson in 2008, the shark-culling season.
They remain particularly close, and were seen deep in conversation on Brownlow Medal night.
Hardwick brought the interloper not only into the Tigers’ rooms on Saturday evening, but also into the inner sanctum.
Momentarily, Clarkson became an honorary Richmond Man. So, too, was Collingwood premiership player and Brownlow medallist Dane Swan, who stood draped in a Richmond scarf, celebrating with his great mate Dustin Martin.
Having produced arguably the greatest ever season by a player, Martin looked a little dusty when he joined his teammates and thousands of fans at Punt Rd yesterday.
Richmond Tigers' celebrations have lasted late into the night after their first AFL premiership in 37 years.
It is scarcely surprising they needed a freshen up, having kicked on till dawn at the inner-city nightclub Bond after official proceedings finished at Crown Palladium.
Young star Daniel Rioli, who will undergo surgery on the ankle he hurt in the last term of the Tigers’ 48-point triumph over Adelaide, has only been at Punt Rd for two wildly disparate seasons.
“There is a big connection now,” Rioli said. “I don’t think last year we were that connected as a group but we are certainly connected now. We go to dinners now and celebrate special occasions together and we are a tight-knit unit.”
The connection for Rioli runs deeper. The first thing he thought of as the siren sounded was how proud his great uncle, Maurice Rioli, would have been.
The 20-year-old wears the No 17 made famous by Jack Dyer and also worn with distinction by Maurice Rioli when he won the Norm Smith Medal on Richmond’s last grand final appearance in the 1982 loss to Carlton.
Defender David Astbury drove to the MCG listening to his family telling tall tales about Tatyoon, the tiny town he was raised in, to the ABC.
The straight-talking Tiger said Hardwick, if anything, had become too focused last season in a year they finished 13th, a slide that could have cost him his job bar for the faith Gale and president Peggy O’Neal had in him.
“This year, in particular, he has let himself show some emotion, show how much we mean to him, and sometimes as a player, that is what you really want,” Astbury said. “He probably fell victim to being too professional. I sort of said that in the past, but I just love him. I am so proud of him.”
For a club so ruthless and relentless this season, and particularly on Saturday, a key facet was making football fun again, senior Tigers statesman Shaun Grigg said.
“We had played finals for the three previous years and to miss out, to have a bad season, it didn’t sit well with us,” he said.
“We wanted to get back to enjoying our footy, similar to when we were a junior, to have footy and play with our mates.”
Hardwick had acknowledged the need to soften, to show some vulnerability, prior to the grand final when saying his wife had told him at the end of last year that he was no longer the man she married.
Grown men are allowed to shed tears too, as former Tigers captain and current Greater Western Sydney football manager Wayne Campbell did when he embraced his mate and Richmond legend Matthew Richardson after the game.
“It didn’t matter what type of season we had, Dimma was always huge for the players and you never, ever want to let him down, because he shows genuine care and it has really rubbed off on the playing group, because we all love each other,” he said.
The words of a true Tiger, a Richmond man.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/afl/tigers-winning-mantra-i-am-the-richmond-man/news-story/490974e0d1d9652f95104a67409e571c
