Classic one-liner sums up ‘Spud’Matthew Richardson,
news.com.auThe following is an edited column Richmond great Matthew Richardson wrote for news.com.au in 2015. Frawley tragically died in a one-car crash west of Melbourne on Monday. Richardson’s anecdote sheds light on the type of character the St Kilda legend was.It happened at Richmond in 2004. After making a prelim in 2001 we had some pretty lean years under Spud, culminating in a 14-game losing streak to finish the 2004 season.
I couldn’t tell you what game it was after but some time towards the end of the year I remember driving to the club on a Monday after another loss and sitting in traffic on Punt Road and really dreading what I’d find there.
There’d been a lot of speculation in the paper that day about Spud’s job and as I got closer to the club I could see the big aerials that sit on top of the media vans sticking up from the car park and immediately thought, “This isn’t a good sign, something’s going on.”
I made my way past the reporters and got into the club and the first thing on the agenda was a team meeting upstairs in the Graeme Richmond room. The whole team was in there, it was pretty tense and sombre, no one was saying much, but there was one glaring absence — Spud wasn’t there.
We waited about 15 minutes and finally we heard him walking up the stairs. I was looking down at my feet as he entered the room because you know you’re every chance to cop a spray if you make eye contact. When I looked up, Spud was standing up the front of the group and he had a compressor we used to pump up the footballs on the ground next to him.
We’re all starting to think, “Maybe Spud has lost the plot here, what the hell is he doing?” He just stood there and he was looking at us and then he slowly bent down, picked up the compressor and held it up above his head.
He kept looking around and then said fairly quietly, “What am I boys?” No one said anything. He waited another 10 or 20 seconds and then said a little bit louder, “What am I boys?” No one knew what to say, so no one said anything. So a third time, with the compressor still above his head, Spud really yelled it, “WHAT AM I BOYS?”
One of the young players who made the rookie error of sitting in the front row finally broke the silence and said, “I don’t know Spud, what are you?” And Spud replied: “I’M UNDER THE BLOODY PUMP!”
Everyone roared with laughter and it really eased the tension in the room, which was obviously his intention. It summed up Spud as a character — he could always find a bit of humour in the most dire situation. It didn’t help him in the long run — later in the season he announced he was going to resign at the end of the year — but I’ll never forget that classic one-liner.
It might not have changed anything but there was a bit of method in Spud’s madness that day at Richmond. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to get a bit of humour in the place.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/matthew-richardson-recalls-afl-legend-danny-frawleys-hilarious-oneliner/news-story/e97d23d566ef8642f7cec0098a3106dd
