Johnson's steel suggests roar can be found
Martin Flanagan | May 12, 2007
The Age
ODD, that loss of Richmond's last weekend. I think an old-style English copper walking past the ground might have said: "Hello, hello, hello, what's going on here?"
The full-back, the experienced if much-abused Darren Gaspar, retires after a difference with the coach. Another experienced player, Greg Tivendale, whose form has been solid but who is not popular with the fans, is axed at selection. The captain, Kane Johnson, and a fourth experienced player, Shane Tuck, start the game on the interchange bench. What follows is a mugging.
The coach previously has announced 2011 as the club's date of destiny, thereby, it seems to me, puncturing one of the game's vital beliefs — that footy is something you live week-by-week, along with your medical ailments and irritating relatives. It's part of life's ups and downs. We all sustain ourselves with ridiculous beliefs. In footy, it may mean supporting a club that hasn't won a flag for 50 years and still believing each week you're a chance.
Instead, the Tiges have a five-year plan. The Soviet Union was big on five-year plans, but in the end, even the people making them didn't believe them. Chronic losses such as last weekend's don't combine well with five-year plans when you're already two-and-a-half years into the previous one. My instincts tell me the Tigers are in trouble.
AFL football is now hyper-competitive. It's like riding the Alps in the Tour de France. You have to be fit and strong and confident just to keep up. Drop off the back of the pack and you could fall a very long way. Dig deep, Tiges. It's a struggle to find your pluck, your courage, your might and power, after a loss like last week's, but life is a struggle. It's just that your struggle is on display. Anyone who pays to watch or sees it on television is free to voice an opinion. And — particularly at your club — they do.
This week, I rang around my Richmond mates, starting with my father-in-law. Never one to shirk from direct action in such matters, he said he'd clean the place out, starting from the top. Eventually, I was told by my wife not to over-excite him.
Then I rang David Frazer, an artist who grew up barracking for the Tiges in the Wimmera town of Murtoa. He says the result proved what he'd long thought — that the Tigers are uncoachable. "They should go the whole way and appoint Richo captain-coach," he said. Then he was sobered by the thought that if they're getting rid of old players to make way for youth, they might get rid of Richo.
Think deeply before you do that, Tiges. Richo's your champion. Former Richmond captain Wayne Campbell said as much in this newspaper a couple of weeks ago. The best centre-half forward of recent times, Wayne Carey, apparently agrees. Richo's conversion rate in kicking for goal is only marginally less than Barry Hall's, but his value is more than that.
Every club needs one player who sums up the agony and ecstasy of its cause and, at Richmond, that player is Richo. Treat him shabbily and you'll pay for it, Tigers. I may not know as much as others about the theory of the modern game, but I do know a bit about the game as popular theatre. This is a game of passion — grand passion, wild passion, mad passion — and anyone with eyes in their head can see that the brilliant, frequently broken, faulty Richo has played his heart out for the Richmond Football Club.
I saw the Tiges two weeks ago against West Coast. They weren't bad at all that day. Jay Schulz took three terrific marks early — I thought he was the ghost of Jim "The Ghost" Jess — and then kicked three points. It was that sort of performance.
Before the game, I attended a Richmond group organised by former player Nathan Bower. This was for ordinary supporters, the folk of the yellow and black. I met a young woman who is a friend of injured Tiger Mark Coughlan. I met Coughlan last year in a shelter in Fitzroy handing out breakfast to homeless people. "Mark does things like that," she said.
Before the game began, they showed a match on the big screen from 2005 in which the Tiges hung on to beat the Bulldogs by a few points. In the final minute, the ball was kicked loose to the wing. Flying backwards, horizontal to the ground, Richo narrowly failed to take the mark before being crunched by oncoming traffic. I've seen him do those sorts of things hundreds of times. At the end, the Richmond players all rushed into a big, joyous hug and the commentator said: "You'd think they'd won the premiership."
It can be that good again this year, Tiges. At Tuesday's press conference, I thought club president Gary March sounded firm in the crisis. Kane Johnson was good, too — direct and to the point. He is a man of subdued emotions, but the emotion he showed on Tuesday glinted with a clear light. His mind, rightly, was on tonight's match.
Leadership in footy is now made out to be as complex as the rest of the game, but reckon the leader in any situation is the person who shows the way. Or even a way. I got the impression Johnson knows the way back for his team.
Dig deep tonight, Tiges. Give your supporters something to hang their hearts on.
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