Tired of whimpering, Tigers roaring back
Rohan Connolly | December 17, 2008
THERE was a pivotal moment in Richmond's slide from a power of league football to the wilderness from which it is still trying to emerge more than three decades later — and it came all the way back in 1975.
The Tigers were big, bold and not a little brash, and nothing it seemed would stand in their way of landing a very large catch in the form of star South Melbourne midfielder John Pitura.
After league investigations, fines and the threat of court action, Richmond eventually got its man. Pitura lobbed at Punt Road midway through the 1975 season in exchange for three players — Graeme Teasdale, Brian "Whale" Roberts and Francis Jackson.
For Richmond, it proved an expensive and energy-sapping disaster. The obsession with landing Pitura became a distraction, the loss of three good clubmen in one fell swoop damaged morale, and in only 40 games for the Tigers, Pitura never reached his previous heights.
Teasdale, would win a Brownlow Medal for South Melbourne, and Roberts would go close for the Swans in another.
But maybe the wheel has finally come full circle for Richmond. And it's the third member of the trio that had to leave Punt Road for the Lake Oval in the infamous Pitura swap who can now claim to have played a pivotal role in Richmond's two biggest recruiting gambits — 33 years apart.
It was Francis Jackson, now back at Tigerland as recruiting manager who, at 10.14am yesterday, called out the name Ben Cousins, and promptly sent the Richmond hordes into a frenzy of expectation, membership renewals and, doubtless, some impromptu production of memorabilia to mark the occasion.
They're a rabid lot, the Tiger army, but the scenes surrounding the week-long speculation about Cousins as a Tiger have been remarkable, even for them.
A tidal-wave of radio talkback callers gathered, willing the club to give the former West Coast premiership player a second chance, and there were spontaneous demonstrations outside the club when the "Polak solution" was scuttled and it appeared Cousins might be left without a home.
Anger turned to jubilation when Richmond crossed its fingers and used pick No. 6 on Cousins.
There's already palpable drooling from the Tiger masses over the 2009 season-opening clash between Richmond and Carlton. And why not?
A return to the biggest stage against a bitter foe from those golden days of the late 1960s and early '70s; Cousins in yellow and black against former teammate Chris Judd.
And for the fans already buoyed by the strong finish to 2008 — and with names destined to be crucial parts of the Richmond midfield machine for years, such as Brett Deledio, Nathan Foley and Trent Cotchin, now supplemented by one of the modern era's greatest running players — there is genuine hope, something they have lacked for far too long.
The Pitura deal, and the even more disastrous recruiting war with Collingwood in the early 1980s, taught the Tigers some lessons that were incredibly costly.
Richmond could now no longer afford stars. Long before rivals, it was forced to hang its hat on promising kids, to nurture them to stardom in keeping with the draft's "grow your own" philosophy. But those young Tigers simply didn't have good enough onfield tutors. The flaws were handed down from generation to generation.
The club pines for brilliance. It has just delivered a great whack of it.
Say what you like about Cousins away from the field, it's hard to think of anyone else on it who would provide a more effective teacher for Cotchin and company in the arts of hard running, winning the football and using it with precision.
When he comes to winning games of football, he might be arguably the greatest teacher of all.
If the Cousins gamble comes off, there might be some bigger-picture lessons to be learnt, too.
The advent of the draft and the skill with which it was utilised by some clubs seemed to kill off the concept of recruiting "the big fish" — the costs supposedly not worth the gain.
But Judd's move from West Coast to Carlton has made that football truism worthy of reappraisal. The extraordinary buzz surrounding the Judd move created a momentum for the Blues that lasted all of last season.
The pay-off in terms of a club's standing and profile was also apparent. By the end of 2008, the impact of Judd's abilities on an entire team was obvious.
Carlton, as coach Brett Ratten had vowed, had recaptured its strut. And for Richmond, the arrival of Cousins could prove a masterstroke in the Tigers recapturing their roar.
It's been three decades since the arrival of a superstar inadvertently helped bring Richmond to its knees.
Perhaps now, the luring to Punt Road of an even bigger name might, ironically, prove the catalyst for it standing tall again.
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