Proud team reduced to paper Tigers Sally Bennett
Herald Sun
May 13, 2010 9:09PM THE trouble with footy fans is that they are so caught up in their emotions they cannot see what's good for them.
Like obsessed lovers trapped in tumultuous affairs, they are incapable of stepping back and surveying the landscape objectively.
Take Tiger fans, for instance, locked in wedded misery to a team that eternally disappoints. Not some of the time. Not but the good outweighs the bad. All of the time.
What the Tigers most need now is a bit of tough love. They need to be scared into action. They need a wake-up call, from the top down, and there's no one better placed to give it to them than the fans.
So, as a non-football fan of any club or code, but the mother of a Tiger tragic, here's some sensible, get-results advice.
Put your foot down, Richmond fans. Abandon those sorry losers. Cancel your memberships and don't turn up for games.
Would you show such "loyalty" and "passion" to a horrible spouse, or a dreadful boss, or an untrustworthy friend?
No. You'd tell them to stick it, eventually. Particularly if they let you down year after year and appeared to have few redeeming qualities.
When are you going to stop thinking with your hearts and start thinking with your heads? When are you going to get angry, instead of just shuffling off in resigned, pathetic acceptance? When are you actually going to react?
You don't have to cut them off forever, just become members of the Former Richmond Fan Club until the team proves itself worthy of your love. Set up a Facebook site, make up bumper stickers, whatever ... just do something.
At the moment you're behaving like doormats, allowing yourselves to be mistreated, disrespected and completely taken for granted.
Just as it is with a downtrodden lover, you are not doing yourselves any favours by playing the loyal, long-suffering fools. And you most certainly are not getting what you want.
If you don't feel able to abandon the troops while they "rebuild", ask yourselves honestly how many years you've been doing just that.
I encourage my son to have a second-best team, but there seems to be an unshakeable tradition that runs through Richmond fans of any age.
My son wouldn't do it to his father, who wouldn't have done it to his father, and so on.
But I bet some of the late fans now turning in their graves would be only too happy to
come back and give the Tigers a good swift kick in the pants.
In my son's 11 years, he has never seen the Tigers rise any higher than mediocre, yet it's water off a duck's back.
So, you see? The yellow and black passion is already dying a slow, painful death.
Cut that pack of losers loose, take a stand and make them earn your respect. They will if they have to.
Sally Bennett is a Herald Sun journalist http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/proud-team-reduced-to-paper-tigers/story-e6frfhqf-1225866310944
