The anniversaries of famous flags also stir up memories of downfalls
When winning is no celebration JAKE NIALL
June 24, 2010 The anniversaries of famous flags also stir up memories of downfalls.
WHILE Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon are all celebrating anniversaries of famous premierships this year, the other member of Victoria's heavily supported ''big four'', Richmond, has not organised a function to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the club's last premiership in 1980.
Some of the players from that 1980 flag remain interested in a reunion, but if they do organise a gathering - and there's a tight core that stays in regular touch - it won't be under the auspices of the club, which is commemorating that flag with a release of memorabilia, such as signed jumpers.
Richmond has had its fair share of big ticket functions in the past 18 months; it celebrated its centenary as a member of the VFL/AFL competition in 2008 and held a massive Matthew Richardson testimonial/tribute earlier this season. The 1980 team had been honoured by the Tom Hafey Club last year, and the club felt that it couldn't overdose on functions in 2010.
If Richmond's reasons for letting 1980 pass without major fanfare are entirely practical, one could argue that the club has, unwittingly, made the right cultural call too, because 1980 signalled the beginning of Richmond's sharp descent from powerhouse to poor house. The 1980 premiership, then perceived as the dawning of another Richmond hegemony, was actually an orphan flag - it was not really related to the four fraternal flags under Tom Hafey (1967, 1969, '73-74), having a different coach and only two survivors from 1967 and 1969, Kevin Bartlett and Francis Bourke from Hafey's heroes. Orphan '80 would become increasingly lonely in the ensuing 30 years.
Yet the Tigers weren't the only big four club to suffer from post-premiership malaise. Collingwood, too, didn't recover well from the breaking of footy's most storied drought in 1990 and, in the course of the decade just gone, Essendon also gradually ebbed from the high water mark of 2000. Remarkably, none of Richmond, Collingwood or Essendon has won a premiership since '80, '90 and 2000 respectively.
Of these decade anniversary premierships only Carlton's 1970 flag, won in probably the most extraordinary and eventful grand final of all, served to strengthen the victors. It was 1970 that represented a revolution in many respects: the Blues deposed Collingwood, which had led by 44 points at half-time, as the competition's super club.
Ron Barassi's status as super coach was born in that game, due in part to the mythologised ''handball, handball'' speech at half-time. The game heralded, or cemented, the advent of modern, play-on football in everyone's mind. Ted Hopkins, who came off the bench and booted four in the second half, agreed with the notion that 1970 helped make Carlton greater, while simultaneously ruining its major rival, the Magpies, who in Hopkins' view, were ''demoralised''.
As Kevin Sheedy observed in Cakewalk, Michael Gleeson's account of the Pies' 1990 premiership, a flag ''is not always great for your club. It wasn't great for Collingwood, but another one for Essendon at that time mightn't have been great either. Most clubs can't handle handle winning premierships - you get complacent, you don't believe you have to listen any more. The lights just go out.''
Sheedy thinks the bitterness of 1990 enabled the Bombers to win their stunning 1993 flag: ''After a long period, 1990 told us we had to change.''
Essendon didn't fall apart after 2000, as the Tigers and Pies did after their last flags. Essendon remained powerful off the field; it did not, however, remain at the cutting edge of football in the next five years. Sheedy's assessment of 1990 could also be applied, less dramatically, to the legacy of 2000. Post-2000, the Bombers were like the proverbial boiling frog who doesn't react when the water boils slowly; had they fallen sharply, more drastic reforms may have been undertaken. What these premiership anniversaries also underline is the scale of Geelong's achievement since 2007. The Cats didn't become complacent, party too hard or indulge in hubris. The premiership transformed Geelong into a winner; it developed a similar self-belief to Carlton circa 1970. But based on what's happened every 10 years since 1980, the challenge for the Cats may come if and when they win a third flag in 2010.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/when-winning-is-no-celebration-20100623-yz36.html
