How they saved the Tigers is worth celebrating Greg Baum
August 27, 2010 It is better to have a club - flawed, maddening, but ever striving - than no club at all.
IT IS 40 years since the landmark 1970 grand final, 30 since Richmond's last premiership and 20 since Collingwood's. It is also the 20th anniversary of a different sort of milestone triumph - the Tigers' over imminent extinction. They will celebrate today with a lunch that is its own affirmation: without a club, there would be no lunch.
It was skin-of-the-teeth close. From 1967-1980, Richmond won five premierships, its most fruitful era. Then it collapsed. Reckless spending on a ruinous war with Collingwood and a desperate effort to win a centenary flag in 1984 brought the club to its knees.
Recession hit hard. By 1989, the social club had closed, full-time staff had been reduced from 14 to seven and the famous tiger pelt that symbolised the club had been folded away so that the boardroom could be used for an office. Twenty-two court actions by former players were pending.
Debt stood at $1.7 million - this in an era in which a six-figure liability was considered critical. Only committeeman Garry Krauss's $400,000 loan kept the club afloat. But the Tigers were wooden spooners.
Cameron Schwab, then 24 and a lifelong Richmond fan, was newly arrived as general manager. ''You kept telling people it was all right when it wasn't,'' he remembered, ''because you didn't want the guts to fall out of the club.''
But Kevin Bartlett, midway through an understandably barren term as coach, knew different. ''As coach, we had no money,'' he said. ''No money for recruiting, for any sort of infrastructure. We had to chop players. We always had to try to cut costs somewhere.''
So at the end of 1989, the club decided to change tack, throwing itself on the game's mercy. At the annual meeting, president and ex-champ Neville Crowe, another Tiger from birth, made public the scale of the debt, shocking Bartlett and surprising even Brendon Gale, then a first-year player, now chief executive. ''We decided to say exactly how it was,'' said Schwab. ''We put the club on death row.''
In August 1990, it launched a campaign called Save Our Skins, giving itself 10 weeks to raise $1 million. An advertising campaign modelled on the graphic TAC ads was devised, and later won an industry award. Everyone from the president down, including the coach and players, set out to rattle tins and sizzle sausages.
''I was proud of how quickly the club mobilised,'' said Schwab. ''Richmond football club became a cause.'' Crowe especially remembered a teary primary schooler, Christopher O'Brien, who turned up with his father and his piggy bank, declaring: ''I don't want to lose my club.'' ''It blew me away,'' said Crowe.
Ex-players rallied. Gale remembered travelling to Warrnambool with hard men Ricky McLean and Robbie McGhie, and how, to his surprise, they still made sense at the end of the journey.
All were humbled by the charity, not just of Richmond fans, but many others. ''They were bloody generous,'' said Bartlett. The biggest single donation was Craig Kimberley's $10,000. Kimberley was president of South Melbourne.
The campaign revolved around two events. One was a rally at the MCG, drawing 10,000. Jack Dyer, the revered Captain Blood, then 76, was the immutable star. It was the first time Gale had clapped eyes on him, ''messianic, almost''. Recalled Crowe: ''He got up there and rambled on. But he rambled on with a heart full of passion for his Tigers.'' Bartlett and his team collected money in buckets. ''It seems archaic now,'' he said. But $300,000 was raised.
Windy Hill hosted a Richmond/Carlton legends match one Sunday, irking the VFA, but again selling out. ''Nothing's changed,'' urged coach Tom Hafey pre-match, as recalled by Schwab, ''just kick it long to Royce.'' ''But Bruce Doull kept punching it away!'' said Schwab. But, coin by coin, the coffers continued to fill.
Two factors weighed heavily in Richmond's favour. One was that Footscray's near-death experience the year before had concentrated the minds of fans previously cynical about football clubs and their apocalyptic warnings. ''This had a finality about it,'' said Bartlett. ''The Tigers were going to go out of business.''
Schwab is not sure to this day if the ANZ would have foreclosed. ''It wouldn't have been great marketing for them to pull the pin on an AFL club,'' he said. ''But they were seriously concerned.''
The other was that Richmond had been in living memory a club worth saving. ''The most common sum when the cheques came in was divisible by five,'' said Schwab. ''People would say: 'I'll give you $100 for each of the premierships I've seen'.''
Gale's abiding memory is of ''how much the club meant to people'', a revelation to him. Gale thinks no club will again have to live the Save Our Skins experience; clubs and competition were better managed now.
By October 31, 1990, Richmond was exhausted, but saved. Dyer had been the figurehead, but Crowe was the driving force. Latterly, he has had to deal with crises of his own, but his crusading role will be acknowledged today.
Redeemed Richmond never has become the Tigers of old, but as all will aver at lunch today, it is better to have a club - flawed, maddening, but ever striving - than no club at all. In 2008, the Save Our Skins campaign was named as THE defining moment in Richmond's first 100 VFL/AFL years.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/how-they-saved-the-tigers-is-worth-celebrating-20100826-13u6z.html
