Richo has never changed... thankfully Martin Flanagan
October 30, 2010 JUST after the bushfires of February 2009 I was phoned and asked by a publisher if I wanted to write a book on Richo. It was a gloomy period. In my 25 years in Victoria, I'd seen rivers disappear and lakes evaporate; now the place was exploding.
By contrast, the idea of writing a book on Richo sounded like fun. I contacted him and asked him what he thought. "I'm honoured that you would ask," he said, "but I don't really have a story." I must admit I was taken by that reply.
When the publisher first rang me, she said brightly, "We want 80-100,000 words on Richo". I said, "He's not Winston Churchill." That's what Richo understood from the start.
Books are big things. It takes a lot to fill them. After we'd been working for a while, he told me he'd been nervous when we began. Why? I asked. "Because I couldn't see how anything in my life was worth writing a book about - so what were you going to write about?" That's where Richo's smart. His modesty and his intelligence amount to the same way of seeing the world.
When we started we knew the book was about him as a player.
We also knew we had certain things in common. One was that we both appreciate the history of the game.
He sees himself as being part of a much bigger story that includes the history of the Richmond Football Club.
On Thursday in Hobart, Richo met John Smeaton, son of George Smeaton.
Jack Dyer said the dark-skinned Smeaton, known as "The Brown Bomber" - a name he inherited from American boxer Joe Louis - was the toughest player he played with.
On Wednesday, we went back to the Devonport Football Club, where Richo played his first senior footy, to launch our book together. His mate Foo was there. They played footy against one another at high school. His mates from that time are still his mates.
Of his two "best mates", one, Simon Lucas, he has known since birth.
He met the other, Ben "Harro" Harrison (who played 150-odd AFL games with Carlton, Richmond and the Dogs), when he was five.
Harro will tell you Richo hasn't changed since he was a kid. Indeed, you can argue Richo played his best footy in the AFL when they finally let him play as a kid and do what he did in the mini-league. Run everywhere.
Richo's into music. Benny Gale says growing up on the north-west coast of Tasmania in the 1970s that's all there was - footy and music.
I said to Richo, "Books are like songs. I'll write it, you read it and tell me if I've got the right tune." That was the deal. That and the fact that we weren't interested in cheap disclosures or manufacturing false controversies.
He's not interested in that stuff; it's just not part of him. The further we went, the more I relied on his judgments. His responses are unerringly honest and he has that most elementary of wisdoms - he knows who he is and who he's not.
To begin with, we just talked footy and he told me the story of his career as he remembered it. He doesn't remember much. He described whole seasons in a sentence. I spoke to former teammates. There were remarkably few stories. The one most commonly told was the day coach Robert Walls caught young Richo looking out the window at the Nylex tower when he was sternly instructing the team.
The Nylex tower is the one Paul Kelly sings about in Leaps and Bounds.
It's the four grey silos with a flashing sign on top that gives the temperature and the time. Walls believed Richo was reading the time to see how much longer he had to endure the coach's harangue.
Benny Gale says, "The thing you have to understand about Wallsie is that he can use words." His sprays were not just spittle and profanity. They were verbal demolitions. That was early in Richo's career when coaches were trying to break him like you break young horses. They failed.
The most remarkable thing to me about Richo as a person is his absence of illusions about himself.
No one will surprise Matthew Richardson by telling him he's an ordinary person. It's like saying a hut is a hut or a tree is a tree. His favourite Beatle is George Harrison, the sane one. He's also good with people in that he makes an effort with them.
My favourite photo of him is not in the book. It was sent to me after it was printed by Tony and Daniela Ruberto. It's of their small son Marcus and Richo sitting on a couch. Both are smiling at the camera. Seven weeks later - and nine weeks after he was diagnosed - Marcus died of a brainstem tumour. According to his parents, his "one and only wish" was to meet Richo. Why do people identify with Richo? Because he's a good bloke, plain and simple.
On Thursday, in Hobart, when we did an interview with ABC radio they threw open the lines, and his grade two teacher from Our Lady of Lourdes Convent in Devonport rang in and said how he mixed paints for her and was always punctual.
After that, he went off to yet another signing and we met at the airport a few hours later. He was all signed out but he told me the highpoint of his week. A woman who had read the book appeared at one of the signings and presented him with a tea towel imprinted with an image of the Nylex Tower.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/richo-has-never-changed-thankfully-20101029-177kg.html
