Tigers give thanks to Mildura

[Tiger Spirit]

Tigers give thanks to Mildura
7 February, 2005
Paul Gough
Sportal

For Richmond legend Dale Weightman, the Tigers' trip to Mildura this week as part of the AFL's community camp week was about far more than the club just doing their bit to spread the Australian Rules gospel.

Instead it was a giant homecoming for the local hero and the chance for the club to say "thank you" to a city that has produced more than its share of Tiger champions over the years.

Mildura is not only the home of Weightman, but also of his fellow 1980 premiership hero Mark Lee as well as former skipper Matthew Knights and Phil Egan.

"Being a local lad from Mildura, it really has been a special week," Weightman said as around 2000 Tigers fans watched the club's first intra-club hit-out of the season on Thursday night.

"We have had peak crowds at all our functions, the clinics have been great and the boys have gone into the high schools and that has been fantastic."

Weightman said Mildura, which is the furthest Victorian regional centre from Melbourne, was starved of contact at the top level with the game it loves so much.

"People here starved of the AFL," he said.

"It's so far away (from Melbourne), about 550km so it's not as if you jump in the car and just drive down to a game anytime."

And according to Weightman that's why the past week has been so important - not just to the people of Mildura but also the Tigers.

"I think the last time the Tigers were here as a team was in my second year 1978/79 and we played a game against Hawthorn," he said.

"We used to come up in the 80's when it was our (recruiting) zone (in the days before the national draft) to do clinics but a lot of people here still follow us because a lot of our former players came from here."

Weightman said such was the keenness for everything "yellow and black" in Mildura that the club sold more Richmond merchandise on the first day of their camp to Mildura this year than they did for the whole week last year on the Mornington Peninsula.

And Weightman is hoping the club's return to Mildura will lead to the start of closer ties with one of the club's most solid support bases.

"Terry (Wallace) mentioned that at the civic reception in that like Essendon have very good ties with Darwin, we would like to again have those ties in Mildura."

"We will be continuing to promote the area and hopefully we can get back and start producing the players from here that we have in the past."

http://richmondfc.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=184277

[Tiger Spirit]

Weightman said such was the keenness for everything "yellow and black" in Mildura that the club sold more Richmond merchandise on the first day of their camp to Mildura this year than they did for the whole week last year on the Mornington Peninsula.

This is something near and dear to my heart.  And I don’t know where to start.  Other than to just give it to them.

When the SOS campaign was launched in 1990, Sunraysia formed a committee to help raise funds for the Club.  I forget the specific details of it all, but I think we had something like 3 weeks in which to raise money.

The Committee, of which Dale Weightman’s parents were part of and mostly led by, and also included the parents of Mark Lee, Matthew Knights and the Bower boys’ father, helped raise something like $10,000 in that time.  Had things gone a little differently, a lot more could have been raised.  But that's the way things go sometimes.

When the campaign was over, RFC made comments that it had budgeted for around $2,000 from the area.  Whether they were just saying that or not I don’t know, but it just goes to show how much they really knew the area.

One event organised, through the assistance of RFC, was a merchandise stand at the annual Mildura Show.  As one of the volunteers, I remember giving away posters and the like to kids that stopped at the stand.  One thing that struck me was that, to them, it didn’t matter that the posters were a few years old, they were just thrilled to have something that was Richmond.

I just never understood why RFC never devoted more time to Mildura and instead treated the area more with contempt than anything else.  From what I remember of the area, the majority of people always seemed to be Richmond supporters.  Even though the Club wasn’t going all that well, they were still out there.

Not that this was RFC’s fault, but at times the coverage of football up there was just about non-existent, which was probably just as well, given how we were going at the time.  I remember seasons where if I saw Richmond on tv 4 times a year I was one of the lucky ones.  Supporters of some Clubs never even got to see their team on tv.

Considering the coverage the AFL had up there, you would’ve thought you were in some back block, rather than in the state of Victoria.  Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.

Things have changed in the last few years and the coverage is a lot better than it used to be.  And it would want to be.

[mightytiges]

Weightman said such was the keenness for everything "yellow and black" in Mildura that the club sold more Richmond merchandise on the first day of their camp to Mildura this year than they did for the whole week last year on the Mornington Peninsula.

I just never understood why RFC never devoted more time to Mildura and instead treated the area more with contempt than anything else.  From what I remember of the area, the majority of people always seemed to be Richmond supporters.  Even though the Club wasn’t going all that well, they were still out there.

That's a poor effort. As a club we're competing against 9 others for the Vic market so to ignore a region which is pro-Richmond is just plain dumb  . Hopefully the community camp was a first step in rectifying our re-connection with Mildura.

[Tiger Spirit]

I thought it was poor too MT.  After the SOS campaign, one of the committee members decided to form a Sunraysia Richmond supporters’ group.  But, after a short time, due to what we’ll refer to as “a break down in communication” between the Prez. of the Sunraysia group and a representative of RFC, it never really got off the ground.

To my knowledge, there was no further correspondence from RFC to find out the reasons.  But I could be wrong on that.  Whatever the case, you would’ve thought that they would make more effort in an area was that was so pro Richmond.  And no doubt still is.

[mightytiges]

Communication breakdowns and loss of connection with the supporter sadly appeared to be far too common over the past decade or two TS. Mildura should have been and should be a no brainer going by the support for the RFC there.

Although our on-field woes has alot to do with it our member to supporter ratio is still low compared to the likes of other Vic clubs. On a positive note the past year or so the Club has been working hard through the reward program and now Wallace's media presence to improve that. However we really won't see us as the "big" club we once were until the on-field perfromance picks up hopefully in the next 2-3 years.     

[Tiger Spirit]

For anyone who knows the area, they would realise what a “no brainer” it really is.

But as you say MT, a lack of communication by RFC, over a number of years, has helped cause a lot of our problems.  And it’s no wonder we’ve been such a poor performing Club, both on and off the field, when we have supporters we don’t even know about.

And when we did know about them we became complacent and chose to ignore them.

It wasn’t just because zoning was abolished that ties between RFC and Sunraysia were severed.  Because when the ties were still there, the locals who had dealt with the Club had the opinion that RFC was arrogant in some of its dealings with the area.  And they would even laugh in your face if you suggested that RFC would in some way ever bother to help out.

But as soon as they wanted help from the area to save the Club, all of a sudden they had people flying or driving in to get support for the Club.  Despite all that, the locals still bothered to help.

[julzqld]

Last week, we had the Brisbane Lions visit my daughter's school as they were on the Gold Coast for their training camps and visited all the primary schools.  My daugther said that the students got to ask questions and I told her she should have stuck her hand up and asked them "how do you think Matthew Richardson will go this year?"

[Tiger Spirit]

How frustrating is it when they get the opportunity and they just don’t ask the right questions Julz?   Or they just aren’t able to answer your questions afterwards?

Last week, I had a phone call from my 8 y.o. niece.  The Richmond players had conducted a clinic for some of the schools in the area where she’s from and she was telling me all about it.  Where it was and how the players had come by bus and what sort of things they did throughout the clinic.

Then she mentioned she had got some autographs.  But couldn’t tell me the names of any players she had met or whose autographs they were (mainly because the autographs resemble chook scratches).

Might have to start an education process I think.