Shambolic Richmond finally sees the light
Matt Price
The Australian
May 21, 2005
MANY AFL supporters are beginning to understand how the average candlestick maker must have felt back when word broke that a smarty-pants named Edison had invented some fancy thingamejig called a light bulb.
Things, we fear, will never be the same again. I'm talking, of course, about Richmond.
For as long as most of us can remember – certainly the duration of the national competition – the Tigers have been the dependable under-achievers of the AFL. Forget other serial non-performers such as the Dockers and the old Brisbane Bears, both cobbled-together clubs fated to struggle.
Richmond descended to uselessness from fearsome heights. The proud near 100-year-old club, home to 10 flags and legendary players, morphed into footy's version of a lunatic asylum. Spats became feuds which degenerated into crises. Tigers fans, roused by the (very) occasional heroic victory, could set their watches to the certainty that a humiliating, morale-sapping, season-destroying thrashing lurked further down the fixture list.
Connoisseurs of mediocrity marvelled at Richmond's capacity to finish ninth – AFL's version of purgatory in which clubs are denied both the adrenalin of finals and morphine of draft concessions.
I'm rather fond of Richmond. One of my most joyous non-Freo memories came in 2001, the Tigers' flatter-to-deceive year, when they finished third. Richmond beat Carlton at the jam-packed MCG in a shambolic, scrappy, thrilling semi-final. The game was played on the first weekend after the September 11 attacks; for a couple of hours, at least, it became possible to forget the atrocities in New York and revel in blokes chasing a ball around a park.
Students of the enigmatic and eccentric adore Matthew Richardson. Richo has long been the walking, talking personification of his famous club: erratic, entertaining, frustrating, brimful of potential. Astonishing and unstoppable when switched on, Richo can also be spectacularly petulant and ineffectual. The late ultra-marathon runner Cliff Young couldn't shuffle the distance between Richo's best and worst.
But the world is turning. Richmond is switching from sit-com to, whisper it, serious contender. When Nathan Brown suggested the Tigers were a genuine top-four chance, nobody gagged or accused the star forward of overdosing on No Doz.
Coach Terry Wallace seems to have performed a miracle; the new Pope could do worse than dispatch a bunch of cardinals to Punt Road to clear the path for official beatification.
Few fair-minded fans will bewail Richmond's makeover. Perhaps it will suffer a mighty hiding in Brisbane to puncture the juggernaut, but I doubt it. True testimony to the Tigers' renewal is that it would be no great shock should they thump the Lions tonight.
The eradication of the rolled-gold basketcase is a regretful by-product of AFL communism. Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs, both expected to struggle, are playing the most entertaining footy in the competition. Collingwood is suffering horrendous injuries and Carlton is paying the cost of severe draft punishment for salary cap rorting. Neither club will be down for long.
We can, at least, rely on Fremantle to remind us that knuckle-headedness hasn't totally been eradicated from the game. Last week, Essendon's Mark McVeigh won a free-kick after the siren on half-back, was awarded 50 metres, then booted a goal from beyond 65m. It bounced through – after the siren, remember – with five Dockers in the goalsquare, including 211cm Aaron Sandilands. Even the Tigers at their demented worst couldn't have concocted such a cock-up.
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