With love, to Capt Blood Peter Hanlon
The Age
August 14, 2013 HUMP DAYJack Dyer jnr thinks of his late father often, and lately it warms him all the more. ''I was talking to someone the other day and said, 'If dad was alive now, he would have loved this - Richmond making the finals, having all those great young players'.''
The conversation took place at a vastly different Richmond Football Club headquarters to the one his dad knew, where he attended a Jack Dyer Foundation luncheon and was blown away by the people and their passion that filled the room. ''I was quite proud, it was packed, you couldn't move.''
He loves the fact that the proceeds from this yellow and black love-in go to a fund to help past players who fall on hard times. His father came from a world of struggle and hardship where football was an extension of the brutality of everyday life in inner-suburban Melbourne as the Depression bit hard. It informed who he was, but also left him with a more generous heart than the ''Captain Blood'' caricature suggests.
To Jack jnr, first and foremost, the great Jack Dyer was a father who loved his kids, who took him along on the carefree ride that was his life after football, who never pushed him to follow (which he belatedly did anyway), and who left him with a lasting image that would bring a tear to any parent's eye.
''We were very lucky,'' he says, speaking also for sister Jill. ''That's all I can say, we were very lucky to have dad as our dad and mum as our mum.''
Just the factsThe recollections of Jack and Jill Dyer have helped produce an affectionate and adventurous new book, Finding Jack Dyer. It is based on interviews with family and friends, and according to the jacket, ''enhanced with a dash of the renowned Dyer-esque exaggeration''.
The last time Richmond played finals, in 2001, the man who embodies its spirit was still alive. Without a premiership since 1980, its fans are no strangers to the occasional daydream. Jack jnr loves the book.
''He [author Tony Hardy] got a lot of information from my sister. I don't know how true all that is - I think she's got a bit of dad in her in that way. But even [those imaginings] were true to me, were part of the story which could have happened and to me it seems it would be true. He would have loved it.''
Hardy makes no apology for taking stories told by and about Dyer and giving breadth to the picture around them. ''The book's about him, but it's also about Richmond [the suburb and its team] and footy in that part of the 20th century,'' he says.
It begins with a 12-year-old Jack Dyer stepping off a bus from Yarra Junction into a suburb sinking to its knees, where children queued at the local pool simply to get a wash, where picket fences were weapons for gangs of youths, and the new kid in town would soon be taught how to break an opponent's collarbone on the football field - by a Christian Brother.
Hardy thinks it is a good period to view from the comfort of 2013. Jack jnr is grateful Richmond was already a much-changed place when he was a boy and that other than the war, ''things were getting back together''.
CelebrityHe remembers going everywhere with his father, meeting legends not just of other teams and stars of other sports, too. Later, when television gave his father's stardom a comical, loveable slant, Jack jnr thinks everyone in Victoria knew him.
''We used to go away a lot fishing or shooting, you'd walk into a hotel somewhere . . and next minute the pub would be full of people wanting to meet dad.''
All the attention made him a shy child. ''I used to go inwards instead of outwards.'' He remembers having no interest in football until his mid-teens; the game and its famous faces were a backdrop to simply being with his father.
''He never, ever pushed me,'' says Jack jnr, who eventually joined St Kilda YCW, won a best and fairest in an undefeated premiership team coached by Jack snr (''so I was proud and so was dad''), and in 1960 was picked for Richmond. He remembers a photo of dad presenting him with his No.17 guernsey, and gives thanks it was then, and not in today's blinding media spotlight.
''Not really,'' he says of any pressure. ''I wish I could have been a better footballer, that was all. I was terribly slow, put it that way.''
After three games he went to Prahran, did a knee 18 months later, and retired at 23. ''Dad never mentioned anything about it, it didn't upset him at all.''
Stories of the footballer abound, including one of Hardy's favourites. A policeman by day, Dyer was so angst-ridden about whether he should enlist in World War II - and so well-connected - that he arranged a meeting with prime minister John Curtin, who told him the Diggers at the front loved hearing stories of Captain Blood and he must keep playing football.
''He said, 'But I will ask you one thing, Jack','' Hardy says. ''My nephew plays for Fitzroy, Claude Curtin. I want you to leave him alone, Jack, don't hurt him'.''
Anything for country and prime minister, Dyer told him. And the next time Richmond met Fitzroy, he lined Claude Curtin up and knocked him out.
A softer sideMaybe it was instinct, perhaps he was just forgetful. A thread of Finding Jack Dyer is that, for all of his footballing viciousness, he was a nice man who floated through life and drew people to him.
Daughter Jill told Hardy of her mother Sybil telling Jack to stop leaving the family car unlocked outside their home. It kept happening, and eventually they discovered he was letting a homeless man sleep there on winter nights.
Jack jnr recalls the milk and bread given to a struggling family of 12 who lived near the Tigers Milk Bar run by Sybil and where Jack served kids on Saturday mornings before heading off to scare opponents witless in the afternoon. Writing the chapter about Dyer's 2003 funeral, Hardy found himself close to tears. From childhood he had heard the cartoonish stories about the brawling wild man, then seen Jack age on World Of Sport and League Teams. ''Then I realised, 'I've really got to love you mate'.''
Things to comeAge columnist Leaping Larry has been a Tiger since the '60s, listened to his father's tales of watching the great man, and reckons he borrowed Captain Blood: the Jack Dyer Story from the school library 30 times.
He sees Jack Dyer as a name you pledge allegiance to in the way young Americans do Lincoln or Franklin, even if they know little of their exploits.
He knows the sense of who he was will fade, but as the book does, he connects him with a suburb that is no longer struggle town but will never lose sight of what it was.
''That expectation that the team and the supporters in particular have that harder, nastier edge to them, that goes back to those times when Richmond had a reason for that, because things were really tough. And Jack was that in human form.''
Jack Dyer jnr is as excited about what's to come as he knows his father would be. ''I'd eat a Richmond football jumper,'' he says.
Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/with-love-to-capt-blood-20130813-2ruj2.html#ixzz2bs2wXG8Q
