Richmond's faithful don't just want a win, they want a normal football teamJonathan Horn
The Guardian
19 April 2016Every year. Richmond do this every year. Every year there is some sort of biblical crisis, some last-minute calamity, some eye-crossingly inept passage of play that resembles the closing credits on Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. Every year, the press comes down hard.
In an industry always looking for an angle, Richmond never disappoints. The reporters and camera crews converge, the players slink in, the coach gets antsy. Last week, one of their many former coaches, who is at least partially responsible for this whole mess, was on radio taking pot shots.
On the ubiquitous footy analysis shows, the panellists opine on how a man who’s just had 38 possessions is the worst footballer since Austin McCrabb. On Friday night at Domain Stadium, after Richmond were blown away in the first half and suffered the indignity of the Eagles easing off the gas in the second, the seemingly three dozen panellists in Fox Footy’s ‘Lab’ looked especially grave.
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Every year, there are ‘only at Richmond’ moments. At Mad Monday a few years ago, their captain conducted the most po-faced of door-stop interviews whilst dressed as former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley. Earlier that year, star forward Jack Riewoldt provided some grabs that, by player-speak standards, verged on being interesting. He was promptly chased through the streets of inner city Melbourne like one of those dodgy landlords or plumbers on A Current Affair. He jumped a construction fence, ducked behind a parked car and was eventually collared at a Myki machine.
Every year, usually in the dead of winter, Richmond enjoy a riotous period of success. They knock off the top four or five teams and people start talking premierships. It would be wrong to say the bandwagon gathers momentum, because Tiger fans tend not to drop off anyway. Sure, they’ll microwave their memberships, vow to never attend another game, pen withering rants on forums and they provide some extraordinary talkback moments. But they’re always engaged, always loud, always Richmond.
Every year they find themselves in a cutthroat final. In 2013 they were 32 points the better of their most despised opponent. Dustin Martin booted a goal and made a handcuff sign to one of his mates in jail. But they short-circuited in the second half. It’s hard to recall a more devastated supporter base than Richmond’s after that game.
The following year – after 13 rounds – they were in 16th position. They then unleashed a winning streak that got more ridiculous by the week until they’d secured a finals spot. Fleets of buses were chartered to get thousands of their supporters to the Adelaide Oval, whereupon everything went pear-shaped in the first ten minutes and Port Adelaide vivisected them.
Last September the Richmond faithful trudged to the MCG for yet another elimination final. The players ran out to a Japanese drum ensemble. It was one of those Melbourne spring afternoons where anyone who has ever played football, at any level, fantasises about unlikely comebacks. For Richmond supporters however, it was torture. Granted, the game was appallingly umpired. And they were unfortunate to cop an unusually strong eighth-placed side. Among their fans there was a sense of violation.
Footy will do that to you. Two years back, a Melbourne supporter and blogger chronicled every bit of misfortune to have befouled the club since 2007, the last time they played in a final. It made for astonishing reading. Interspersed with off-field tragedy and on-field ineptitude was a litany of high farce, low expectation, administrative blundering and institutional embarrassment. It could only really be captured in extended list form. And the list went on and on and on. After a couple of seasons you stopped laughing. There were players chucking sickies for being hungover, decking assistant coaches on Mad Monday, vomiting on team-mates, urinating on bars, and worse.
Richmond supporters could doubtless knock up something to rival it; the time a posse of supporters stormed the changerooms following a 25-goal loss to North; the time they were sunk by a rugby league player after dishing up what Paul Roos called “the worst 47 seconds played in the history of Australian rules football”; the time a truckie dumped a load of chicken manure outside Punt Rd Oval after a bad loss; the time Relton Roberts was caught eating a hamburger before a game; the time their key defender was hit by a tram; the time they plumped for Aaron Fiora and Richard Tambling at the draft table ahead of Matthew Pavlich and Lance Franklin; the day Ablett kicked 14 from the wing; the day Dunstall kicked 17 and could have kicked a quarter of a century. Friday night’s loss to the Eagles is a mere blip compared to all that.
You could be forgiven for thinking there’s some sort of curse here. But Richmond’s problem isn’t bad luck. Richmond’s problem is they offer hope. Hope blooms the cheek of every Richmond supporter. That mighty song of theirs pulsates with hope. Hope is a dangerous thing.
At a time when Victorian crowds are noticeably more introverted and at the mercy of highly caffeinated fun facilitators whipping up excitement in between quarters, Richmond supporters keep coming and keep making noise. The AFL’s ‘fan engagement’ initiatives, which include flame throwers, inflatable drumsticks and t-shirt cannons, could never work with a Richmond crowd. The Tiger bug is too complex and too ingrained for such confection. They’re not there to have fun. You can’t experience hope and pain and wrath and the whole dammed Tiger experience whilst James Sherry is chirruping away on the loudspeaker.
Richmond supporters would hate all this talk. They don’t want our sympathy. They want a win. They want a normal football team. They are hard-boiled, star crossed and impossibly loyal. Their team is one from four but they still believe. They are inured to calamity. They will be insufferable, and possibly unemployable, if they ever win a flag. In a forlorn sort of way, they keep believing that day is close. They are, as Dermott Brereton says, good for the soul.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/apr/18/richmonds-faithful-dont-just-want-a-win-they-want-a-normal-football-team
