Club not a pub chook rafflePatrick Smith
The Australian
18 August 2016The man leaned against the wooden fence, safe that he could not be seen by the group of men entering the pub across the road. His Tigers jumper helped keep out the bitter winter wind that chilled the air.
It was the second time in three days he had watched the goings on at the suburban pub. Some five minutes after the last person had entered, the man stopped observing and started walking. He stood at the pub door for a moment and said softly: “Jock Dyer.”
A security man inside, suspecting a ring-in, said: “They’re not the passwords.” The man from across the street, pulling down hard on his beanie, replied: “I know, it’s my name. The passwords are: ‘How stupid do we look now’.”
With that the door swung open and a wall of heat hit the man from across the street. A pile of Richmond members’ tickets burnt in the fireplace. The Richmond plotters had gathered to figure out their next move to overthrow the board.
First, the minutes from the last meeting. The chicken parmigiana had been considered an overwhelming success and so it was to be served again that night. “Here, here,” said the more heavyset men present, banging their knives and forks on the table in anticipation.
Second, the meeting had considered the publicity gained in the newspapers, TV and radio had been beyond expectation.
Someone called Joe Russo got to his feet. “Given that we had no idea what we were talking about and given that we had nothing whatsoever to say I think we are entitled to pat each other on the back for convincing the majority of the media that we were about to overturn the board.”
Someone called Russo continued: “I think it would be remiss of us not to congratulate Bobby Davies for his work in spreading the word about the inadequacies of the present Richmond board. I think his work, especially on SEN sport radio, was remarkably nonsensical. Let’s put our hands together for Billy.”
A ripple of applause evaporated as lamely as it began and stopped altogether when a gentleman — well-dressed and from a famous family associated with the club — tapped his monocle on the table. And broke it — the monocle that is. So he asked his butler to bring the meeting to attention.
Which Jeeves did. The man from a very famous family long associated with the club told the room full of men from other very famous families long associated with the club: “The man of which you speak is not Bobby Davies, not Billy Davies but someone called Liam Davies.”
Some of the men, hurt by the rebuke, said Davies hadn’t made it easy by burning his member’s ticket.
Finally, the meeting got to what it couldn’t avoid. That despite the fawning media picturing them as crusaders for all that is good in football and for the Richmond Football Club, the conspirators hadn’t achieved anything. Peggy O’Neal was still a very capable president admired by the AFL, the board itself was considered just about the best in the business, debt had been paid off, membership had soared, training and administration facilities refurbished. When the man from a very famous family associated with the club said “I could go on and on” he was clubbed to death. The injury list was growing.
It was then decided it would be wise to review where Operation Stuff-Up had gone wrong. First, it was agreed that the tactic of claiming the board hadn’t changed for 10 years had backfired. There had been three new directors in the past three years for starters and there’s likely to be two more next year. “Who knew?” said one of the men from a very famous family associated with the club.
A slightly angry voice joined the debate. “I don’t think it helped much either when Billy Bob Davies said the fact that the board was stable was the very weakness of the club. You know that didn’t make sense.
“Nor did us saying we felt the board required a juggler, ventriloquist and a village idiot to broaden board views help our credibility,” said the man. “And I think we could have made a better case of diversity on the board if we actually had a woman on our ticket when the club already had a female as head of the board.”
Then Jock Dyer, the man who had watched the plotters gather from across the street, got to his feet and asked: “By the way, has anybody here spoken to any official at the club? Has anybody gone to the club with our thoughts about some new ideas? Or has everybody just yapped to the media?” Not a word. Not from anyone.
After a long and awkward silence men from very famous families associated with the club bolted for the doors never to be heard of again. And thus a lot of very nice chicken parmigiana was wasted.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/opinion/patrick-smith/night-of-long-knives-ends-with-tigers-wearing-their-parmigiana/news-story/ba6371ebf7fc2eb56c058331d2dca8cc
