From Malthouse to Bourke and Bond, the Tiger tales of a club's Mr FixitJake Niall
The Age
10 December 2019Had the Richmond Football Club followed the surprising recommendation of Paddy Guinane in 1983, Mick Malthouse would have coached the Tigers in 1984.
The story of how Malthouse was almost appointed coach at Richmond following the back-pocket's retirement in 1983, is among the many Tiger tales that Guinane told me, back in the 2000s, from the front table at Don Camillo's cafe in West Melbourne, where Paddy would hold court, regaling those present with entertaining accounts of Richmond's scurrilous past.
Guinane, then in his 60s, would sit at the front table, in a leather jacket with carefully coiffed dark hair, looking like a 1950s rocker. He was a major figure of Richmond history - a man who'd held numerous jobs at Tigerland: premiership player in 1967, coach of the reserves, recruiter, member of the match committee and of what we now call the club board (then known as the committee) and as confidant of the club's Godfather, Graeme Richmond, who deployed the affable Paddy as a Mr Fixit in various roles and tasks.
Guinane was an excellent footballer, with a muscle-bound physique that teammate Kevin Sheedy described on Tuesday as the best he had seen in footy. He played as a powerful marking forward in the 1967 flag; another teammate and club great Francis Bourke compared Guinane to Matthew Richardson in terms of the way he would play during his 146 games for 216 goals.
Guinane, who died this week aged 80, was a quintessential Richmond person. As Bourke recounted, Paddy lived and was raised in Richmond, was the son of an ex-Richmond player, taught at Richmond Tech and went to St Ignatius - the local Catholic school that was Jack Dyer's alma mater, where he also sang in the choir. "He was Mr Richmond," said Bourke.
To a younger journalist with a fascination for football's storied past - a subject given much less attention in these days of Nintendo attention spans - Paddy was a wonderful storyteller, with a flair for peppering the past with colour.
A few of these stories stuck in one's mind. The near-hiring of Malthouse was one.
As Guinane related it, the Tigers had just sacked Bourke at the end of 1983 following a disastrous fall from grand finalist to 10th. Richmond - that's Graeme and the club, the two were then synonymous - asked Guinane to undertake what was, by the standards of the time, a fairly rigorous process to locate a new coach.
Guinane reckoned he interviewed several candidates. GR insisted, for instance, on him considering Hawthorn's eccentric ex-skipper Don Scott. Paddy and the panel then ranked them from one to six or seven, placing Scott last.
At the meeting of the committee, Guinane told those assembled that their recommendation was that "Michael Malthouse be appointed coach". Guinane, it happened, had recruited Malthouse to the Tigers from St Kilda.
Objections were immediately raised then, because Malthouse had just retired and there was a view that Bourke's stature as a just-retired teammate had posed problems that shouldn't be repeated.
Malthouse, indeed, had been told by the club's general manager Kevin Dixon he had the job, only to be informed a little later that the powers-that-be had reversed their position, on the grounds that he was, like the Sainted Bourke, an immediate past player.
Malthouse, as we know, went on to coach Footscray, then became a triple premiership coach at West Coast and Collingwood; who knows what shape AFL history would have taken had coached his old team?
"He was proved right," said Bourke, who did not hold any grudge against Guinane for the latter's view that he should be removed as coach. Guinane, indeed, had a rollicking account of some events that led to Bourke's sacking, but Bourke, with a chuckle, remembered a different version.
Paddy reckoned he placed John Northey, who went on to coach four clubs - including the Tigers - as second choice after Malthouse. It's unclear what the issue was with Northey. But, ultimately, the committee appointed Michael "the Swamp Fox" Patterson as coach for 1984; like Bourke, his predecessor Tony Jewell and numerous successors, Patterson didn't last long.
Another Guinane story was his view, based on proximity to events, that, in the course of his brief and embarrassing tenure as president of the club (1986-87), the later-disgraced figure of Alan Bond had provided Richmond with funds that had actually kept the doors open at Punt Road.
Bond, mind you, had suggested the Tigers be shifted to Brisbane, too and couldn't name Dale Weightman, the '86 best and fairest, correctly at the club annual general meeting.
"You could never dislike Paddy," said Bourke, calling the vice-captain of Richmond's 1967 premiership team, both "a great storyteller" and "a great human being".
Paddy Guinane was one of those people whose footprint was far larger within the walls of his club than to the public. While part of Richmond’s tumultuous history passed with him, the stories should endure.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/from-malthouse-to-bourke-and-bond-the-tiger-tales-of-a-club-s-mr-fixit-20191210-p53imu.html
