Wallace's men inspire lasting confidence
Waleed Aly
The Age
July 8, 2006
The Bulldogs deserve loyalty, while the Tigers are in the throes of a cultural revolution, Waleed Aly writes.JEFF has suffered a lot as a footy fan. As a kid, he had an incurable passion for Fitzroy. In his devotion, he witnessed countless wallopings and kept returning for more.
After the Roys' demise in 1996, and clearly not yet content with such emotional thrashings, Jeff adopted Richmond. We often watch the Tigers together and talk football philosophy.
A few years ago in the outer, he turned to ask me a question only an ex-Fitzroy fan could: which team did I think I'd support if I had no pre-existing prejudices and was making a decision on objective criteria?
Which would be most deserving of my support if football fandom wasn't such an irrational business?
This, we quickly agreed, was not simply a question of success. An invincible team was not necessarily endearing.
A supporter in search of a team is looking for something that inspires loyalty. Honesty. Consistency. Regular fulfilment of potential. Exceeding expectations. With our criteria in place, we came reluctantly to a consensus on two points.
First, that the objective barracker probably should choose the Bulldogs.
No other team, we figured, had done so much with so little, and given their supporters so many unexpected triumphs.
In 1996, they bested only Fitzroy. The next year, with a fleet of unknown mosquitoes, they produced upset after upset and rocketed into the upper echelons of the ladder.
We waited for them to fall. They stayed there for years. In 2000, somehow, they beat Essendon and Carlton when no one else could.
A couple of lean years later, it's a similar story. They're still short. They lack glamorous star power. Injuries forced them to scout the little league for key forwards. They have no excuse for winning, really. But none of this stops them beating West Coast in Perth when no one else can.
Secondly, gallingly, we agreed no rational thought process could produce Richmond supporters like us.
Here was a club endowed with its share of stars, but defined by perennial failure. Finals berths were regularly squandered by a late-season loss to a lowly opponent. And, perversely, we were easily satisfied.
A good win would entitle us to a few terrible losses. Indeed, we found countless excuses to lose. One year, we couldn't win in white shorts — even at the MCG. In several consecutive seasons, we copped a shellacking early and refused to recover, spiralling instead into as many consecutive defeats as we could muster.
Our mental fragility was truly awesome. Failure was as inherent to our culture as theatrical diving was to soccer's.
When Jeff and I were philosophising in the outer, Terry Wallace was coaching the Bulldogs. Now he's at Richmond. As an outsider, I'd long guessed Wallace was chiefly responsible for the Bulldogs' cultural revival. Could he do the same at Richmond? Was anybody that good?
Again, it's not simply about results. In his first two seasons as coach, Danny Frawley took us within a whisker of the eight, and then to a preliminary final.
On results, he will likely outperform Wallace to this point. But something about Terry's Tigers breeds more long-term confidence. Frawley's team was built on veterans, and promptly collapsed in subsequent, grotesque years. Wallace's is built on schoolkids.
But most importantly, Wallace has led a cultural revolution. We still get smacked from time to time, and occasionally lose games we shouldn't, but we've discovered we're still allowed to play well the next week. We've conjured rebound victories against Adelaide and Collingwood as a result. We're adaptable. We can absorb injuries. It's almost as though we're mentally stable. It's a miracle.
If Jeff posed his question today, the Bulldogs would still be my answer. Frankly, they astonish me. But now, my Tigers at least offer something to a footballing rationalist. Once, all we had was the world's best theme song. Now there's a chance, on any given day, that we might be able to sing it.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/07/07/1152240490211.html
