"Tigers must look to the past to go forward" (The Age)
IN 2005, I interviewed Wayne Campbell before his 297th and final game with Richmond. We met at Punt Road. One of the first things he did once we were inside the old black and yellow rooms was open a door from which we could see the green of the oval. That, he said, is one of the best things this footy club has got going for it — the club's connection to its original base...
Richmond Football Club is a great character of the game. Like Collingwood, but a lot funnier. In recent years the affairs of the Richmond Football Club have largely been comedy. You have to remember that Richmond had its best years when it was ruled by a dictator named Graeme Richmond. We are talking about a dictator in the communist manner, or what was supposed to be the communist manner.
Richmond has got possibly the best piece of real estate in the game. Over the road from the blood-curdlingly tough suburb from which the football club came, the ground pre-dates the chaos of the club's recent history and goes back to the days when Jack Dyer was a man and not a football legend.
The club won under Jack in 1943. It didn't win again until 1967, which was the start of its period of greatness — five premierships in 13 years — and the source of many of its present woes. The Tigers were great within living memory but aren't any more.
Near enough the second thing Campbell showed me on the eve of his last game was the Richmond Football Club museum, introducing me to its then curator, Ronnie Reiffel. We went together through the several rows of glass cases, finding bits and pieces of interest. I noted the relationship between Campbell and Reiffel. They shared a similarly intelligent appreciation of the club history.
Campbell won four best and fairests with Richmond. He went within one vote of winning it in his first year as a 19-year-old from Bendigo. He was captain for four years. Those who played under him speak highly of his leadership qualities. He also happens to be one of the smartest blokes I've met in footy. He was a smart player. Doug Vickers, who recruited him, said he was always two moves ahead of the play. "He'd give it to you because he'd see who you could give it to."
Dale "Flea" Weightman, a Richmond icon, told me Campbell was misunderstood by Richmond supporters because he wasn't in the old "knock-'em down Richmond mould". And he wasn't. He was ahead of the game. He was playing it like it's played now. Since retiring, he has spent a year at the Western Bulldogs as an assistant coach to Rodney Eade — as good a place as any to further your football education. Eade's record of starting games without a winning hand and winning has to be as good as anyone's.
The day Campbell took me around Punt Road, he showed me a photograph of former property steward Dusty O'Brien. He said that if anyone summed up Richmond for him, it was Dusty. "He was hard, he'd been in the war, he gave his all for Richmond. He kept his thoughts to himself but he knew the blokes who had a go, he knew the blokes who didn't, and you knew if you had his respect or not."
A former Geelong Grammar student who owned a pub and otherwise dealt with punk rock bands, "GR", as he was known, was utterly ruthless, but what was undeniable was that he always acted in the best interests of the club.
In 1966, there was even a plan to install GR as the game's first manager/coach in the manner of Manchester United's Alex Ferguson, a man he, it might be said, resembled.
GR's exit followed the departure from the club of three key members of the 1980 premiership team — centre-half forward David Cloke, centreman Geoff Raines and defender Bryan Wood. The Tigers never recovered. The club which had been ruled with an iron fist became a club of fierce and indiscriminate internal disputes.
Leon Daphne, then the head of Nissan in Australia, was considered a very good Richmond president. He was brought down from within. If Shakespeare had been a sportswriter, he might have called the incident a tragedy.
I am spending this season with Melbourne. In the way that I judge these things, Melbourne is a good footy club. I'm not saying the people who ran the club before Jimmy Stynes took the presidency lacked either energy or good intentions. I am saying ideas that live in the public mind can have real force. As a player, everyone knew where Stynes was coming from. As president, it's pretty much the same. If the person at the centre of an organisation is seen to be acting for the right reason, that example spreads like ripples from a rock dropped into a pond. It's all about the power that comes from within.
Richmond needs to signal the carnival is over. It needs someone credible to say this is where we come from, this is where we are going and why. Ben Gale coming back as club president would give Richmond a real chance of finding the sort of motivation and focus it needs. So, I believe, would Wayne Campbell as coach.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/rfnews/tigers-must-look-to-the-past-to-go-forward/2009/05/15/1242335882948.html?page=2
