Hangover of Tommy Hafey's removal from Tigerland still lingers Jake Niall
The Age
May 4, 2014 Late in Mark Thompson's first year as senior coach at Geelong, his chairman of selectors - former Richmond premiership player, coach and president Barry Richardson - had a discussion with Geelong's president Frank Costa and chief executive Brian Cook.
The Cats, who made a fleeting finals appearance that year - bundled out by the accursed Hawthorn - had an ageing core of players, but had already embarked on a root-and-branch reconstruction of what would become the most decorated and miraculous playing list in the AFL. Joel Corey, Paul Chapman, Cameron Ling and Corey Enright had been drafted a year earlier, with Cameron Mooney donated by North in the Leigh Colbert trade. Jimmy Bartel, Gary Ablett, James Kelly and Stevie Johnson were another year from landing at the club.
Richardson, who had hitherto worked alongside David Parkin at Carlton and Ron Barassi and Neil Balme at Melbourne in the same role, had one basic message for the Geelong hierarchy: hold your nerve.
Pain was imminent, as the veterans exited. Richardson advised Costa and Cook that Thompson had an exceptional feel for the game and would become a very good coach. But the playing list needed time, and so would ''Bomber".
In hindsight, we can all see why Geelong has become THE club of the past decade. It recruited brilliantly (with some help from its gene pool), it had the right people in the key administrative and coaching positions, and it was stable. It was a collegiate club, without any Messiah, and it was patient. Costa and Cook heeded Richardson's advice - Thompson did not coach a flag until his eighth season at Geelong.
Richardson understood the significance of keeping the coach, once you were convinced he had the gift of the gaberdine (the coat famously worn by Hawthorn legend John Kennedy). ''Bones'' himself had taken over as coach of the Tigers from a fit fellow called Tommy Hafey, who, incredibly, had left Richmond at the end of 1976. Tommy left the club and signed with Collingwood, largely because he had lost the support of powerbroker Graeme Richmond. Hafey wasn't technically sacked, but to have lost ''GR'' was tantamount to having an imminent expiration date stamped on your forehead.
Today, as Hafey is hospitalised with complications from cancer and very much in the collective minds of the football's most resilient tribe - the Richmond nation - there are Richmond folk who wonder if the club ever overcame the departure of their four-time premiership coach.
''Richmond never recovered when Tommy Hafey left,'' said Kevin Sheedy this weekend. Hafey's other ''Kevin'' - Bartlett - said Hafey's exit from Tigerland removed the stability that the club had established over the previous decade.
Most accounts of Richmond's fall finger the events of late 1982 until 1984 - when David Cloke, Geoff Raines, Bryan Wood (Essendon) and Brian Taylor left the club, prompting the Tigers to retaliate by poaching less talented Collingwood players, putting the club into a deep debt. The notion that Hafey's exit was the trigger is contradicted by the 1980 premiership under Tony Jewell.
Yet, a case can be made that Hafey's exit destablised the club, as a succession of coaches were hired and fired - Jewell 12 months after a flag, Francis Bourke shoved after the losing the 1982 grand final (and many senior players) - and that the Tigers never made it back to the base camp, lacking both talent and financial strength, from which multiple assaults on the summit can be launched.
As one prominent Hawthorn supporter described the Hafey exit: imagine if John Kennedy has been forced out of the Hawks after 10 years, rather than staying on for a second and third flag, passing the baton to David Parkin (for a flag) and then staying on as chairman of selectors for the appointment of Allan Jeans. There would be no statue of ''Kanga'' at Waverley. Perhaps, Hawthorn would not have transformed into the premiership club.
One of the surprising features of the contemporary AFL is how some clubs have struggled to overcome their pasts. Carlton, clearly, hasn't fully recovered from the events of 2002, when the club was broke, stripped of draft picks for salary cap crimes and lumbered with a Brisbane Bears-like playing list. Melbourne has never again been a strong club, despite the rises under John Northey and Neale Daniher, since 1965.
Hafey coached the Tigers to flags in 1967, 1969, to a grand final in 1972, then back-to-back flags in '73-74. The Tigers reached the preliminary final and were beaten by eventual premier North Melbourne in the 1975. Just 12 months later, he was gone.
Hafey's coaching was predicated on basics: long kicking, playing on, quick ball movement, out-numbering the opposition and fighting like Tigers at the fall of the ball. Fitness was paramount - an emphasis that saw him criticised, including by some Collingwood players, for over-training, particularly after the drawn grand final. He was perennially positive, the consummate players' man. Arguably, his finest coaching achievement was coaxing limited Collingwood sides into those grand finals, with a draw and a five-point loss depriving him of a fifth flag.
He was less successful at Geelong, where he had issues with the hierarchy, lasting only three years, and after two super seasons with the glitzy ''Edel-Swans'' of 1986-87, was shoved by the Swans after the '88 season, when, in what was a rarity, there were rumblings in the player group. At Geelong, he wasn't supported by those above. At Richmond, Bartlett and Richardson say he never lost the players, only the full support of the regime.
To put Hafey's Richmond record in perspective, consider that Thompson coached Geelong for the same period - 11 seasons - and that Mick Malthouse coached Collingwood for one year longer. Bomber won two flags, with another grand final loss, Malthouse won one flag, plus three grand final defeats. Hafey's four flags, plus another grand final, makes his Tiger tenure comparable to Norm Smith's at Melbourne - six-flag Smith was sacked in 1965, the year after a premiership. A 49-year famine ensued for the Demons.
''It is astonishing,'' said Bartlett of Hafey's ''forced'' resignation in 1976. ''He was Richmond Football Club ... it was a monumental error by the board.''
Richardson, a more scientific coach who in some ways was ahead of the curve, reckoned following Hafey was a tough gig, and he acknowledges that he did not gain the same motivational traction from the players the Tigers recruited from other clubs, as Hafey had with the likes of Paul Sproule and Robert McGhie.
Hafey, despite his illness, was running in Mount Eliza a matter of two weeks ago. He is said to be regaining his strength in hospital, while retaining his customary good spirits.
Tommy Hafey isn't simply a muscular symbol of health, fitness and fanatical self-discipline. He's a potent reminder of what Richmond once stood for, and which the Tigers have been unable to recapture since 1982, if not six years sooner.
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