There's always next year
realfooty.theage.com.au
September 4, 2004
Despite a year of heartache, it's always hard for the supporter to part with his team at season's end, says Waleed Aly.
My living room staged many football epics. Like the time I kicked three goals in the last minute to snatch a six-point win for Richmond over Melbourne in the 1988 preliminary final. It was a scene of euphoric pandemonium until mum told me for the last time to clean my room that instant, meaning the hasty relocation of my in-depth post-match interviews.
I was the Richmond full-forward in those days and wore No. 8 - just like Michael Roach. Roach to me represented everything that was great about football, namely taking marks and kicking masses of goals. When I wrote to him in grade two, he replied by thanking me and said: "I'm glad I still have some fans left after the way I've been playing lately."
He may have been right about his form, but I hadn't noticed. He was Michael Roach, and I was committed to experience his career journey. As you grow older, the team becomes paramount, but I think the reason football matters to so many people remains fundamentally the same: we all feel pledged to experience all the exhilaration and the heartache of football's journey.
My journey for 2004 ended where it began: the top deck of the Great Southern Stand at the MCG. It was there, in March, that I saw my Tigers thrash Collingwood by 40 points. "Richo" kicked five, and Nathan Brown sparkled. The papers the next morning dubbed them the "dynamic duo". The Tigers looked reinvented, and I was cautiously excited.
Nothing seemed more important that week than devouring the smorgasbord of available statistics. It was imperative that I knew about all the "hard-ball gets", the "rebound 50s", the effective kicks (short and long), and the "handball receives". Such statistics would then be manipulated to justify my initial analysis of the game. I would examine the tackles column and exclaim triumphantly, "you see, we crushed them with relentless pressure!"
Alas, it all went hideously awry. Like a player carrying a chronic injury, I found myself needing considerable recovery time before I could back up the following week to face another shellacking. Denial ensured that round 12 inexorably ushered in the phrase "mathematical possibility", but by round 16 "priority picks" was sadly ingrained in the Tiger discourse. That once all-important statistical smorgasbord would now only mock me.
I heard somewhere that Joel Bowden was the AFL's leading possession-getter after a given point of the season and could not contain my indifference. How could anyone possibly care about this meaningless information? And so, ultimately, in the place where it all began, my journey's conclusion witnessed Richmond securing the now disturbingly familiar wooden spoon.
I am not alone in suffering a catastrophic season. I ask a friend who supports Hawthorn how he has coped, and he is philosophical. He understands his players are putting in and finds it easy to forgive: "I've seen them win five premierships," he said.
It is at this point I realise my life as a supporter is a tragicomedy in yellow and black. Richmond's last grand final appearance was in 1982. The following year itr plunged spectacularly down the ladder and, the rarest of exceptions aside, has been there ever since. I am now 26. My first football memory is Leigh Matthews holding the 1983 premiership cup aloft. The post-1983 Tigers are the only ones I've known.
Richmond fans my age can mount a compelling claim to being unique. No AFL club now in existence has endured such entrenched failure in the past 20 years. Essendon and Hawthorn fans were abundant among my primary school classmates in the '80s. Success breeds fans. But no one my age could possibly choose to barrack for Richmond. It is a persuasion that had to be inherited.
I inherited the Tiger faith from my brother. Ten years my senior, his story begins circa 1974. To that point, he had supported Collingwood full-forward, Peter McKenna - not Collingwood, but Peter McKenna. As a six-year-old boy, he had made this known to an older girl in his street. She was an ardent Richmond supporter, and my brother was thoroughly besotted with her. Like any respectable football missionary, she exploited his vulnerability and the fact that Richmond had just won consecutive premierships, and the deal was done. I was not yet born, but my fate was sealed.
I would like to say I have never forgiven him, but like all devoted footy fans, the truth is I wouldn't have it any other way. It has been a miserable era.
But in spite of all the heartache for which my team is responsible, I was sad to part with them at season's end. I will miss them, and with breathtaking irrationality, will experience uncontrollable excitement in the lead-up to round one, 2005. For the long-suffering fan, next year is always our year.
Waleed Aly is a Richmond member
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