Richmond Football Club History

 

"THE MIGHTY TIGERS"

 

HOW IT ALL BEGAN 1860-1900

A team of footballers playing as Richmond is mentioned by the newspapers in the first years of Australian football, circa 1860. Tom Wills, one of the game's founders, was the club's inaugural secretary and captain, and Wills' cousin H. C. A. Harrison captained Richmond briefly in the early 1860s before moving to Geelong. This loosely organised group has no continuity to the present club. A number of teams formed in the Richmond area during the game's rapid expansion of the 1870s and early 1880s. However, all played at a junior level and it was considered an anomaly that Richmond, one of Melbourne's biggest locales, didn't boast a senior team. The wait ended when the Richmond Football Club was officially formed at the Royal Hotel in Richmond on 20 February 1885. A successful application for immediate admission to the Victorian Football Association (VFA) followed. The club shared the Punt Road Oval with the Richmond Cricket Club, one of the strongest cricket clubs in Australia which had been playing on the ground since 1856.

At first the team wore a blue uniform. One of the most important features of a nineteenth-century footballer's uniform was his headgear, and Richmond opted for yellow and black striped caps, the same as the cricket club. After a couple of years, yellow and black stripes replaced blue as the colours of the team's guernseys. The team was variously called the "Richmondites", the "Wasps" or, most commonly, the "Tigers".

During the late 1880s, the VFA expanded rapidly. A booming economy and large numbers of immigrants made Melbourne the largest city in the Australian colonies. The city was mad with football and many clubs tried to get admission to the VFA. Richmond struggled to make an impression and after a promising season in 1888 (when they finished fifth with eleven wins), the club slipped backwards. In an amateur sport, the strongest teams were luring the best talent with undisclosed payments to players and were not keen to schedule matches against teams with poor followings (such as Richmond) that could not generate much gate money.
Centreman Charlie Backhouse played over 200 games in a 15-year career before Richmond joined the VFL in 1908.

As the local economy slipped into severe depression in the early 1890s and the crowds began to dwindle, a number of strong teams began to agitate for a reform of the competition. Richmond were not considered part of this elite group, who usually voted together as a block at VFA meetings. A lack of commitment and focused effort was holding the Tigers back. In 1896, Richmond walked off the field in a match with South Melbourne at half time when they were a long way behind on a very wet day to protest the umpiring. Later in the season, the Tigers had their score annulled against Essendon when it was discovered that they had too many men on the ground. In the closing three weeks of the season, Richmond's gate takings amounted to just five pounds.

Richmond finished the season last of the 13 clubs. In October 1896, the cabal of six strong clubs broke with the association to form the Victorian Football League (VFL) and invited two other clubs to join them: Carlton and St Kilda. Richmond's struggles during the season had not helped when the invitations to the new competition were being considered. Richmond's performances did not immediately improve in the emaciated VFA until the turn of the century.

 

 

SUCCESS AT LAST  (1901–1907)

The Tigers were boosted by a significant country recruit in 1901. George "Mallee" Johnson was an instant sensation and the first true star player at the club. Richmond leapt to third place and then in 1902, with Johnson dominating the ruck, Richmond entered the closing weeks of the season neck and neck with Port Melbourne at the head of the ladder. Just when a play-off between the clubs to decide the premiership looked certain, Port Melbourne faltered against Williamstown to hand Richmond its first flag.
Charlie Ricketts, the star player in the Tigers' 1905 premiership. He then transferred to South Melbourne, and later returned to Punt Road to coach the club between 1914–16.

Having missed a potential bonanza from a premiership play-off, the VFA decided to emulate the VFL and introduce a finals series in 1903, a fateful decision for the Tigers. After recruiting the competition's leading goalkicker, Jack Hutchinson, and finishing the season as minor premier, Richmond lost both finals and were runner-up. The following season, the club became embroiled in a feud with umpire Allen, whom the Tigers accused of failing to curb field invasions or the illegal tactics of arch-rival North Melbourne.

When the two clubs were scheduled to meet in the 1904 VFA Grand Final, Richmond announced that they wouldn't play with Allen as umpire. The VFA called Richmond's bluff, and appointed Allen as umpire for the match, meaning that the Grand Final was scratched and North Melbourne won the premiership on forfeit. Richmond were now openly at odds with the VFA and matters failed to improve in the next few years.

The club was campaigning against violence (both on-field and among the crowd), ungentlemanly conduct and poor sportsmanship, issues that plagued the VFA to a far greater extent than the rival VFL. Richmond cultivated links with some VFL clubs by playing practice matches against them. Richmond knew that they were a major asset to the VFA. They had built up a large following and played on one of the best grounds in the competition, where they remained unbeaten for five consecutive seasons. In 1905, Richmond confirmed their status with a second premiership, this time overcoming bitter rivals North Melbourne, "Mallee" Johnson had moved to Carlton, but youngster Charlie Ricketts dominated the season and won plaudits among the pressmen, who voted him the best player in the VFA.

However, Ricketts was also lost to the VFL and injury hit the club hard. In 1906–07, the Tigers played finals without looking likely to win the flag. The club earned a rebuke from the VFA for scheduling a practice match against Geelong before the 1907 season. Richmond went ahead with the commitment and earned further censure. Later in the year it became clear that the VFL wanted to expand its competition and Richmond won a place ahead of North Melbourne, which had been strengthened by an amalgamation with the bankrupt West Melbourne as part of their bid. Richmond were granted admission along with the now defunct University Football Club.


INTO THE BIG LEAGUE  (1908–1944)


The first few seasons in the VFL were less than spectacular. Our first VFL coach was Dick Condon and our Captain was Charlie Pannam, Although the club turned up some star players, it let a lot of talent leave and the administration was unstable after George Bennett's death at the end of the 1908 season. In 1916, the side played in the finals for the first time, however, with World War I having reduced the competition to just four clubs, finals qualification was automatic.

Finally, in 1919, Richmond made their first Grand Final appearance, losing to Collingwood. Richmond stoked a rivalry with Collingwood by recruiting their former skipper Dan Minogue as playing coach and gained vengeance by beating Collingwood in the 1920 VFL Grand Final to secure a first flag in the big league. This was followed by an even better performance the next year. The only club that continued to beat Richmond on a regular basis was Carlton. Finishing minor premier with only one loss for the season in 1921, Carlton were the hottest premiership favourite, yet Richmond managed to beat them in two classic finals matches played over successive weeks to go back-to-back.

The rest of the decade saw four more Grand Final appearances, all of which would end in frustration. From 1927 to 1929 Richmond became the first club in the VFL to lose three consecutive Grand Finals, all of which were to neighbouring arch rivals, Collingwood.

The next VFL flag came in 1932, with Richmond's triumph over Carlton in a tough encounter which saw Richmond wingman Alan Geddes play the second half with a broken jaw. Another premiership came in 1934, this time against South Melbourne's famed "Foreign Legion", avenging Richmond's loss in the 1933 VFL Grand Final.

Prior to the commencement of the 1940 season, internal problems were brewing between the key personalities at the club. Some felt that the uneven performance of the team was due to Percy Bentley's coaching methods, and that he should be replaced. Jack Dyer walked out on the club and threatened to play in the VFA after his father, a committeeman who was involved with the anti-Bentley faction, lost his position at the board elections. Finally, the matter was resolved and Bentley kept his job, while Dyer returned to training on the eve of the season.

The problems appeared to have been solved when Richmond won the semi-final against Melbourne to go straight into the 1940 VFL Grand Final. However, Melbourne reversed this result with a crushing win to pinch the premiership. Richmond had been out-thought by their old mentor Frank 'Checker' Hughes, who had assigned a tagger to negate Dyer. Dyer was furious that Bentley had done nothing to prevent his opponent taking him out of the game. The Richmond committee agreed with this assessment, so when Bentley (after retiring as a player) attempted to negotiate a higher fee to continue his coaching tenure, he was rebuffed. Incensed, Bentley quit Punt Road and moved to Carlton as coach, adding further spice to an already fierce rivalry between the two clubs.

Despite the tribulations created by the Second World War, Richmond was able to maintain a commendable level of consistency on the field. The club had quite a lot of players in reserved occupations who remained at home, while the administration became adept at securing star players who were temporarily in Melbourne on war service.[citation needed][examples needed] Dyer was a fearsome presence in his role as playing coach, but he was unable to improve Richmond's ability to win finals matches. A loss in the 1942 VFL Grand Final to Essendon (after starting as favourite) meant that over the previous 18 years, Richmond had won two flags but been runner-up eight times. Jack Titus set a still unbeaten record of playing in six losing Grand Final teams. In 1943, Richmond broke through to beat Essendon in a thrilling Grand Final by five points, a win that the club dedicated to ex-player Bill Cosgrove, an RAF pilot who had been killed in action a few weeks before the match. But another Grand Final loss followed in 1944, when Dyer's team failed against Fitzroy on a very hot day.
Tough times at Tigerland (1945–1965)

In the immediate post-war era, despite an influx of excellent new players, Richmond struggled to make the four, appearing in the finals only once, in 1947. Dyer continued on as coach for three years after his playing retirement at the end of 1949, but was asked to retire by the committee who felt the club needed a shake up. Under a succession of coaches in the 1950s, With the demands of potential players increasing with each passing year, the club refused to allocate sufficient funds to recruit and they failed to replace star players as they retired. When stalwarts such as Des Rowe and dual-Brownlow Medallist Roy Wright left, the team slumped dramatically and finished with a wooden spoon in 1960.