"Old Time Tiger Hero's". Jack O'Rourke
"Old Time Tiger Hero's".
Jack O'Rourke The man who made Roachy and Jack look like a lightweights !!
Jack O'Rourke was a spectacular and highly effective full forward who should perhaps have achieved a good deal more in the game than he did. As it was, he played 44 VFL games for Richmond between 1949 and 1953, kicking 134 goals. Had he not been such a frequent victim of injury, both totals would have been considerably higher. His best seasons in terms of fitness were 1951 and 1952, in both of which he topped the Tigers' goal kicking list with tallies of 58 and 43 goals respectively. After Jack Dyer was sacked as Richmond coach at the end of the 1952 season O'Rourke played briefly under his successor, Alby Pannam, but then decided to express his dissatisfaction with the situation by bringing down the curtain on his VFL career. To call his decision disconcerting would be to understate the matter given that he was only twenty-five years old at the time, and presumably had plenty of good football left in his legs.
