Just a blast from the PRE past here, wanting to congratulate you all on an amazing win on Saturday.
It was simply the most fun I've ever had at the footy. Imagine a Richmond supporter winning a flag without any stress! It's like those two concepts just don't belong together - and yet here we are. I know every other footy fan will have hated such a lopsided GF ... and that makes it even sweeter. They really do hate us now. It's wonderful!
When I first ever posted on PRE, I think we were in the midst of a coach hunt that ended with T.Wallace at the helm. And quite obviously, that was already decades into a life of dead ends, embarrassment and pessimism. One more didn't mattter that much. After all, it had kind of become who we were. We had a role to play in the big AFL screenplay - the vaudevillian laughing stock with pie on its face. We played it perfectly.
And then some folk called Gale, O'Neal and Hardwick flipped the script. We won one - from nowhere. 2017 was a release of pent up anxiety the likes I've not known. I cried like a baby when Prestia kicked the sealer in the last. When non-Tiges friends told me they knew it was done when Lambert put us 26 points up in the 3rd quarter, I confided that this moment only brought on utter dread as my old Tiger identity sought to convince me that it was really gonna hurt when we lost from there.
The siren blew to end our demolition of the Crows and, all of a sudden, we were relevant. We mattered. We were annoying, but only the kind of annoying that comes when a mate wins big at the races or pokies. "Bloody hell, can you believe Richmond won?" they'd say with all the incredulity of a Scott brother watching a Selwood have a free paid against him. It was a one-off, a fluke. Soon, we'd be typed back to cast.
But we weren't. And, despite the blip of the 2018 Prelim, we supporters were gifted a deserved celebration on this September Saturday just gone. This one wasn't about a flag -- and it wasn't a relief or luck. This was vindication, reward and a metamorphic emergence into the spring sunshine. In a moment, our collective identity changed. We became a new kind of Richmond supporter. One that barracks for the most dominant, connected, progressive, honest, enviable, vulnerable and thoroughly gargantuan sporting movement in the country.
The word in our amazing song that I always heard loudest was 'bold'. I never felt bold as a Tiges barracker. For decades, I felt meek and sheepish about my footy club. When people hung it on me after another calamitous loss, I'd join in and resort to self-effacing humour to survive the humiliation.
And yet, here we stand now as the team that backs its system when others resort to tagging, as the club who embraces firstly Dusty and then Sydney Stack and now Marlion Pickett and turns them into Richmond men. We take risks so well these days. More often than not, it's our authentic boldness that prompts both these decisions and they're success. It's so admirable.
That I got to boldly smile at my friends and family in the second quarter on Saturday and say "We've got this mob" is testament to me now watching the game through different eyes. I'm emboldened. Everything about us is different now.
Long may we remain in this state. Geez it's good to be a Tiger. Enjoy!
