Blood Ties [cont]
. . . "If you were playing football you were sort of king of the town," Jack Dyer recalls. "A few of the blokes lived out a bit. I lived in the middle (of Richmond), used to walk home from the football. I lived in Fraser Street for years. The main recreation of a Friday was a walk up Bridge Road to Punt Road and walk back again. You can imagine, they're all Richmond supporters, I used to love it, take two hours to do it, take my minder with me. You'd see a little mob on the corner: 'Hey, Jack, howya goin'?' They'd be lookin' for a fight at that stage, about seven of them waiting in a doorway, waiting for a fight. 'It's Jack, let him go.' A very compact little town."
In the '30s the football was the last entertainment working men could afford. The second-last was a beer in the pub. "Men might give up beer and tobacco but they could never give up the Tigers," writes McCalman.
The football side was full of "desperate men", according to Dyer, and this showed on the scoreboard, too. The Tigers, with Jack "Skinny" Titus and Dyer as the stars, won three premierships during the Depression, losing grand finals to Collingwood three times in that era, and fuelling a hatred that may only now be slightly receding, edged into irrelevance by the football dominance of a team 3500 kilometres across the desert in Perth.
"Collingwood had a beautiful side in '29," Dyer says. "Richmond hated them. You were taught to hate a side. Especially Collingwood."
He remembers his very early days at the club - paid £3 a week, nervous and shivering on the bench when he was 17. "They were a beautiful side. All veterans, all hard workers, no mercy, no mercy at all and, ooh, they looked after me: 'Don't touch the kid.' I can hear them all saying it now. They were all nice guys, credit that, but get 'em on a football field, there's a touch of madness about them. They were all lovely, all married.
"In those days you could go up the bush and grab a champion. You couldn't imagine that now, now you've got to go over to Western Australia. Me and Graeme Richmond used to go on the 'scone run', recruiting. I was the front man, I used to knock on the door, I was with the television and they were all just getting television at that stage, too . . . I couldn't talk but he was a beautiful baloney merchant. We picked up some beautiful footballers - *smile* Clay, Royce Hart, all that mob who won the premiership."
Dyer had come to Richmond when his mother put him on a bus at Yarra Junction. He was 12. . . .Dyer's family followed him down from Yarra Junction and struggled along with everyone else in Richmond.
"It was called Struggletown a bit," says Dyer. "We got along all right, when you think of it, we lived pretty well. Dad was battlin' around, but I got him a job on the council, very nice. Once you got on the council you were right forever. He was there until he died. He loved his football and everything like that. . . .
Dyer brought prestige and a little money to the family. His mother realised that others were less well-off and helped them out. Loyalty to families in the same street was as important as loyalty to the football team.
"This is where Richmond was such a beauty. If you didn't have something, the people next door had something. It went along every street, people helping out. They'd push back, too, if they got a big lift-up or something.
"All the country kids (who came to play with Richmond) . . . I used to fall in with them a bit because I came from the country. They'd only be 17. I used to take 'em all home for dinner. Get there about 3 o'clock of a Sundee, Mum'd say nothing at all, it was only scrambled eggs and bacon, but it was something to eat, you know. She was happy to see us. When I think of it, things were on the line, you know. I don't know whether she had much money or not at all, she was more cunnin' than I thought, though, just the same, my mother.
"She said to me one day, she said: 'I bought you a house', I said: 'You what? Whereabouts?', she said: 'Next door', I said: 'Where'd you get the money from?', she said: 'The money you've been giving me, I've been putting it away.' It wasn't a big house, but today they're $238,000, the same one.
"I paid £200 for that one. I bought seven more after that. When she started me I kept going."
It was round the halfway mark of the nine opponents' collarbones he broke that he became known as "Captain Blood". He was the embodiment of the rough Depression footballer. He played with all the grit and grime and violence of the streets around the Punt Road Oval and it's difficult to reconcile that violence with such a gentle old man, but he won't apologise for it today: it was just like that then and you took it and he especially liked hurting the middle-class Melbourne Football Club players.
"We used to take 'em orf a bit. We didn't like 'em because they looked down on us. We were the rabble from Richmond, and we didn't take kindly to it. They were public school. I went off the ground once and said: 'I think I've killed this feller.' They'd taken him off on a stretcher, put blankets over him and, oh God. He hadn't moved and Dr Cordner had had a look and there was hell to pay. I said: 'I think I've killed this feller' and a Richmond man said: 'Don't worry about that, it's only manslaughter, I'll get you off for nothing.' " That's how Richmond worked.
"I visited a bloke (an opponent he'd put in hospital) once. I never visited again. I ran into his wife. Did she give me a nice time - I orf! I went in to see how he was, the only one I ever did that to, too."
Dyer worked as a policeman for 10 years during which time, he says, he learnt valuable lessons about dealing with people, about communicating. Besides, it was better than his other jobs, packing tea and gardening. . . .
He did miss Richmond when he moved out, but he also enjoyed the isolation. "I'm 80, I'm going on bloody 90, which is not a bad job just to be goin' on. I reckon I've done enough."
. . . . He loves Richmond Football Club more than ever. He collects his scrapbook and puts it in the boot of his car. "I don't sleep for a week if we get beat," he says. He laughs. "I should be over that."
Does he fear death? "No. I'm one of the ones who are going to live forever."
