Kevin, you’re too slow to do all this finessin’
[N.B. This is unashamedly “lifted” from Well May We Say . . . The Speeches That Made Australia, Edited by Sally Warhaft – the source was given as “Audio courtesy of the Australian Football League , previously unpublished”and is reproduced on PRE without prior permission so hope it’s ok.]
Tom Hafey’s address to the Richmond Football Club, Preliminary Final, VFL Park, 20 September, 1975.
The Richmond Football Club had not won a premiership for almost twenty-five years when Tommy Hafey (1931- ) was appointed coach in 1966. A tough, compact back-pocket player who had played seventy-seven games for his club between 1953 and 1958, Hafey brought a no-frills approach to the job. He was one of the first coaches to devote himself to his players’ physical conditioning, having himself become a disciple of the athletics coach Percy Cerutty, and his personal integrity extracted great loyalty from senior players. He coached the ‘Tigers’ through a golden premiership era, including four premierships, then went on to coach at Collingwood, where he took the team from the bottom of the ladder to a grand Final in twelve months.
After seasons at Geelong and Sydney, he finished his career having coached 522 games, but his influence outlived him, through the eighteen of his players who became VFL and AFL coaches in their own right. The most famous, Kevin Sheedy, played 251 games for Richmond between 1967 and 1979 before commencing his tenure at Essendon in 1981. Like Hafey, Sheedy was ‘tough and totally fearless’ — but not tough enough in the 1975 Preliminary Final against North Melbourne, when Hafey pleaded with his star defender to stop his ‘finessin’’. The straight-talking demands were not enough; Richmond lost by seventeen points to North Melbourne.
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We’re not runnin’ straight at the ball. That’s the cruel part about it, Tigers. Nothing more Tigerish than a bloody Tiger, a wounded Tiger. Kevin, fair dinkum mate, you’ve got to put your boot into the ball, you’re too slow to do all this finessin’. Bloody back pocket plumber, that’s what I want. You see the bloody straight, get your boot to the damn thing headin’ towards goals. Same with Michael, same with Balmy, we’ve gotta get a lift from you players. Surely you can see this, everybody’s gotta get a lift. Kevvy Morris, where you been? Get in now, come on, in the front of your man, you know he’s gunna run like mad. But the biggest problem, fellas: across the half forward line. David, I’ve given you a big job, a big job, centre half forward – but at the end of the day, at the end of that half, you were joggin’ along, you were joggin’ as though you were waiting for the bloody bell to come along. We’ve gotta remember that every time the ball comes to our area you’ve gotta fight like hell. Fight on your hands and knees, fight over for the mark, run over, and then when it does come to the ground, that’s when Sheeds or Bruce Montieth . . .
And I told you Johnny Rantell’s a great mark, well you oughta know better than anybody right now, because every time the ball’s come up he’s marked over ya Bruce, fair dinkum. I can’t remember you once tryin’ to knock the ball to the ground, can’t remember you once doin’ it.
