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Voices in the crowd: stories of being Richmond
JOHN CARR, 33, FOOTSCRAY
Favourite all-time player:
Stuart Maxfield - “He was wild, he was tough, and when he smashed the ball onto his left foot and it worked he was glorious to watch.”
Favourite current player:
Chris Newman - “He’s really had to navigate an elite career through some dark days at Richmond. I really admire him. He’s stuck it out.”
“My family history is in Richmond,” says John Carr, a Tiger by birth who’s ensured his allegiance passes along the family tree. “Recently I learnt my great-great-grandfather, Maurice Cronin Snr, in 1905 was on the club’s membership list. Rhett Bartlett, Kevin’s son, said he was the club’s vice-president during World War One.”
From one generation, being Richmond in the Carr household has – quite literally – now been bestowed on the next.
Four years ago, on the birth of their youngest, naming rights were up for grabs. “We decided on ‘Richie’ but my wife asked if I wanted to put ‘Richmond’ on the birth certificate,” says Carr. In a heartbeat, it was official: Richmond Jack Carr it was, and a beaut little Tiger he is! “I snuck ‘Jack’ into the name as a nod to Dyer and Riewoldt and Titus.”
This is the sort of bloke John Carr is: a family man, passionate about his football, his club, a bit irreverent, creative, and steeped in the meaning and identity of what it might be to be Richmond.
(left to right): John and Molly in their colours (standing among their colours) at Whitten Oval, to watch the Tigers play earlier this year; Yellow and Black: John and his colours and his pre-game warm-up.
I first met him last autumn at the old Western Oval at the first-round match of Richmond’s new VFL team, and we caught up again at the ground to see Richmond in their first pre-season game this year. On a sweltering afternoon, with his eight-year-old daughter, Molly, (his eldest daughter, April, bless her, shows no interest in footy) the two of them stood on the hill in vintage woollen Richmond jumpers, wearing them with pride.
John moved west eight years ago, a “couple of torpies” from Whitten Oval, although his sister (she barracks also for Richmond, as does her nine-year-old son) lives even closer to the ground. Their brother, Pete, joined them at the game wearing red, white and blue. He’s a Bulldog. He lives in Ringwood. They worry about him.
What the Carr children have in common is that none have witnessed their senior football team win a premiership. Born in 1981, John is the oldest of a generation of Richmond supporters bereft of the best of September memories. “They had the five flags, then I came along,” he says. “It was about the worst birth year I could possibly have.”
Not that the drought has dimmed his enthusiasm for the Yellow and Black. He works as a teacher’s aide at Dinjerra Primary School at Braybrook (‘Dinjerra’ is the indigenous word for ‘west’), and several years ago he won a writing competition to work on a blog published by former Collingwood captain, Nick Maxwell. It was a stepping stone for John to start his own, wonderful, homespun website (theholybootsfootballemporium.com), about football as a community, with his leanings to Richmond.
Past writings have included the day he visited Waverley Park to see Richmond win its last silverware (the 1989 U19 Grand Final which was, incidentally, the last VFL game ever played). Another is on Punt Road Oval and is filled with personal inquiry, archival photographs, and a family snap of him as a child with Richmond 1980 Premiership player, Barry Rowlings. There’s also a photograph of a brick he souvenired from demolition works at Punt Road. It’s a family heirloom.
John, with Molly and his wayward brother, Pete, at the Whitten Oval watching Richmond play earlier this year
But it was a short story John published in the wake of last year’s deeply disappointing loss to Melbourne in the Tommy Hafey tribute game that sets him apart, endearingly, from most of the crowd. In one of the Club’s darkest hours, with emotions raw and hurt everywhere, he penned a piece, titled: “I love the Richmond Football Club’.
“Following Richmond has been difficult, a real test of character,” he wrote. “Some of the best memories growing up were of rare Tiger wins, ringing Nana and Pa and asking them to record the replay. I’d watch it the following Friday night when we’d go over for dinner. Stick with them Tiger fans. Thick and thin. What’s another 30 year wait? I love the Richmond Football Club. Go Tiges.”
This week I asked John, on the eve of Richmond’s return to the MCG to play Melbourne, about writing this piece when many others at the time were full of scorn and venom. After such a public letdown, his words were a tonic.
“I went to that game with Molly and Richie, and it was Richie’s first game,” he says. “When you take children to the footy you view things differently. They get over the loss so quickly. For them it’s about the experience.”
A starry-eyed 10-year-old John Carr with sister Maryanne ("Mezz") at the 1991 Best and Fairest awards held on Punt Road Oval, with the Jack Dyer medallist, Craig Lambert!
“I still love Richmond,” he says. “Of course it can sometimes be frustrating, and that loss last year might have felt like the worst, but it wasn’t. When I was growing up my team – our team – nearly went extinct. We need to be thankful for what we have.”
Still, he says, a win this Friday night under lights would be perfect, and certainly would help to expunge memories of last year’s loss. And of course he’ll be watching, after having read a good night story to his lovely little boy called Richmond.
Go Tiges!
If you would like to nominate a Richmond fan who has a story to tell about their barracking please email Dugald Jellie with details: dugaldjellie@gmail.com
www.tigertigerburningbright.com.au
