Oh we're from Tigerland
Stories of being Richmond
Jamie Mason, 54, Newport (via Glenelg, Adelaide)
Favourite all-time player
Geoff Raines – “Loved the way he covered the ground, he was just so smooth. He was a beautiful kick, an all-round package.”
Favourite current player
Bachar Houli – “I like what he represents, the diversity of footy, that it can be a place for everyone. Whenever I hear him speak, he handles himself with such grace.”
We meet by the boundary at Punt Road Oval, three-quarter time at a VFL match, the home boys up, and first impressions are he is an organised man: measured, thoughtful, generous. Jamie Mason was a footballer, with a deep tap root in the sport in Adelaide: two reserves flags and 12 senior games as an on-baller at Glenelg, then 40-odd games for North Adelaide before tearing his medial ligament.
He returned to the field with the Broadview Tigers in the A1 amateurs, winning a premiership in 1989 and the Pfitzner Medal, the competition’s highest honour, along with selection in the all-Australian amateur side. Playing days over, among other part-time jobs, he coached Adelaide University FC for two seasons, and helped out at Norwood as football operations manager.
“In the words of Captain Blood, I was a good ordinary footballer,” he says, modest about his on-field feats.
Now he’s a barracker – seeing the game through another prism – and from the perspective of a South Australian transplanted recently to the game’s heartland. “It’s been surreal these past few years to be able to watch Richmond play almost every week,” he says, on the grass at Punt Road Oval with his youngest son, 8-year-old Edward. “For supporters like me who’ve grown up elsewhere, you don’t appreciate how good it is until you’re in Melbourne.”
The football story of Jamie Mason is one of perseverance, tradition, and sense of place.
He was born in Glenelg, a beachside Adelaide suburb, and in the early 80s as a young man played at the fabled ‘Bays’ alongside the likes of Stephen Kernahan, Chris McDermott and Paul Weston. “Glenelg were perennial grand finalists in the 70s and 80s, but I watched as they lost most of them to Sturt, Port Adelaide and Norwood.”
“My earliest memory watching them in a grand final was 1969 when Royce Hart played,” he says. “He was doing national service in Adelaide. He got knocked out very early in the game.”
For many older Glenelg fans, growing up with a team who wear black with a yellow sash, transferring allegiance across state lines to Richmond was once a logical step. Jamie was no exception, keeping abreast of the VFL from afar. But it wasn’t as though he opted to back a winner.
“To be honest, I really got interested in them in the early 90s when they weren’t particularly successful, when they had a habit of finishing ninth.”
His catalyst, in part, was the Adelaide Football Club, a footballing confection that for many South Australians fractured allegiances. “For people of my age who had played in the SANFL there was probably a bit of petty jealousy,” he says. “The Crows became the main game in town, and SANFL clubs and the league suffered because of that.”
Football traditions, they run deep in Australia wherever the game is a way of life.
“Many supporters like me probably have a greater appreciation for Port Adelaide because they were a real club and you can’t deny their success,” says Jamie. “But having played against them in the SANFL there’s no way I could possibly barrack for them.”
So Richmond it is, and Richmond it has been and probably always will be.
Tiger trio: Jamie Mason (left) with fellow Glenelg and Richmond fan Brook Kilpatrick and former Glenelg legend and now Richmond development coach, Mark 'Choco' Williams.
“There’s a sense of nobility in supporting a team that hasn’t been successful for a long time,” he says. “There’s always that hope and imagining, and those private thoughts in quiet moments, reflecting on what it would be like if they actually went all the way.’
A shared Tiger trait: the ability to dream big.
Another thing about Jamie Mason is he’s an educator, a teacher, one who passes on knowledge and experience to the next generation. It’s an attribute of so many good coaches, and club men. Giving down the line, thinking holistically about the game and all it might mean.
Moving to Melbourne for his wife’s work, with his new job as Director of Learning at the Catholic Regional College in Sydenham – a Year 11 and 12 senior school with 950 students – Jamie now sees the game from another vantage. “I’ve been involved in footy as a player or coach for most of my life,” he says. “Now I really enjoy going along to watch as part of the crowd.”
“I’ve realised it doesn’t matter if you’re not intimately involved. If you’re in the stands watching, it’s the same rollercoaster ride of emotions, the feelings of a win or a loss, the euphoria or despair.”
That is, the psychology of a game brings a crowd together, and makes it as one with the players and a club. As such, our emotional lives for two hours each weekend in winter become entwined with those of so many others. It’s a philosophical question, says Jamie, which in some ways makes us ponder the very meaning of existence.
“Why do we follow these young men, why do we give them our hearts?” he says. “Maybe it’s to do with the tribal aspect of the code, but maybe it’s also because football makes as much sense as anything else.”
By the boundary: Jamie with future Richmond draft pick, Edward, on the fence at Punt Road Oval
Jamie will return to Adelaide this weekend and be at the game on Friday night with his eldest son, Angus, and holds onto fond memories. He was at the game at Football Park in 1998 when Richmond beat defending premiers, the Adelaide Crows, and Malcolm Blight contemptuously walked the boundary line and left the game with three minutes to play.
“And I’ve seen the Tigers play twice at Adelaide Oval for two wins.”
Once was a Saturday night late in 2014, with all on the line, the lead lost late in the game, our shared fairy-tale fading until, at the eleventh hour: enter Dusty. Our tribal warrior, our common hero, he turned his hips, muscled his opponent off the contest, and kicked a goal to win the game. The other was last year, a Sunday afternoon and a stoic upset over Port Adelaide, purging much of the disappointment of the 2014 Elimination Final loss.
“I’m hoping for three-in-a-row,” says Jamie.
On Friday night he’ll have the Richmond crowd with him, ringing in his ears, praying for sweet mercies, for a win, for team heroics, for a group of young men to show all what they can do, and how one day they might yet dance with the angels.
Go Tiges! And go all Richmond supporters from South Australia and all who travel to Adelaide for the game this Friday night!
If you would like to nominate a Richmond fan with a story to tell about their barracking please email Dugald Jellie with details. dugaldjellie@gmail.com
