With Richmond playing Hawthorn in a special tribute match at Devonport tomorrow, for the victims of the Hillcrest Primary School tragedy, it would be remiss of us not to reflect on the Tigers’ greatest and most famous player recruited from the northern Tasmanian town.
Matthew Richardson played football at junior level for East Devonport, where his father, Richmond 1967 premiership hero Alan “Bull” Richardson had been captain-coach and later president of the club.
Young “Richo” subsequently crossed over to Devonport and he had a brief, but brilliant senior career there.
Former Hawthorn champion Peter Knights was Richardson’s coach at Devonport and, in Martin Flanagan’s book “Richo”, this is how he described the highly-talented youngster . . .
“He was like a young horse that just wanted to run and jump, that just wanted to go . . . He was so far ahead of anyone else down there. He could run faster, he could run longer. He could jump higher, he was a better mark,” Knights said.
Flanagan further highlighted the impact Richo had on the football fields of Tasmania . . .
“At 17, he played senior football with Devonport. He wasn’t picked the first week and was filthy. He was picked the second week, kicked five and a pundit in the Burnie Advocate wrote that if you wanted to see Matthew Richardson play in Tasmania, you only had that year to do it. In his second game with Devonport, he left the field in the second quarter with bruised ribs, by which time he has taken 17 marks!”
Richo was taken by the Tigers as a father-son selection in the 1992 AFL national draft.
He went on to carve out a magnificent 282-game career over 17 seasons with Richmond, winning the Club’s leading goalkicker award on a record 13 occasions, taking out the Jack Dyer Medal in 2007, gaining selection in the Tigers’ Team of the Century (on a half-forward flank), and being inducted into Tigerland’s Hall of Fame.
