Richmond President, John O'Rourke, spoke at the start of Tuesday night's Jack Dyer Medal. Read his speech below (edited for length and clarity).

Can I extend a very warm welcome to all of you here at the 2025 Jack Dyer Medal. Thank you to Uncle Colin for your generous Welcome to Country and welcome to you, and welcome to Aunty Pam, and all our guests joining us on the KGI table. I also want to acknowledge every Richmond player, past and present, including AFL, AFLW and VFL listed players, joining us tonight - you are all an integral part of the history and the future of the Richmond Football Club, along with all of our coaches and amazing staff.

I particularly wanted to call out the families and partners of our playing group. I know a number of you have purchased your own tables tonight, and it is just a wonderful example of the invaluable support you provide to your player, but also to the whole fabric and culture of our Club, so thank you.

I’m looking forward to hearing from Adem Yze on his reflections on the year and plans for 2026, but I think I can echo the overwhelming view of our members and fans that 2025 was a year of growth and development and genuine excitement about what the future holds. There were no doubt moments of adversity, but I have to commend the resilience and spirit of all in our football program for their unity of purpose, to get back to work week in week out, no matter the results, and to strive to get better.

We are on a journey, and history tells us we must stay the course, with no short cuts to achieve ultimate success, but it’s clear from post-season discussions with our coaches and leadership group, that we cannot just expect our abundance of young talent and the passage of time to get us there.

In such a fierce national competition we are under no illusions about the enormous amount of hard work that is ahead of us. Our leaders are up for the fight to drive our standards, to continue to develop winning habits, and most importantly, to have the grit to be fiercely competitive every time we run out in 2026.

This acknowledgement of the hard work ahead has to occur across every aspect of our Club, on and off the field. We are fortunate that we have strong foundations. We are a powerful, stable Club, with great experience that guides our decision making. We have a huge membership base and great commercial support.

With those foundations in mind, the Board charged our CEO Shane Dunne to bring forward a new plan to guide the whole Club through to 2030. I should at this point congratulate Shane and all his executive team on an outstanding first year.

Under Shane’s leadership the culture of our Club remains strong, but we also embrace significant change and innovation. Out of the Strategic Plan work is the commitment that Richmond will be The Destination Club where all of our talent thrives on and off the field, no matter where they come from. It will be a place that no one wants to leave and outsiders will long to join. It won’t just be a result of having the game’s leading high performance/high care football program, but by excellence in the way we operate across the Club.

We must have strong financial muscle to have the capacity to invest in what we know it takes to win, in an environment where Richmond gets no favours; we accept that, and we get on with it. To that end I do want to acknowledge the crucial support of our commercial partners.
 
Thank you to all the organisations who have partnered with the Richmond Football Club this season, working in collaboration to help enable and enhance our football programs and broader community impact, in particular our Joint-Major Partners, nib and Latitude. 
 
A special thank you to the whole team at Latitude in their final year as a partner of the Club. We appreciate all of your support across the past five years and look forward to remaining in touch. Thank you to Campbell Morrison and all of your team - you will always be welcome at Tigerland.

With the departure of Latitude, the Club is proud to announce that GWM will be joining the Club as Joint-Major Partner in 2026. We look forward to working with the GWM team and showcasing their range of exciting products in the years to come. A big welcome to Steve Maciver from GWM and your executive team here tonight – it is great to have you in the Richmond family.

Another pillar of our Plan is that Punt Road thrives as a place of belonging for all of our people, and that includes having elite high performance facilities in the best training location in the AFL. I’m sure everyone is aware that we are now underway with Stage 1 of our Punt Road redevelopment. It has taken years of hard work to get the project underway, and I have to call out the amazing support of our key donors, a number of whom are in the room tonight. You will be always remembered as part of a foundation group that will drive the next generation of Tiger success.

We still have a lot of work ahead of us to press on with Stage 2 and complete the whole project, and we have a number of initiatives underway behind the scenes to further strengthen the Club off-field. Look out in 2026 for the Punt Road Collective — a program designed to offer a distinctive point of difference by pioneering new opportunities for connection, growth, and innovation across our Club.

And a final, but perhaps most important pillar of our Plan, is to deliver for our members. That not only means the joy that the on-field journey and ultimate success will bring, but it also means striving to provide everyday excellence in service to our huge membership base and to invest in developing the Tiger fans of the future, as the demographics of Melbourne and Australia evolves. We are so fortunate to have the Tiger Army behind us through thick and thin. We are really encouraged by the surveys of intention to renew memberships for 2026 - it shows our fans are enjoying the growth of our young list, and we urge everyone to get on Board early next season.

I would like to call out and commend all of our senior players and leaders for their commitment and spirit throughout 2025. But it would be remiss of me if I didn’t just single out one player in Kamdyn McIntosh. He’s a remarkable character that brought so much to our Club. I loved the way he spoke before his last Richmond game about how hard he felt he had to work to earn every single one of his 213 games. I know that work ethic extends to his burgeoning construction business, and as a result he is going to be so successful in his post football career, but a special thank you for everything Kamdyn.

Our Club sadly lost some true Richmond giants with their passing during the year. We will pay tribute to them at our Annual General Meeting, but I did want to acknowledge the contribution of Peter Nixon AO and make special welcome tonight of Peter’s daughter, Jo, and her husband Peter, for joining us.

In closing I would like to thank all of my Board colleagues for all of their tireless commitment that goes unsung. We are fortunate to have such a strong and stable Board in today’s environment. Can I pay special tribute to Emmett Dunne who retires this year after nine years on the Board and a remarkable 53 years of service to the Tigers in so many capacities. And we now welcome to the Board three-time premiership hero Dave Astbury. We all know what a great player he was, but he brings so many other skills to our Board table and we look forward to his contribution.

Let’s go Tigers in 2026!