It’s 50 years since ‘The Royce Hart Story’ was published in 1970, so we thought it was worthwhile revisiting some of what the Richmond ‘Immortal’ wrote in his ground-breaking book. First-up today, we present Hart’s thoughts on his coach, Tommy Hafey.

“Tom Hafey is a quiet man who gets results. Meek in manner, as a coach he has no peer. Two premierships for Richmond in four years at the club speak for themselves. And he achieved this by becoming part of his team; training, talking and living with them on and off the field.

I first met Tom in 1966. That was his first year as coach of the seniors and I was playing with the under 19s. He first struck me as being a man with very little to say; he was more intent on listening, especially about football. A coach has many ‘advisers’ and generally two-thirds of their theories on the game can be taken with a grain of salt. But if Tom thought an idea was worth trying he would put it into practice; if it was no good he would drop it.

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The following season was my first introduction to Hafey’s coaching methods. I had heard stories about him and one stuck in my mind. It was said that he had never been taken off the ground through injury in his life. One day when he was captain-coach of Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley League, he received a nasty cut on the eye. Although his eye was half hanging out he brushed the doctor and trainers aside and played on. This is the type of man Hafey is – all guts and determination. It was this course that led Shepparton to many premierships.

We still rubbish him about it at Richmond. If a player has an injury and Hafey tells him to forget about it, we say: ‘We’re not as tough as you, playing with an eyeball hanging out!’ He won’t listen to excuses, even if we are injured. He expects us to play our hearts out, even if it means running ourselves into the ground until we drop exhausted. If we have the bad luck to be injured during a game, it makes no difference. Hafey wants us to play on and give our best.

Hafey is a keen boxing fan and he likes us to play our games as if we were prize fighters . . . go the full distance. He compares the last quarter to the last round of a fight. It’s do or die and he expects us to get the pat on the bell. A boxer has always ‘had it’ when he has finished his bout and this is the way Hafey expects his team to come in after a game – exhausted.

Training with this human dynamo is murder! As a matter of fact, in pre-season cross-country runs, we don’t see much of him – he is always way out in front. Tom runs five or six miles along the beach every morning, then goes for a swim. Consequently, when we start training, he is so fit he can outrun almost any player in the club. It is not his style, but his fanatical will to win. This is the way he trains his side and himself. In the off-season he is in the gym two or three times a week. Everybody stops to watch him. Usually between exercises we take a breather. But not Tom. He runs from one corner of the gym to another. For example, if he is doing push-ups in one corner and weight-lifting in the other, he sprints between the two, whereas a normal person would just amble across. He tries hard to instil this attitude in us. And when the footballs come out at the start of the season, he doesn’t expect us to do anything he can’t do himself.

Tom has crossed a few people’s paths in his time. He doesn’t mind a player having an after-match drink with his opponents, but he frowns on anyone who abuses the privilege behind his back. Tom believes in looking after himself and doesn’t drink or smoke. Although certain people may be influential in the club, he doesn’t like listening to them over a drink. He would rather go with the players and hear their opinions. This is why he has been unpopular at times. There was some back-stabbing in 1969 and it was rumoured he was on the way out. This was because he preferred to mix with the players rather than the Big Shots.

But Tom’s attitude has won the confidence of the Tigers. We will do anything for him. The fact that he speaks our language makes all the difference. Even though he doesn’t drink himself, quite a few players do, and he will come over and talk to them while they are having a beer. He will stay up until two o’clock in the morning chatting and then give us his phone number to ring him if we have any problems. If he has something to tell you, he won’t hesitate to ring you at work. Rather than say anything behind your back, he will come right out and tell you man to man. He is very straightforward.

What makes Tom Hafey better than any other coach is not so much his skill at football, but his ability to bring a player to his peak. At Richmond we have many talented players recruited by Graeme Richmond. Even though Tom may not have had their ability as a player himself, he is able to extract the best from them.

He is like a motor mechanic working on an engine; he gets it going smoothly and everything runs well by the end of the season. This is borne out by the fact that we won our last eight games before the flag in 1967. The following year we won our last five in succession to finish fifth, and then in 1969 we took the premiership.

There couldn’t be a keener student of fitness than Hafey. He never misses an opportunity to attend a lecture or seminar on sport, and as long as he can find one point he can put into practice with the Tigers he is satisfied.

Tom has done some strange things in his quest for physical fitness. He has a shack at Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula, about 50 miles from his home in the Melbourne seaside suburb of Beaumaris. One morning he said to his wife: ‘I’m going to run down to Sorrento.’ He asked her to follow him a couple of hours later in the car and pick him up. She finally found him at Dromana sitting at the side of the road exhausted. He had run nearly 30 miles. That was a good effort, even for a marathon runner, but for a 38-year-old, who had not trained for marathons, it was phenomenal.

Hafey’s speeches before a match are loaded with fire. He tries to stir you up before the bounce. He never bawls out a player in front of his team-mates; if he is not pleased he will take a player aside and tell him quietly what he wants. Even when we are behind and in trouble he blasts us as a team, not as individuals. This helps the player who is letting the team down. He realises he is at fault without Hafey having to tell him, and strives to regain form. If the coach was on his back all the time it would only lower his morale. Often a player’s bad form is not entirely his own fault, but those around him.

Confidence is the key to Hafey’s success. This is why he’s the only coach for me. He has so much confidence in his players. Before the 1967 Grand Final Tom said: ‘There’s no way known Richmond can be beaten.’ This was contrary to the views of all the critics who said that a young side with no finals experience could never win. But Tom had so much faith in us that we didn’t dare let him down.

The premiership was the first for the Tigers in 24 years. The feeling of elation at winning was not so much for us as a club, but for the little man with a big heart – Tom Hafey.”