Given it’s been 50 years since ‘The Royce Hart Story’ was published in 1970, we thought it was worthwhile to revisit some of what the Richmond ‘Immortal’ wrote in his ground-breaking book. Today, we present Hart’s thoughts on what the then VFL competition needed to do in order to become truly professional. It reveals just how far ahead of the game Hart was, both on and off the field, and makes for fascinating reading. 

“Football is at a standstill. The game has not progressed in fifteen years and it needs one mighty kick to lift it into the computerized space-age. The only improvement has been in training techniques. As far as crowds go, in 1956 we had 100,000 at the Grand Final, today we have 120,000. A 20,000 increase in 14 years, and that only because they built a new stand. Professionalism has got to come if the game is to survive.

Professionalism is linked closely to money. If you can’t pay the players the right cash, you can’t expect to get the best material. Only the top talent will produce the best football. If I was in the chair, this is what I would do to lift football out of the doldrums:

If the game is to get any bigger it will need more money ploughed into it. And the only way to get that money is to think big, act big and be big – which means Professionalism with a capital ‘P’.

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To start with, you need crowds. After all, crowds make the game; without them there would be no play. We must attract the paying customers and pack them in by serving up a better standard of play – and more of it. Games should be played midweek, interstate – even in the bush – and we should develop a promotion and relegation system and a national league. 

Promotion and relegation is the answer to the present one-sided competition. Weaker clubs would have something to aim for instead of sitting down on the bottom of the ladder year after year; they would have a chance of winning the premiership of the second division and thus gaining promotion into the first. It would keep the stronger clubs on their toes instead of them sitting on their backsides reaping in the receipts of the big gates. Every club would have to strive to stay in the top division. But such a system could not survive in one State alone, it would have to be on a nation-wide basis. 

Following the British soccer system, we should have a national league. Over there, a team from Manchester or Liverpool travels to London for matches. Here two teams from Perth could fly to Adelaide and Melbourne and vice versa. In this modern jet age it would only take a couple of hours flying time between each capital city. Teams could arrive on Thursday, have a couple of training runs and play on Saturday. Victoria would lose its stranglehold on football supremacy, but the whole of Australia would reap the benefit. It would be good for the sport and we would get more even competition rather than the one-sided interstate exhibitions that fans now have to put up with.

Professionalism would improve playing standards. Nowadays clubs only train a few days a week during the season, with only a sprinkling of summer preparations. At Richmond we train three nights a week and on Sunday mornings, a program not far removed from professionalism. If we were pro, we would be able to train every day and still have plenty of time to discuss tactics.

At training camp we could develop our skills. Richmond have just started one at Torquay, a holiday resort on the Bellarine Peninsula, 60 miles from Melbourne. A professional team could make better use of such facilities, living together for three or four days to do nothing but talk, eat and sleep football. Full-time coaches would be essential with, perhaps, a head trainer. At present a League coach is almost full-time. He would just have to give away his job and put in a couple of extra hours.

Part of his time would be devoted to keeping a comprehensive record of every player, a detailed file of every kick, injury or mistake in his career. These cards could then be fed into a computer to discover faults. Even though at Richmond we do study each player individually, a part-time coach, with perhaps fifty players under his care, cannot have sufficient time to discover every weakness in the side. And we don't see enough of our team-mates to uncover bad points. But if we were together throughout the week flaws in our game would soon show up. 

There is no better way to spot a player’s weakness than on film. The Tigers often go to Channel 7 or Channel 9 studios on Thursday night to study Saturday’s opponents on film. With professionalism we could, perhaps, employ our own cameraman to shoot film of specific players to show up their weaknesses. This could be projected in slow motion while the coach pointed out where he went wrong. 

I think a top team should have at least four coaches – one each for gymnasium, sprinting, kicking and general play. But to afford all this we need income from other sources. In Britain they have football pools which reap a tremendous amount of revenue for soccer. In Sydney the Rugby League clubs have poker machines and licensed premises which are run as a big business. The crowds at their games are not as big as those in Victoria, yet their stars are paid twice as much as we are. 

Gambling plays a big part in the promotion of any sport. Look what the TAB has done for racing, trotting and the dogs. Imagine what it could do for football. Victoria has a far too parochial outlook on football gambling. I know some people say that it would open up more vices for the public, but already offices and factories run their own football pools, and someone goes around with a tipping card at 20 cents a go. This ‘under-the-table’ money could be ploughed back into the game if only the Government could see the light.

A good player is worth his weight in gold. Top players should receive $200 a week. A full-time footballer still has to support his wife and family, and if he is going to be interstate and in the country regularly, he needs a fair bit to compensate him.

Payment should be on a sliding scale. Those at the top naturally should be paid the most. Obviously a captain with ten years service to the club should get more than a first-year recruit.

Every player should be on a contract, just like any other professional performer. It should be for a maximum of three years, because beyond this period you could not predict what a chap's form would be. New blood could be on a year’s contract to be reviewed according to his progress.

In summer months players should receive a small retainer and be free to take on coaching clinics and part-time jobs.

This year, at last, interstate transfer fees have been given the green light after years of underhand payments. But we must have a general transfer system like they have in Britain. There they put a price on a player’s head and any club that wants him has to pay ten or twenty thousand dollars depending on his worth. In this way clubs who are weak in certain departments buy players from the stronger clubs and vice versa. The player, of course, has to benefit from it and should receive a percentage of the fee. In this way no money passes under the table and only the club and individual profits.

The interchange of players between states would even up competition. Bigger crowds would be attracted to matches in hitherto less footy-minded states because they would be seeing the cream of Australian football in action. And that is where we came in. Crowds make the game – and that is where the big money is going to come from.”