Dual Richmond premiership player Rex Hunt has urged today’s Tigers to use the pain of this year’s elimination final loss to Carlton to spur them on to greater heights in 2014.
Hunt, who was one of 18 Tiger premiership players to receive Life Membership of the Club at last night’s (Wednesday, December 11) Annual General Meeting, delivered a trademark passionate speech . . .
“The times that we had at Richmond were fantastic. We laughed together, we cried together, and if we got beaten, we absolutely bound together to become the most unstoppable and feared team in the competition,” Hunt said.
“That’s what Richmond, through ‘Dimma’ (Damien Hardwick) and the football department is here doing now . . . moulding together a side that will never, ever accept defeat.
“I don’t think it’s important to celebrate every time in your life. What I think is important, is to bleed when you get beaten.
“Never accept the fact that we made the eight this year, because we got done by a side (Carlton) that wasn’t in the eight!
“That should drive the Richmond Football Club and its players . . .
“I finally say to you people that the horizon that you’ve got is a great one.
“Don’t leave the Richmond Football Club saying, I could have done better, or I should have done this.
“There’ll always be better and lesser players than you. But when you bind together as a team, and become a force that wears the Black and Yellow, as Graeme Richmond used to say, ‘By Christ, they’ll know they’ve played Richmond’ . . .”
Hunt, a member of the Tigers’ 1969 and 1973 premiership teams, was deeply moved by the Club’s decision to grant him, and 17 other former players, Life Membership status at the 2013 AGM.
“Well, this is a great night for the Richmond Football Club, and why wouldn’t you be affected because this is where it all happened for me, 50 years ago next year,” he said.
“I arrived as a 15-year-old to try out with 52 other kids for the under 19s – and here I am.
“One of the nice things to happen to me was to receive a letter (from the Club) . . . we don’t receive letters much any more . . .
“The first paragraph of (Richmond president) Peggy O’Neal’s letter said, ‘The primary reason for the Richmond Football Club to be here is to win premierships’.
“I just think that’s wonderful.”
