“Evolution of Stats”
After a strong friendship of 10 years, Peter Cameron who was a Richmond Football Club Committee (Board) Member and manager of the Reserves team, asked me if I would be interested in helping him on match day to record the players’ statistics.
It was pre-season 1973, and as I had followed the Tigers since 1943 and kept quite a lot of player details over 30 years I couldn’t say “YES” quickly enough.
Whilst some stats had previously been recorded there was very little detail. For my first day I arrived at the MCG at 10am which was an hour before the Reserves game started. On Peter Cameron’s advice I drew up a sheet with all the players names in their selected positions and headed up 4 columns namely, kicks, handballs, marks and goals.
When the match started Peter and I took up a position inside the boundary sitting on the same bench as the 19th & 20th men. Peter was the caller and I was scribe. All went well until there was an injury and Peter had to stop calling to organise a replacement player.
The stats stopped until Peter sorted out Coach, Colin Saddington’s instructions.
Over the season fairly accurate details were recorded and we won the Premiership! In fact, Richmond won the Seniors, Reserves, Under 19’s and Essex Heights (4ths) Premierships. What a way to start !
At the end of the season Peter asked me if I knew anyone who would like to join me as a full time assistant. One of my long standing friends from Melbourne High School and cricket association, Lloyd Brown, sprung to mind immediately as he was also a life time Richmond supporter. Lloyd jumped at the offer and we continued as a team for 25 years.
The senior team already had George McHutchinson recording stats with Ian Busse and others calling. Lloyd and I continued doing the Reserves and gradually as more details were being recorded we also did special stats for the Seniors. In 1985 I was appointed Head Statistician and by then we had a team of 10 people recording the Reserves and Seniors each match day. We split into 5 teams of 2. Two did the basic opposition details (kicks, handballs and scores) the balance recorded Richmond’s details such as kicks, effective/ineffective, handballs effective/ineffective, shepherds, smothers, tackles, knock-ons, inside 50’s, knock-outs, centre clearances, stoppages, goals, behinds and misses, loose ball gets, run and bounce, frees kicks for/against etc. etc. This was all manual – no computers !
At the 20 minute mark of each quarter a “tear off” sheet went to the nearby coach’s box together with another tear off sheet at quarter time, half time, 3 quarter time and at the end of the game.
Each quarter was identified with a 4 colour pen, blue 1st qtr., red 2nd. Qtr., green 3rd. qtr. and black for the final qtr. We had specially drawn up 12 page, A3 size duplicate (carbonised) stats sheets.
The Champion Data details that you see today in the newspaper is what we did manually from 10am to 5pm each match day ! I continued until 1998 when computerisation began.
In my time I worked with 21 different coaches. Col Saddington, Barry Richardson, Tony Jewell, Royce Hart, Paddy Guinane, Michael Green, Peter Hogan, Peter Welsh, Emmett Dunne, Peter Schwab, Kevin Morris, Rod O’Riley, Geoff Gieschen, Tom Hafey, Francis Bourke, Mike Patterson, Paul Sproule, Kevin Bartlett, Allan Jeans, John Northey and Robert Walls.
After 25 years without missing a Reserves, Senior and practice match no matter where the game was played I estimate that I was involved for 1200 matches.
Biggest Changes
From sitting on a bench inside the fence at the MCG to a specially built elevated, glass fronted “box” suitably for 10 people close to the Coach’s box with a telephone link.
