Vendor Stephen B stuck with the yellow and black through their dark days, and has the memories of punter misbehaviour to prove it.
Back around 1969 or 1970, when John Jillard played for Footscray, his son Stephen and I were besties – I would go along with them to matches and that. Meanwhile, my mum was born on Burnley Street in Richmond, and was a lifelong Tigers supporter – so was her mother; it passed down the generations. One fateful day, it came to my birthday, I must’ve been turning 10. Mum asked me: “It’s your birthday, do you want a Footscray jumper or a Richmond jumper?”
The fact that Richmond was winning premierships at the time might’ve had something to do with my choice. And also, it was my mum – you don’t wanna disappoint your mum! She probably put some pressure on, that kind of mum pressure.
I still remember it as a turning point, but you don’t think at the time about how a choice like that will become part of your identity. It’s like, “I’ll have a cappuccino and you’ll have a latte”, “I’m Catholic and you’re Protestant” – but once you’ve got a team, you’ve got a team.
After that, I remember vividly walking around Footscray’s grounds after a game: they didn’t have showers then, they had big tubs that all the muddy footballers would hop into. Stephen would go and say hello to his dad, who was covered in mud on a winter’s afternoon, and I’d be standing there among them in my Tigers jumper. I got a few quizzical looks, that’s for sure.
Everyone in my family has a different team. My sister barracked for Essendon for reasons that were obscure. My brother was the most rabid Melbourne supporter, and a real eccentric, but in his adult life he never saw a Demons Premiership. One time I saw him praying in front of the scoreboard in Moorabbin – I thought that was quite unusual from a grown man.
I remember an English guy saying footy was our revenge on the working week: you could let your hair down, act manic, and it’s acceptable because it’s the footy. With my brother I saw this happening, he would be up in arms about how wrong an umpire’s decision was, or whatever: psychosis would be the most accurate term for it. At Moorabbin, they had a particular area on the ground for Saints fans called “the animal enclosure”.
Worst of all was halftime with my brother, when I was eight or nine years old, walking into the men’s urinal at a match. It was like a concrete bunker, or something from the Roman days – you can imagine the atmosphere. As we walked in, there was a guy lying half-in half-out of the half-full urinal, unconscious after a fight. That was very confronting to see as a kid. It’s surely changed a bit since then, that culture and that edge: it was like the wild west.
There was no choice when it came to my son, I didn’t offer him two jumpers: straight onto Richmond, straight to the footy. He lives in Queensland, but he’s the one that fills me in on events that are happening kilometres away from me – he listens to the footy more than I do. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and all that. I’ll ask my son questions about the team because my interest has been waning lately. I whinged about it to a St Kilda supporter, and he was like, “You won a wooden spoon? We’ve got 27 of the bloody things!”
For all the “I hate Collingwood, can’t stand Collingwood”, Richmond and Collingwood are very similar in our one-eyedness. It’s like religion! Richmond, Collingwood and
Carlton all got the pick of the litter for the best team songs, too. My son and I love to compare the new songs, like Greater Western Sydney (it’s just plastic to my ears), to the Carlton one (there’s real history there). It’s like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones capitalising on all the blues songs lying around: the new songs can’t compete.
In about 2005 my mum passed away. She was always a Richmond supporter, through that huge grand final drought for them between 1982 and 2017. I got a little moist around the eyes the day the drought broke and we won, standing around Punt Road Oval with my son, embracing. Any football supporter will tell you, it’s all about the victory of getting to say “I was right all along!”
By Stephen B
Stephen B is a writer who sells The Big Issue on Lygon Street, Melbourne.
Published in ed#743
Want more of The Big Issue?
Subscribe to The Big Issue magazine to enjoy powerful journalism, stories from our vendors, and more — all delivered straight to your door.
Subscribe now.