The Day the Music Died

I was sitting at Old Bar on Johnson Street when the news came through. I was perched up on the Norm seat, toying with a pot and reading The Age and making small talk with the barkeep. It was just another Thursday night. The regular crowd was in, wearing black drainpipes and moustaches carefully crafted to look casual and fashionably unfashionable spectacles that would make both Henry Kissinger and Mrs. Slocombe proud. They were drinking cider and smoking Stuyvesant Lights and listening to some jangly country rock that the Gram Parsons admirers on stage were playing. It is a fine establishment for a professional sportswriter to relax in.

Any chance of relaxation last Thursday night was swallowed up like a box of Pizza Shapes at weed lover’s house, however, when a gentleman in a dapper grey suit stuck his head in the bar and yelled out to nobody in particular: “Have you heard the news…Richo just retired.” He stood there, the colour drained from his face. The few of us who understood the gravity of that statement went into immediate shock. One woman screeched and went to the bathroom. Before we could press the man in the suit for more details, he was gone. We knew it was no prank though. We could all see it in his eyes.

It reminded me of that Lou Reed song, “The Day John Kennedy Died”, that intense sense of drama you get when you realise at the moment that you are caught up in something world changing.

“I remember where I was that day, I was upstate in a bar
The team from the university was playing football on TV
Then the screen went dead and the announcer said,
"There's been a tragedy
There's are unconfirmed reports the president's been shot
And he may be dead or dying."

For the next two hours I sat there in stunned silence. I drank whiskey and chain smoked a packet of cigarettes and looked for meaning in the empty glasses and burnt up butts. I probably should have gone to Richmond where I imagine tears flooded Punt Road and Burnley Street and everywhere in between. It didn’t occur to me though. I could do nothing but ponder a life without Richo. I was not the only one drawn into personal reflection, social isolation and apocalyptic thinking that night.

Sometime around two in the morning I pulled myself from the bar and slowly wandered home. I turned my phone on and it began convulsing like an epileptic watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I had become the point man in many circles in regards the retirement of Matthew Richardson. The right kind of people know the love I have for Richo and the distress his unexpected retirement has caused not only me but a great many across Australia. Some were concerned about my well-being. Others wanted details. A sick few wanted to fuel their own self-esteem by lapping up my misery in some form of perverted self-worth osmosis.

After wandering the streets for an hour or so I made it home. I couldn’t sleep though so I smoked another packet of cigarettes and decided that I was giving up on Australian Rules. What was the point? What attachment do I really have to the game? I am not a native of the sport. For the most part I find it messy and lacking in physical toughness. A great game of AFL is a most enjoyable experience but a great game of AFL is not particularly common, particularly these days where coaching and officiating have made the game virtually a non-contact sport. Even my support of Richmond has no foundation without Matthew Richardson. I don’t know life at Tigerland without Richo. I don’t really want to know life at Tigerland without Richo. I started following Richmond because of a fondness I developed for Richo sitting in The Judge’s lounge in my first year of college, a regular haunt prior to The Buffalo Club and The Officers Club. Danny Frawley and the club song were partially responsible for bringing me to Punt Road but essentially it was that giant champion with the graceful hands of Charlie Parker, the colossal heart of Phar Lap and the persistence of James C. Horvath that has led me to care for the happenings of the Richmond Football Club.

And late last Friday morning, drunk and delusional and devastated and deprived of sleep, I was prepared to give all that up. There would be no Australian Rules without Richo, at least not as far as I was concerned. There would be no Tiger membership in 2010. There would be no getting behind this new Richmond team. There would be no more hurt, anger or frustration. Supporting the Tigers without Richo seemed like a futile and somewhat sado-masochistic pastime. I caught a glimpse of it in 2009 and I didn’t like what I saw. It was brutal and draining and as awkward as having a gay shop assistant touch your belt buckle twice while doing up a tie for you and gazing lustfully into your eyes from a very close proximity.

I knew that I was deep in the anger stage of grieving and that when all the dust had settled I would remain a Tiger but I had and still have an acute sense that things will never be the same.  

Deep down I knew the time would come for Richo to move on but I guess I always assumed that it would be at the end of a season- the end of a winning season- where the farewell would last weeks and would culminate in our idol being chaired off the MCG as 100,000 looked on and cheered and the skies opened and Melbourne stopped and a thousand honours were bestowed on him. Whether it was true or not, I always felt it would be easier to let Richo go if he was given the farewell he deserved.

No AFL player of the last decade has deserved a better send off than Richo. He was more beloved than any Australian Rules player and on an esoteric level he is regarded as the best player of his generation. He is almost universally regarded as the most entertaining player of this generation and probably any other. No player in the league had the same attributes: a midfielder in the body of a power forward, unparalleled in the air, speed and strength, unrivalled in passion for both club and game. He danced to his own beautiful tune and few reached his lofty heights.

He deserved a fairytale finish. And we all needed to be part of it. We needed one more memory, one more grab, one more Richo moment, one more expression of flawed brilliance, one last chance to see Richo in the yellow and black. We needed the wake. We needed closure.

In years to come, the legend of Matthew Richardson is going to be tough to explain. In a sport that worships statistics, the story of Richo does not lie in the numbers. He kicked 800 goals but his greatest flaw was his goal kicking. He had a will to win like few of his contemporaries and he did as much for his team as any single player but he played in only three finals matches and never played in a Grand Final. He polled big in the Brownlow only once and won only one Jack Dyer Medal yet but he was the most important Richmond player of the last fifteen years, the personification of the Tiger spirit and the most enduring star of Richmond’s lowest era, a player who was so equally brilliant as beloved that he ranks as one of the club’s all-time greats.

In fifty years time, it is doubtful history will be able to tell the full tale of Matthew Richardson. Written history at least will not reflect the impact Richo had on AFL football and the Richmond Football Club. He was a player you had to see and feel and hear to understand. Words will never be able to tell the full story of Matthew Richardson and numbers, which become more important with the passing of each person who saw a player, won’t even get close. It is impossible to quantify all the intangibles that make Matthew Richardson the beloved icon of the modern game that he is.

While I am still breathing and all those who have seen Richo display his brilliance are still kicking, the legend of Richo will survive. Those with an eye for greatness and a sense of history know that Richo is one of a kind, the Halley’s Comet of Australian Rules, and they will never forget.

I have no idea how life without Richo will be. The one thing I am sure of, however, is that it won’t be nearly as entertaining or wonderful. Saturday afternoons at the MCG won’t ever be the same.