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Right on, Royce
Tony Greenberg
9:34:37 AM Wed 1 May, 2002
"The Royce Hart Story", published in 1970, caused quite a stir in football circles at the time due to the forthright comments of its author, the brilliant Richmond centre half-forward.
Hart had just completed his third season of VFL football with the Tigers when he wrote the book, which today has become something of a sporting collector's item.
Most of the publicity surrounding the book at the time revolved around Royce Desmond naming himself at centre half-forward in his "perfect side." He copped some flak for being so bold and brash as to do that at age 21, and with only three years' experience in the big time.
Indeed, there were those critics who seriously questioned Hart's credentials to write his football life story so early in his league career.
It didn't take long, however, for Hart to silence his knockers. By 1972, he was Richmond's captain, and by the end of the 1974 season, he had led the Tigers in superb style to back-to-back premierships.
When he retired midway through the 1977 season, he had 187 games, 369 goals, four premierships and two Best and Fairests to his credit, plus the acclamation of the football world as one of the greatest players in the history of the game.
In 1996, Hart was inducted into the AFL's Hall of Fame. Three years later, he was named at centre half-forward in Richmond's Team of the Century. Then, on the eve of the 2002 season, he became one of 24 inaugural inductees into the Tigers Hall of Fame.
Safe to say, therefore, that Royce has more than justified his place in his own best-ever team. Perhaps he had foreseen his own greatness -- just as he'd accurately foreshadowed, in The Royce Hart Story, so many of the changes that would take place in league football over the years.
While recently browsing through the book (my autographed copy, which has taken pride of place in my library since 1970), I was amazed at how many of Royce's suggested improvements to the competition had taken place.
Here's an example . . .
· "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'.
· "To start with, you need crowds. 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.
· "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 50 players under his care, cannot have sufficient time to discover every weakness in the side. And we don't see enough of our teammates to uncover bad points. But if we were together throughout the week, flaws in our game would soon show up.
Tony Greenberg
9:34:37 AM Wed 1 May, 2002
"The Royce Hart Story", published in 1970, caused quite a stir in football circles at the time due to the forthright comments of its author, the brilliant Richmond centre half-forward.
Hart had just completed his third season of VFL football with the Tigers when he wrote the book, which today has become something of a sporting collector's item.
Most of the publicity surrounding the book at the time revolved around Royce Desmond naming himself at centre half-forward in his "perfect side." He copped some flak for being so bold and brash as to do that at age 21, and with only three years' experience in the big time.
Indeed, there were those critics who seriously questioned Hart's credentials to write his football life story so early in his league career.
It didn't take long, however, for Hart to silence his knockers. By 1972, he was Richmond's captain, and by the end of the 1974 season, he had led the Tigers in superb style to back-to-back premierships.
When he retired midway through the 1977 season, he had 187 games, 369 goals, four premierships and two Best and Fairests to his credit, plus the acclamation of the football world as one of the greatest players in the history of the game.
In 1996, Hart was inducted into the AFL's Hall of Fame. Three years later, he was named at centre half-forward in Richmond's Team of the Century. Then, on the eve of the 2002 season, he became one of 24 inaugural inductees into the Tigers Hall of Fame.
Safe to say, therefore, that Royce has more than justified his place in his own best-ever team. Perhaps he had foreseen his own greatness -- just as he'd accurately foreshadowed, in The Royce Hart Story, so many of the changes that would take place in league football over the years.
While recently browsing through the book (my autographed copy, which has taken pride of place in my library since 1970), I was amazed at how many of Royce's suggested improvements to the competition had taken place.
Here's an example . . .
· "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'.
· "To start with, you need crowds. 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.
· "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 50 players under his care, cannot have sufficient time to discover every weakness in the side. And we don't see enough of our teammates to uncover bad points. But if we were together throughout the week, flaws in our game would soon show up.