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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
For me, it's a total joke that a modern-day, top-flight football team (of any code) has to arrange training runs at a variety of suburban ovals due to the fact that it's home base (i.e., Punt Road) has a cricket pitch in the middle of it. I wonder whether we can really compete with the top teams while this remains the case.
However, I do accept that this is an extremely complicated issue, for several reasons:
- The Richmond Cricket Club has a huge history, that includes the careers of such Test cricketers as Doug Ring, Bill Johnson, Jim Higgs, Graham Yallop, Paul Reiffel (and Cameron White in the present one-day team). If cricket were taken away from Punt Road, it would basically be lost to the Richmond area. Is this unpalatable?
- ... And yet Richmond footy supporters can't stomach the idea that the footy team's base could be any other place - unlike, say, Hawthorn or Collingwood supporters, who muttered barely a word of discontent when their home bases were moved from Glenferrie and Victoria Park respectively. Are we hamstrung by the strength of our sentimentality?
- There was a proposal to turn the Coburg ground into a football-only facility, to be used by us. As far as I know, this would involve the eviction of the Coburg Cricket Club (a notion protested by Gideon Haigh, the Age's twitty little cricket writer, in 2004 - see
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/20/1092972745888.html).
What do people think? I can't believe the current situation can possibly continue if we are serious about climbing into the upper echelons of the AFL world and staying there. Could you imagine a Premier League or NFL team being unable to train on its home base due to a similar predicament?
My view is that a cricket ground has to go. I'm a park cricketer myself - but at the end of the day, very few people give a rat's proverbial for suburban cricket, but a HUGE amount of people would slit their wrists for the RFC. We have to give our guys a decent track to train on, or we're looking at Crows/Eagles/Swans/Lions (etc) finals for years to come.
However, I do accept that this is an extremely complicated issue, for several reasons:
- The Richmond Cricket Club has a huge history, that includes the careers of such Test cricketers as Doug Ring, Bill Johnson, Jim Higgs, Graham Yallop, Paul Reiffel (and Cameron White in the present one-day team). If cricket were taken away from Punt Road, it would basically be lost to the Richmond area. Is this unpalatable?
- ... And yet Richmond footy supporters can't stomach the idea that the footy team's base could be any other place - unlike, say, Hawthorn or Collingwood supporters, who muttered barely a word of discontent when their home bases were moved from Glenferrie and Victoria Park respectively. Are we hamstrung by the strength of our sentimentality?
- There was a proposal to turn the Coburg ground into a football-only facility, to be used by us. As far as I know, this would involve the eviction of the Coburg Cricket Club (a notion protested by Gideon Haigh, the Age's twitty little cricket writer, in 2004 - see
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/20/1092972745888.html).
What do people think? I can't believe the current situation can possibly continue if we are serious about climbing into the upper echelons of the AFL world and staying there. Could you imagine a Premier League or NFL team being unable to train on its home base due to a similar predicament?
My view is that a cricket ground has to go. I'm a park cricketer myself - but at the end of the day, very few people give a rat's proverbial for suburban cricket, but a HUGE amount of people would slit their wrists for the RFC. We have to give our guys a decent track to train on, or we're looking at Crows/Eagles/Swans/Lions (etc) finals for years to come.