![\"Tiger](\"http:\/\/yumstudio.com.au\/footy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/photo1-e1366803927571.jpg\")
<\/a>Tiger fan and death metal devotee. The quintessential niche audience?<\/p><\/div>You’ve got to love the collective fan up against the odds. The Bulldog, the Demon, the Tiger who turns up week after week in the vague hope of victory. Like a smoker habitulised to the filth of acrid smoke sucked under protest into tired lungs, these supporters get lit up, snubbed out, flicked into post game gutters and coughed into submission as on and off field crisis over flow in the ashtray of wrong draft picks, poor coaching and scatter-gun management.<\/p>\n
Somehow I got a ticket to the 1980 Grand Final as a young hipster douffous eager to sniff the vapour of premiership glory one more time in the absence of Hawk action. Packing a $50 ticket I was offered $200 for on the way in – enough for cartons of creme caramels, endless cigarettes and whiskey for a full week; I strolled in confident of a close tough affair. The game was over by quarter time with Richmond eventually steamrolling the Pies by 81 points. Never look a gift horse in the mouth – unless you’ve ordered a French lasagne.<\/p>\n
As wikipedia reports “Richmond have not won a premiership since, with their only subsequent Grand Final appearance being in the 1982 VFL Grand Final, which it lost to Carlton<\/em>.” We knew that. They know that. They hate that we know that. We love that they hate that we know and love that. We love the pain of the opposition side in crisis. Richmond is that benchmark for the 30 years that stretch back to 1982.<\/p>\n So it was with a sense of anticipation we partook of this weeks Collingwood v Richmond clash. The day was windless, crisp and sunny – a portent of the spring time finals conditions those stoic Tiger fans anticipate so pathologically. The sense that here – finally – was a Richmond unit up to the task of taking on and dismantling the big boys after bursting out of the season with 3 straight wins. <\/p>\n If hope is a sore hairy leg, Travis Cloke was the bandaid from which it was ripped. In the third quarter he took 6 towering marks, kicked four goals and energised his team mates into signing the reality cheque that overdrew the bursting bubble of Tiger finals aspiration. Wicked in the middle, shut down up forward, at sea in defence, the Tigers crumbled under Magpie might themselves humiliated the week before by the mighty Hawks. <\/p>\n