Tigers make historic return to Punt Road
A Richmond senior side will play for premiership points at their famous home, the Punt Road Oval, for the first time since 1964 on Sunday.
The Tigers AFLW team were supposed to do so in 2020, but strong ticket sales moved their home games to Ikon Park, which has a bigger capacity.
But with pandemic restrictions capping crowds at 50 per cent, Richmond’s women will play in front of a sell-out crowd of 1300 against the Brisbane Lions on Sunday, at the place their club has called home since 1885.
The Tigers will play in front of a sell-out crowd of 1300 against the Brisbane Lions on Sunday. Credit:Getty Images
Sarah D’Arcy will make her debut for the Tigers in the game. Her grandfather’s cousin is legendary Richmond player Jack Titus, who kicked 970 goals in his career (the sixth most in AFL/VFL history).
Some 471 of those were kicked across 136 games at Punt Road and D’Arcy can’t wait to run out on the ground where he became a legend.
“He’s the first Richmond player I ever knew of. Since I was very little, I always knew who Jack Titus was,” D’Arcy said, adding she will wear the No.12 guernsey this season as it’s the same number as Titus and her childhood hero, Matthew Richardson.
“Every time I saw his name as a kid I got so excited. I remember I saw his name on a locker at Coburg when I was 18 and it was a huge buzz.”
Her grandpa can’t be at the game but her family will, including her father who is over the moon she has moved from Collingwood to the Tigers.
“He wouldn’t wear his Collingwood hat to the game, he would put it on in the stands once he arrived,” D’Arcy said of her one-eyed, Tigers-supporting father.
Richmond moved their home games from Punt Road Oval to the MCG at the end of the 1964 season because the latter was bigger and had more luxurious facilities, Tigers club historian Rhett Bartlett said.
There was also speculation capacity would be cut when Punt Road was widened, but that didn’t eventuate until the late eighties.
“It wasn’t a rabid atmosphere, I wouldn’t say,” Bartlett said. “But because of the cricket pitch, when it got muddy it’s drainage system was pretty much nothing. If it rained at Punt Road it was mud up to your knees.
“It would have been the meeting point for so many people through the depression and World War I and World War II, and we can still to this day go to Punt Road to watch footy. Just like people did back in 1885.”
Club president Peggy O’Neal knows the allure of the ground as a meeting point and cultural touchstone for the yellow and black army, even when there’s no games or events there.
In lockdown, on the morning of the Tigers grand final win in Brisbane, she said she saw people in their Richmond gear walking around Punt Road Oval, and then saw them marching down Swan Street the next day (socially distanced, of course).
“We’ll enjoy watching our team play on our traditional ground,” O’Neal said of Sunday’s match.
“We’ve really enjoyed watching our VFL and VFLW team at Punt Road, but they were not for premiership points. It’s great that it’s our women who are able to do that.
“Once people see the redevelopment [in the coming years] we can make it really tremendous. It’s a sample of what the ground could be if our grounds are realised.
“This board has resolved we won’t leave Punt Road even if we are landlocked. It’s the heartland.”
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