I’VE been stitching up that many fellow teammates in this blog recently that on Twitter, @lyntonmanuel has suggested that The Richards Report be re-named  The Stitchards Report.

So with this in mind, I’m going to give my team-mates a week off and talk about last weekend - our bye weekend.

I had the weekend in Melbourne and caught up with my family down there. I enjoy living in Sydney but sometimes part of me does miss living in a big traditional Australian Rules football city. Football goes hand-in-hand with Melbourne like strapping tape and Tadhg Kennelly - it’s everywhere!

It was great to wake up in Melbourne and read an article in the paper by Leaping Larry L, and to jump in the car and hear some songs by the Coodabeen Champions. Most of all it was also good to sit on the couch, eat mum’s cooking and watch some football on TV.

With all the talk going on right now about the TV rights, I was thinking about the TV coverage of AFL games when I was growing up and how different it was back then.

Channel 7 had the sole rights back then (80’s and 90’s) and there was no guarantee that they would show your team’s game live (as there were so many games on at the same time it wasn’t possible).

If they didn’t show the game live, you could listen to it live on the radio, or watch a delayed quasi version of the game on the Saturday/Sunday afternoon replay. (I say ‘quasi’ because you never knew what you were going to get. Sometimes they’d show the first half and then before you knew it they would skip to the last 10 minutes of the last quarter.)

Most things have advanced over time, but there is something that I want re-introduced into the TV coverage  - of course, TV rights bring in a lot of money to the AFL so I’m conscious not to bite the hand that feeds me. However, I would like to make one nostalgic suggestion.

For heritage round this year I’d love the commentators to bring back the half time ‘around the grounds’ update… but not just any old update.

Before doing this the commentators must give out the warning, Sandy Roberts-style, “For those who don’t want to see the scores, look away now”.

While the scores are up on the screen “Tip of my Tongue” by Diesel must be played for it to be authentic. As this song was played for years, I presume Channel 7 only owned that one single cassette as they never played anything else. If you’re not sure what song I’m talking about then click through here.

I have other ideas for heritage round, but I’ll leave it at that for now. We’ve got our first Friday night game in many, many years this Friday at the SCG and we’re hoping for a strong vocal crowd to help us out.

Hope that you can make it there… or watch us on live TV if you’re not in Sydney.

Ted Richards
@richards_report