#Rover Larrikin

[girls4etho]

rover larrikin could play wwx. i can see it

hang on i have a really bad post to make

[avatarquake]

I have a question. About Larrikin’s full taken name. Is it Larrikin Fetter or Rover Larrikin?????

[protectoroffaeries]

@dasy8316

The secret to sex is to say "tally ho" beforehand

[larrikinn-blog]

To my brother's revolutionary covenant I’m runnin’ with the Dead Men and I am lovin’ it! See, that’s what happens when you up against the ruffians We in the shit now, somebody gotta shovel it! Rover Larrikin, I need no introduction When you knock me down I get the fuck back up again!

[footyplusau]

Vale John K Watts: the best ever… but could he play football?

As one of the great Perth radio presenters of all time, JK Watts often sang and carried on about how, as a footballer, he was “the best ever”.  

It is a funny thing to say about yourself, especially in Australia.

Watts’ irreverent humour was a staple on many sports program in the early 80s. Photo: Jon Watts

But could he really play? Was he any good?

Yep, he could, and yes he was.

Watts, who passed away on Saturday after a long battle with cancer, was a premiership player with East Perth in 1956, 1958 and 1959, and coached by the legendary Jack Sheedy, playing alongside Polly Farmer, Ted Kilmurray and others with names like Webster, Earnshaw and Kevin McGill.

A talented defender and ruck rover in a tough era, John K Watts also won premierships in the VFL (with Geelong in 1963) and Tasmanian football league (with Hobart in 1966 as captain coach), becoming the only Australian Rules footballer to win three premierships with three different teams in three different states.

As an 18-year-old in 1956, Laurie Kennedy was the Royals team youngster and remembers JK the footballer as a flamboyant but “good player”.

“He was a bit of a fancy pants,” Kennedy told 6PR Afternoons.

“Wattsy would have the socks but outside of the socks he would have the white bandages on so everyone knew Wattsy was there.

“He wouldn’t just take a mark… he would put it behind his head and flick the ball backwards and forwards … ‘did you see that one! How good was that?’, so Wattsy was a showman all the time.”

Kennedy, himself a triple premiership player in the same teams as Watts, compared him to intercept specialist defender Jeremy McGovern in the current Eagles team.

“Wattsy was that sort and he was fairly mobile. Quite regularly, he would take off from the backline and head off and do the bouncing and try to attack as best he could,” Kennedy recalled.

JK Watts was the only footballer to win three premierships with three different teams in three different states.

“(But) Wattsy was a very good mark.  There’s times you would be standing there in the back pocket and next thing over the top there’d be this big bloody knee in your back and there’s Wattsy taking a ‘speccy’ over you.”

Any chat about John Watts the footballer soon turns to the related topic of JK the larrikin. 

There was that time when East Perth were building a new grandstand and veteran club administrator Hec Strempel couldn’t understand how the builder was short so many bricks.

Kennedy reckons the mystery was solved when the team went out to a function on Peninsula Road in Maylands.

“Sure enough, there’s all these bricks, there’s a retaining wall, there’s a BBQ. Wattsy had knocked them off,” Kennedy said.

John Watts played 166 games for East Perth and 52 for Geelong between 1954 and 1965, winning four flags.

He could talk, he could sing, but he could really play football.

Simon Beaumont presents the Afternoons show on Radio 6PR

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[neitherthehoneynorthebee]

Finally!!!!!!!!

Chapter 20 of Time Out Of Mind (a Skulduggery Pleasant time travel story about grief and fixing your mistakes) is out as of two. seconds. ago. View here: Time Out Of Mind - Chapter 20 - Alexander_Writes - Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy [Archive of Our Own]. This is where it's all been heading.

[nevermindigotthis]

Anton Shudder and Rover Larrikin. This is part of my crusade to make every SP fan on Tumblr read Dead Men Walking by purplejabberwock on AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/series/49976). Please read this, I need people to draw fan art with me. Also it‘s the ultimate Erskine redemption and perfect Larrikin and Hopeless. God Hopeless, I love him so much…

[nevermindigotthis]

Rover Larrikin from purplejabberwock‘s Dead Men Walking (https://archiveofourown.org/series/49976). Rover is an Elemental with a tragic backstory, but he‘s also a people person who keeps the team together. He is the one who brought everyone back together after the war, he and Dex also got married once because they needed an excuse to throw a party. There are frequent discussions about who is the husband and who is the wife 😄

[nevermindigotthis]

Explanation: This is again from purplejabberwock‘s Dead Men Walking AU, this time from the work https://archiveofourown.org/works/913237/chapters/1770154 which has origin stories for the Dead Men. This is Rover Larrikin, an elemental with a past so tragic he often turns himself to stone to escape. I re-read Larrikin‘s story again yesterday and I have so many feelings that I needed to draw something.

[lassieposting]

The Faces Of Skulduggery Pleasant

The Dead Men Edition

Top: Skulduggery Pleasant, Valkyrie Cain, Ghastly Bespoke

Middle: Erskine Ravel, Saracen Rue, Dexter Vex

Bottom: Anton Shudder, Rover Larrikin, Corrival Deuce

[quickberater]

Ebay Angebot Mountainbike Damen Hardtail 26 MTB Larrikin Weiß 21 Gänge Alu-Rahmen 242M http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/707-53477-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10039&campid=5337445741&item=142782498420&vectorid=229487&lgeo=1&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr %#Bike%

[footyplusau]

Blues larrikins and legends: New AFL book does justice to Carlton’s grandest days

Between 1979 and 1982, Carlton dominated league football, winning three of the four premierships on offer, and winning 76 of 98 games, a strike rate of 78 per cent.

It’s a record that stands up very well against other great teams of the modern era, Brisbane in the early 2000s, Geelong between 2007-11 and Hawthorn’s recent three flags in a row. Yet for some reason, the Blues aren’t often mentioned in the same breath.

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McLachlan: MRP have tough decisions to make

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AFL plays of round 9

AFL plays of round 9

Dangerfield sets the standard, Tiges lose again at the death, Eddie banks another GOTY contender, Bucks bark sparks Pie revival and North run and carry undoes the Dees.

McLachlan: MRP have tough decisions to make

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McLachlan: MRP have tough decisions to …

McLachlan: MRP have tough decisions to make

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan believes the Match Review Panel will have some hard choices to make from Round Nine.

Plays of round 6

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Plays of round 6

Plays of round 6

Dangerfield sets the standard, Tiges lose again at the death, Eddie banks another GOTY contender, Bucks bark sparks Pie revival and North run and carry undoes the Dees.

Dockers into top eight

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Dockers into top eight

Dockers into top eight

After a wet start Fremantle pulled away from Carlton in the second-half to win by 35 points.

Bernie Vince goes down

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Bernie Vince goes down

Bernie Vince goes down

Ben Cunnington took his frustrations out on Bernie Vince, sending the Demons star crashing to the turf with a gut punch.

Kangaroos hold off Demons

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Kangaroos hold off Demons

Kangaroos hold off Demons

North Melbourne have notched their third win of the season, defeating Melbourne 104-90 at the MCG.

Essendon crush West Coast

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Essendon crush West Coast

Essendon crush West Coast

The bombers took the Eagles to task at Etihad stadium, dominating them from the outset to win by 61 points.

AFL plays of round 9

Dangerfield sets the standard, Tiges lose again at the death, Eddie banks another GOTY contender, Bucks bark sparks Pie revival and North run and carry undoes the Dees.

Perhaps that has something to do with the reputation those champion Carlton teams forged away from the football field.

The Blues were big drinkers, hard partiers, and tales of their exploits, like an infamous visit to The Lodge when the players walked away with the silver service cutlery, or the late night adventures of the likes of Wayne Johnston, Jimmy Buckley and Val Perovic, have become the stuff of football legend.

But on Tuesday, the football deeds of those famous Blues will be as front and centre as those stories at the launch of Larrikins and Legends, a new book taking an in-depth look at Carlton’s finest era, the function held, very appropriately, at Peter “Percy” Jones’s North Fitzroy Arms hotel.

Author Dan Eddy has spent considerable time interviewing not only the stars of those triumphant days, but it seems, many of the bit players as well, and the result is fascinating reading.

After Carlton won the 1972 premiership, its third in a five-year span, the Blues drifted for several years despite a glut of individual talent and roll call of instantly recognisable names. It was Alex Jesaulenko’s appointment as captain-coach six rounds into the 1978 season that whipped, almost literally some would argue, an under-performed group into top gear.

Jesaulenko’s torturous training sessions, in which players would run ridiculous numbers of laps, sprints over and over again, and drag tyres filled with bricks around behind them, themselves became the stuff of legend, a story from Carlton cult figure Vin Catoggio typical:

Jubilant Carlton players run a lap of honour after winning the 1979 grand final against Collingwood. Photo: Peter Cox

“Wayne Harnes was competing with somebody else, and he was that tired that he fell to the ground and couldn’t get back up,” Catoggio said.

“Jezza went up beside him and said, ‘Harmesy, get up!’ He said ‘I can’t,’ and Jezza said again ‘get up!’ to which Harmsey said, ‘Fuck you, I can’t!’ ‘If you don’t get up we’re going to stay out here as long as you want,’ so everyone was yelling ‘Harmesy, get up!’ He dragged himself to his knees, then got up on his feet and went for the next ball and again fell flat on his face. It was incredible to watch.”

Wayne Harmes, Ken Sheldon and Jimmy Buckley (the latter pair having swapped guernseys) celebrate the 1979 grand final win. 

After a rare loss in 1979, Jesaulenko had promised his players a tortuous Tuesday evening session and duly delivered. It began with three 1500-metre time trials, then 10 x 800’s,10 x 400’s, 10 x 200’s, and then man-on-man contesting for the rest of the night. “We started at five o’clock and we got off the track at twenty to eleven,” Harmes recalls.

But Carlton, already a skilful side, reaped the benefits of the extra physical and mental resilience their brutal coach had instilled in them, particularly Harmes.

In the grand final against arch enemy Collingwood, it was he who not only won the very first Norm Smith Medal, named after his great uncle, but who delivered one of football’s most famous moments, chasing his own errant kick to the boundary, diving full-length and fisting the ball into the path of Ken Sheldon, who kicked what proved to be the match-winning goal in the five-point thriller against Collingwood.

True to the club’s reputation of the time as loud, boisterous and perhaps arrogant, what ensued was not a basking in the premiership glow, but a civil war, when during a bitter boardroom split, Jesaulenko backed the incumbent, George Harris, lost, and promptly departed for St Kilda.

Jesaulenko’s old mate Percy Jones, asked to fill the breach in 1980, got Carlton to second on the ladder, only for the Blues to go out of September in straight sets. He, too, was unceremoniously tipped out. But the next man for the job, former Hawk David Parkin, would prove a masterstroke.

Carlton powered through the 1981 season, finishing on top of the ladder, comfortably beating Geelong in the second semi-final to earn a second week off, ready to face Collingwood, again playing the role of underdog, preparing for its fourth final in as many weeks.

Parkin was meticulous in his planning, his side perfectly prepared and a warm favourite. But grand final nerves remained an issue.

“Before the game, I went into our rooms and only five blokes were ready for the pre-match warm-up,” he recalled. “So I went into the medical room and there were seven players who were receiving a local anaesthetic, and I had known nothing about their ailments prior to that.

“That made 12, so where were the other eight players? I wandered through each room, and finally I found them. They were all lying on the floor holding hands in a darkened room listening to the psychologist, Laurie Hayden. … I staggered out of there thinking, ‘We’ve got seven physically, and eight mentally, who are incapable of doing the job today. As bad as Collingwood are, we’re not going to win with five players.”

For a time, it looked like the Blues wouldn’t, either. But two late third-quarter goals to Buckley and Rod Ashman pegged back a 21-point Collingwood lead. And in the last term, Carlton came right over the top to win by 20 points.

“My greatest memory is when Jimmy Buckley slotted the goal, and as we were going to the huddle he said, ‘Boys, they’re fucked! I can see it in their eyes, we’ll beat this mob’,” recalls rover Alex Marcou.

“I immediately turned to watch the Collingwood players at the huddle and they were arguing with each other because we’d kicked a couple of quick, late goals. I thought to myself, ‘Yep, Bucks is right.’ We were pretty fired up.”

Eddy was able to speak to virtually everyone connected with Carlton of the era. Except, perhaps not surprisingly, the famously reclusive Bruce Doull, who left him an apologetic voicemail. Not that the author was short on tributes from his teammates testifying both to his champion qualities as a defender, and the extent of his shyness.

Warren “Wow” Jones, who would play the game of his life in the 1982 grand final, recalls a moment involving Doull from that very game.

“He hadn’t spoken to me in about five years, and at quarter-time I’ve grabbed a couple of oranges out of the bucket and I’m counting the pips as Parkin’s talking. Suddenly, Brucey tapped me on the shoulder and I thought ‘Shit! Bruce is going to ask me for some advice or something.’ I said ‘Yes Bruce?’ and he said, ‘Mate, you’re standing on my toe’!”

And it was that 1982 back-to-back triumph over Richmond, one of the most brutal grand finals of the modern era, which set the seal on this Carlton side as one of the greats.

The Tigers had finished on top of the ladder and dispensed with the Blues in the second semi-final. Carlton had struggled to get over Hawthorn in the preliminary final.

Parkin, sensing he would need a different plan of attack for the re-match with the warm favourite, took some gambles. Richmond key forward David Cloke had kicked five goals on Perovic in the second semi-final. Parkin decided to go with the much lower-profile Mario Bortolotto on Cloke with Perovic taking Michael Roach instead.

He also started a potential match-winner Peter Bosustow on the interchange bench alongside Marcou. Both gambits paid off big time, Cloke and Roach quelled, and the “Buzz” and little man Marcou playing big second halves in a bruising, draining game played in difficult conditions.

Carlton were known for their big third quarters. It was no exception in the game that mattered most, the Blues booting 5.4 to Richmond’s 0.6 to take a 17-point lead to the final break, the historic win sealed by Marcou’s goal on the run late in the final term.

Nine Carlton players, Doull (who’d played in his first flag back in 1972), Sheldon, Buckley, Harmes, Johnston, Marcou, Mark Maclure, Peter McConville, and skipper Mike Fitzpatrick played in all three premierships. They were heady days that wouldn’t last.

Carlton wouldn’t win the flag again for another five years. Indeed, the Blues have won only another two in the subsequent 35 years, and endured, through the mid-2000s, their darkest hours, and their only wooden spoons.

But the Blues of 1979-82 aren’t remembered so fondly by the faithful only because they were representative of the last great era Carlton have had, nor just for their exploits around the various pubs, bars and nightclubs of Melbourne.

They were a super football team, full of bona fide stars and which played eminently watchable football, and one which in hindsight was only a breath or two away from winning four consecutive premierships.

Theirs is a legacy that deserves more acclaim and it’s one Eddy’s book does a fine job in delivering.

Larrikins & Legends, by Dan Eddy (Slattery Media Group). Books available at books.slatterymedia.com.

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[footyplusau]

Obituary: Lou Richards, media larrikin and Collingwood football legend

Lou Richards 1923-2017

“THEY don’t talk much about people when they’re dead, do they?” said the George Burns look-alike with dismay as he reflected on the fate of his favourite author, John Steinbeck, almost 40 years ago.

Lou Richards. Photo:

But Lou Richards, a born extrovert who loved the limelight – which masked the fact that he was an eternal hypochondriac mortified by death – didn’t need to fret about his own legacy. At least not with the Australian football world, and even beyond.

The former champion Collingwood rover and captain, who cashed in a 250-game career to become a newspaper columnist and radio and television personality like no other, has died aged 94.

Richards, who was renowned for his witty observations and quick retorts, in turn had to cop plenty of good-natured ribbing from his media colleagues, who were aware that his confident, even brash “on air” persona belied a vulnerable streak of self-doubt.

Richards was born in tough surrounds and circumstances in Collingwood.

It shaped his “alley cat upbringing”. He and his brother Ron learnt some basic lessons early: to stick up for themselves; thriftiness; and to exploit the moment.

Years later, Richards’ long-time sparring partner and another football legend, the late “Captain Blood” Jack Dyer, said of him: “He’s been like a rat in a famine, and he still has those characteristics of native cunning. He’d survive where a lot of people would turn it up. He’s resourceful. If he went to the moon, he’d find five cents there for sure.”

Photo gallery

Vale Collingwood legend Lou Richards

Richards’ father, Bill, an electrician, went broke in the Depression and the family relied on the “two quid a week” earned by his mother, Irene, a boot machinist at a shoe factory. Bill drowned in Gippsland on his son’s 21st birthday.

Richards played for Collingwood for 15 years, was captain between 1952 and 1955, and led the Magpies to the 1953 premiership.

He lit up his 250-game club career with 423 goals and was its leading goal scorer in 1944, 1948 and 1950. He also wore the Big V in 1947 and 1948.

He always wanted to be a performer and had the gift of the gab from an early age, which often got him the strap in school.

As a boy he had Broadway on his mind, as a tap dancer or comic, but he was destined to chase pig leather.

Richards was part of a footballing dynasty: his maternal grandfather, Charlie Pannam – of Greek heritage and originally named Pannamopoulos – played for Collingwood for 14 years before switching to Richmond. Pannam’s two sons (Richards’ uncles), Charlie jnr and Alby, also played for the Magpies; Charlie later coached South Melbourne and Alby coached Richmond. And Richards’ brother, Ron, also was a Magpie and starred in the 1953 premiership side.

After truncated schooling, Richards worked first as a fitter and turner before joining the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, where he went around tapping pipes to find faults. The MMBW gave him time off to study for his intermediate certificate and he became a technical drawer designing public toilets.

Unsurprisingly, he called it his “shithouse” job, but his friend and Brownlow medallist Neil Roberts, took another tack: “It was at the Board of Works that he learned to mix the Yan Yean shandies he served in his pub.”

And speaking of Richards’ publican persona, his long-time sparring partner Jack Dyer, would say: “The scotch in the Phoenix doesn’t even stain the ice.”

Richards, in fact, operated two pubs after hanging up his boots. The first was in Erroll Street, North Melbourne, and later, the Phoenix, in Flinders Street.

Immediately after he retired from football, he broke into the media in 1955 with a job as an expert comments scribe with the now defunct Argus newspaper, and radio commentator with radio 3XY.

Later, he moved to the Sun and radio 3DB, and much later to the Sunday Age; he was part of the Channel Seven team that launched World of Sport in 1958, and League Teams, which became Melbourne sporting institutions for more than two decades.

Richards then moved to Channel Nine and Wide World of Sports and Sports Sunday. His last regular television spot was handling the somewhat chaotic handball segment on the Sunday Footy Show, from which he retired at the end of 2008.

On each show, his mischievous humour was pivotal to the informed coverage/hilarity/nonsense that perennially rated highly.

On the newspaper side, Richards and his cohorts dreamt up all manner of publicity stunts to keep “Loui the Lip” in the news. Frequently he became the news.

Not for nothing did he agree to be dubbed Kiss of Death for his match-day tips.

In 1978, one ill-fated prognostication ended up with him, all 170 centimetres centimetres and 73 kilograms, carrying North Melbourne ruckman Mick “Galloping Gasometer” Nolan, about 113 kilograms, piggy back along Erroll Street.

Earlier self-inflicted (publicity attracting) penalties included sweeping Collins Street with a feather duster, cutting the lawn of “Mr Football” Ted Whitten with a pair of scissors, and rowing then Geelong coach Billy Goggin across the Barwon river in a bathtub in 1980.

Yet another stunt saw him jump off St Kilda Pier into freezing water on a frosty winter morning. The latter experience, he quipped, put him in hot water with his wife Edna for three weeks because he forgot to zip up the fly on his wetsuit.

In 1973, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks moved across the Yarra into a smart apartment in Toorak, marking yet another indicator of his upwards trajectory. Friends ribbed him about being a class-turncoat.

As ever, it was like water off a duck’s back. He also had 22 hectares on the Mornington Peninsula, where a manager maintained a heard of Black Angus, and part-owned the country radio station 3CV.

Richards had entered the business world early in his media career when he bought the Town Hall pub in North Melbourne; later he took the lease on another watering hole, the Phoenix, which he ran with his wife, Edna, who called the shots with a mixture of charm and gentle but firm persuasion.

He never won Collingwood’s best and fairest (Copeland Trophy) award, but several community awards awaited him.

In 1975 he was named Football Personality of the Year; in 1981 he was  crowned King of Moomba; and in 1982 the National Trust classified him a living treasure to be protected against demolition. With typical humour, Richards said that when he received the call, he feared he was going to be “certified”.

He was awarded life membership of the VFL but at the end, elevation to a legend of football’s Hall of Fame eluded him, causing controversy. Perhaps now that honour will be posthumous.

Edna, Richards’ beloved, devoted and understanding wife of 60 years, who was happy to be the butt of some of his jokes, died in March 2008. He is survived by his daughters Nicole and Kim, and five grandchildren.

Collingwood Technical School

Abbotsford

Collingwood reserves premiership 1940

Collingwood seniors 1941-55

Club captain 1952-55

Premiership captain 1953

Runner-up in Copeland trophy in 1947 and 1950

Club’s leading goal kicker  1944 (28 goals); 1948 (44); and 1950 (35)

Total goals for Collingwood 423

Represented Victoria three times

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[footyplusau]

Collingwood great Lou Richards passes away

THE AFL is mourning the loss of one of its greatest and most iconic characters – Collingwood and media legend Lou Richards.

A trailblazer in the football media industry, Richards died aged 94.

He stood just 170cms but was a giant both on and off the field.

Lewis Thomas Charles Richards seemed destined to play for Collingwood – he was born and raised in the suburb and his grandfather Charlie H. Pannam (abbreviated from the Greek name Pannamopoulos) and uncles Charlie E. Pannam and Alby Pannam were Magpie greats.

Young Lou adopted the same take-no-prisoners approach and became one of Collingwood’s finest rovers – fearless, feisty and a noted goalkicker.

Richards slotted 423 goals in 250 games from 1941-55, three times finishing top-three in the Pies’ best and fairest, winning three club goalkicking awards, representing Victoria three times, and captaining the Pies to the 1953 premiership.

A cult figure among Magpie fans, Richards was named among his club’s best players in most of his 14 finals appearances.

However it was in his post-playing career that Richards became a revolutionary figure. The man who became affectionately known as ‘Louie the Lip’ was one of the first football media stars, with high-paying, influential gigs in television, radio and print.

A media presence for the best part of 50 years, Richards most famously teamed with fellow greats Jack Dyer and Bob Davis on Channel Seven’s long-running League Teams program on Thursday nights. (Dyer died in 2003 and Davis in 2011.)

Richards’ ‘Kiss of Death’ column in The Sun newspaper was compulsory match-day reading, as much for its humour as its insights.

In a 2005 interview for a book titled The Champions: Great Players & Coaches of Australian Football, Davis highlighted his little mate’s enormous legacy, unashamedly claiming he’d simply “grabbed hold of Lou and Jack’s coat-tails”.

“We were known as ‘The Three Wise Monkeys’, but Lou and Jack were the real stars,” he said. “They dominated the radio, the television and the newspapers – it was almost a monopoly. Today’s football media owe a huge debt of gratitude to them.”

Lou Richards and Jack Dyer in 1999. Picture: AFL Photos

No one is more grateful than Sam Newman, another former playing great who became a media megastar.

“I don’t know if any of us would be here without Lou,” he said at the September 2012 launch of Richards’ autobiography Lou: My Wonderful Life.

“He was a trailblazer, a trendsetter. He started it for all of us, there’s no doubt about that.”

In 1996 Richards was one of the original inductees, as a player, in the Australian Football Hall of Fame. But that wasn’t the honour he ultimately craved – or that many others believed he deserved. In later years Richards openly expressed his desire for official Legend status and voiced his disappointment when it was denied.

In the hearts of many, Richards is a legend anyway.

In 1982 he was one of the few football identities to be awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his services to sport.

In April 2014 Collingwood unveiled a statue of Richards at the club’s Westpac Centre headquarters.

The same day, the AFL Commission also awarded Richards the inaugural John Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognises an individual’s contribution to the game in multiple fields.

In announcing the honour, AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said Richards had exuded “a profound and enduring influence on our code”.

“He became synonymous with Australian football and the larrikin streak that often characterises our game,” Fitzpatrick said.

“He never took himself too seriously and revelled in the opportunity to have some fun and to add some colour to the debates of the day.

“Lou has enriched our enjoyment and love of the game in so many ways, over such a long period of time.”

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said at the time that “without Lou Richards this industry would just be a local football competition going nowhere”.

“This guy turned it into big-time entertainment … he invented football as entertainment,” McGuire said.

Richards and his late wife Edna – whom he often described as his best friend – were together for 60 years before her death in 2008 at the age of 87.

Richards’ younger brother Ron, who played 143 games for Collingwood, including the 1953 premiership alongside skipper Lou (both were among the Pies’ best players that day), died in September 2013.

Richards is survived by daughters Nicole and Kim, along with five grandchildren.

Eddie McGuire on Lou Richards

“There’s nobody who epitomised Melbourne and its love affair with football and entertainment more than the great Lou Richards. He was a giant of our game, born in the shadows of Victoria Park,” McGuire said on Monday.

“His family played over 900 games and represented Collingwood in eight premiership sides, but also what he did with entertainment, for football and sport, Lou Richards was a person who could be in the Logies Hall of Fame, the AFL Hall of Fame, the Collingwood Hall of Fame, the publicans’ Hall of Fame.

“He’s just an amazing man, and what a life he led.”

Gillon McLachlan on Lou Richards

“Everyone in our industry, who is fortunate to earn a living around the game we love, has the likes of Lou Richards to thank for his work ethic, his love of the game, his willingness to both poke fun at himself and others and his one-off originality.  

“As a player, he captained his club to a premiership – an honour that every player would cherish in a heartbeat – and was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame and the Collingwood Hall of Fame.  

“We express our sincere condolences to his family, many many friends and all those who were touched by a great Australian life.” 

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