Richmond legend Royce Hart hasn’t forgotten the faces of Tiger supporters after he helped deliver the AFL club’s drought-breaking 1967 premiership.
And the four-time premiership centre half-forward remembered supporters again as he was made the 25th official legend of Australian Football at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday night.
“I would like to thank all my coaches, my teammates and particularly the supporters,” Hart said.
The centre half-forward in the AFL’s Team of the Century, Tasmanian-born Hart recalled spending two years bulking up to make the senior side and still having to use his great spring to beat taller opponents.
“I felt if I played side by side with my opponent, the centre half-back, I’d be outgunned,” the 187cm Hart said.
Famously, he leapt on top of Geelong opponent Peter Walker to take a match-clinching mark late in the grand final in his 1967 debut season.
The scene in the rooms afterwards hasn’t left him.
“It was over 20 years since they’d won a flag,” Hart said.
“None of the players in ’67, believe it or not, had played in a final.
“We ended up winning the game and just the look on the people’s faces who came into the rooms who had been following the club for so long and winning the premiership was just exciting.”
Hart starred in three more flags – in 1969 and 1973-74.
Five other players and one umpire were inducted into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday night.
Melbourne great Hassa Mann told how the Demons went to court to free him from national service.
He afterwards discovered lawyers on both sides and the judge all supported Melbourne.
Sturt seven-time best-and-fairest winner Rick Davies described helping the SANFL club beat fierce rivals Port Adelaide in the 1976 grand final, when he had 42 disposals and 15 marks, as the highlight of his life.
“Everything just went right – a bit like tonight,” Davies said.
Scott West, who won a club-record seven best and fairests with the Western Bulldogs, said a “hole” in his career remained because he never won a flag.
Three-time Coleman Medallist Matthew Lloyd, who kicked 926 goals for Essendon, told how Bombers hard men Dean Wallis and Mark Harvey warned him after he’d been intimidated by an opponent early in his career that he’d be forced from the sport unless he toughened up.
Umpire Bryan Sheehan, who officiated in six AFL grand finals, was also inducted, along with Brian Peake, a six-time best and fairest winner and Sandover Medallist with East Fremantle and 66-game Geelong player.
