Lou Richards honoured

Collingwood News Collingwood legend, Lou Richards, is the inaugural recipient of the John Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award. A 250-game Collingwood premiership captain and, later, a football media giant for more than 50 years, Richards received his award at the Westpac Centre this morning from the man in whose honour it has been struck, John Kennedy Senior, and AFL commission chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick. Flanked by family, former team-mates and media colleagues, among others, the 91 year-old Richards heard Fitzpatrick speak of him as one of the most important and unique figures the game has known. "Lou Richards has had a profound and enduring influence on our code, both with a football in his hands and also, at the end of his playing career, with a microphone and a pen," Fitzpatrick said. Collingwood President, Eddie McGuire, having earlier unveiled a bronze statue of Richards on the grounds of the club’s Olympic Park training base, asked: "Has any man in football history done more for the game? "A champion on the field, Lou Richards became a superstar off it. He helped make football one of the most popular and successful forms of entertainment. His unprecedented career in the football media as a commentator, entertainer and journalist has had a remarkable impact on the growth and success of the game in this country. "No one person can claim to have done more for the game, or for Collingwood, than Lou Richards." The John Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award has been struck to recognise individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the game across multiple fields, as Kennedy did as a Hawthorn player, premiership coach and AFL commission chairman. The award criteria reads: "The John Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented periodically to an individual who has made an extraordinary and positive contribution to the AFL competition and/or the game of Australian Football as an administrator, media representative, player, coach or field umpire, or any combination thereof." Richards was Collingwood royalty by the time he retired as a player in 1955. He was the local boy who lived the dream thousands of others in the tough working class suburb dreamt, the grandson of Charlie Pannam who grew up behind the Collingwood Town Hall, attended Collingwood Tech and, ultimately, led the Magpies to a premiership in 1953. This was a triumph shared with his brother, Ron, who starred against Geelong in the grand final. Across the decades, six members of the Richards/Pannam clan played 930 matches in Collingwood black and white. Better, they shared in eight premierships. The regard and affection for Richards the footballer quickly spread beyond the streets of Melbourne’s inner-north, though, once his humour and passion for football found expression in print, radio and the then fledgling television industry. As a media performer he was quick-witted, irreverent and full of lip – some would say much like he was as a player - hence the moniker ‘Louie the Lip’ he carried down the years. He was playfully mischievous and a wonderful comic who worked brilliantly across a range of shows and mediums but never better than when he was in the company of his ‘League Teams’ and ‘World of Sport’ sidekicks ‘Captain Blood’ Jack Dyer and Bob ‘Woofa’ Davis. As McGuire has often noted, every person making a living out of the football media today owes a debt to Richards for his trailblazing work as a pundit, columnist, spruiker, entertainer and terrible ‘Kiss of Death’ tipping. "He invented football as entertainment," McGuire said. "Millions of fans, for more than 50 years, loved and laughed about their football because of him." Richards was inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Collingwood Hall of Fame in 2004. The statue of Richards was created by Louis Laumen, one of Australia’s most respected sculptors, and underwritten by passionate Collingwood fans Tony Sells and Damian Lister, whose company getwinesdirect.com has also produced a commemorative Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc, selling by the name of ‘Louie the Lip’. Laumen has sculpted a number of the statues that grace the MCG including those of Leigh Matthews, Shane Warne, Dennis Lillee, Bill Ponsford, Hayden Bunton and Keith Miller.

REAL FOOTY Lou Richards and John Kennedy first met more than 60 footy seasons ago, as captains of Collingwood and Hawthorn respectively. Between the magisterial Kennedy and the scamp-ish Richards and their clubs, little love was lost. At half-time, Richards would sidle up to Kennedy and ask: "Want a fiver on this?" Usually, the then imperious Magpies were well in front. When Richards led Collingwood to its 12th premiership in 1953, Hawthorn still had not won one. Post-football, both wore many hats. Kennedy's were more heavy duty: premiership coach, sage, rising to chairman of the AFL Commission. Richards, whose retirement coincided with the arrival of television in Australia, became a pioneer of sports media. There was a time when he was Eddie McGuire, Sam Newman and, say, Rex Hunt rolled into one, and his profile was at least as high as any of theirs. He opened all the doors through which McGuire, foremost among many, has chirpily charged. His style was irreverent, mischievous, calculatedly maladroit. He would figure to lose outrageous bets about games, so at various times submitting himself to cutting Ted Whitten's lawn with nail clippers, piggybacking gargantuan North Melbourne ruckman Mick Nolan down Arden St, being wheeled in a barrow down Lygon St by Carlton's Warren "Wow" Jones, and having a bowl of spaghetti tipped over his head by Mario Bortolotto. Recalled with a guffaw by McGuire on Thursday, Richards once said of a hard-but-fair player: "He painted iodine on his boots so that the would not infect you when he kicked you.'' It was one line of thousands. AFL Commission chairman (and then nervous Carlton captain) Mike Fitzpatrick dryly remembered Richards' antics on Thursday as "colourful stunts and wagers". Kennedy was best known for stern visage, but admitted on Thursday that even he would chuckle behind closed doors at Richards on League Teams on Thursday and World of Sport on Sunday - sometimes. "If we lost the day before, I probably wouldn't even have been watching. If we'd won, I'd laugh at anything," he said. "He was marvellous at it. He was genuinely funny. With Jack Dyer and Bob Davis, they were unique as a trio." As one of Richards' newspaper ghost writers, I was in awe of his always brimming enthusiasm for football, as if every day was his first in the game all over again. He embodied the Zeitgeist then, not just football's, but Melbourne's. It lasted more than 50 years. Fitzpatrick said he had "a profound influence on our code". But it was not officially legendary. Though a Hall of Famer, he did not meet the criteria to be made into a Legend with a capital L. A bungled attempt to invest him with a substitute honour in 2009 hurt him and did not proceed. But McGuire, bursting with Collingwoodness, would not leave it at that. Because of his drive, and abetted by private sponsorship money on a scale only Collingwood can attract, a classic bronze Louis Lamen statue of Richards was unveiled at the Westpac Centre on Thursday to sit alongside one of Bob Rose. Richards is 91 now, wheelchair-bound and not given to nearly so much lip, but he was there to witness this immortalisation. There to hail him were former teammates, former rivals, many fans, four generations of family and the entire contemporary Collingwood list. The twist was delivered by Fitzpatrick, who announced Richards as the winner of the inaugural lifetime achievement award, to recognise "outstanding contribution" to the game in various ways other than playing exploits. Richards did not speak, and yet you could hear his reply anyway, in and from the echoes of time: "Well, golly gosh." The award was named for Kennedy, who was there to present it to Richards in the Magpies' inner sanctum, a place he once could not have imagined breaching. But a lot of water has passed beneath the bridge, also much of a thicker substance. Eleven Hawthorn premierships, all with Kennedy's stamp on them, meant that he and Richards and their clubs met again on Thursday as mutually respectful equals, with only this much trace of feeling between them, evinced by Kennedy: "There has been a lot of water under the bridge since then - but you want to keep it going, just the same. Just in case." It is a sentiment so age-old it could be, if not sculpted in bronze, set in stone.

SUPERFOOTY COLLINGWOOD great Lou Richards has been immortalised with a bronze statue in his honour, unveiled at the club’s headquarters today. Richards, 91, was also honoured by the AFL commission which announced the 251 game star as the inaugural recipient of the John Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award. Richards said the statue, unveiled beside the Westpac Centre, was "a great thrill". "I never thought I’d be so famous," he said. "To do this for me is unbelievable, I’m honoured." Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said Richards was "one of a kind" and the statue a fitting way to recognise his contribution to football and society. "This is one of the great days," he said. "Forget about the Royal tour up in NSW this is Victorian royalty. Lou Richards is the man ..." John Kennedy Snr presented Richards with the achievement award in recognition of his positive influence on AFL. AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said the honour reflected Richards’ remarkable commitment and contribution as a footballer and football media pioneer. "Lou has enriched our enjoyment and love of the game in so many ways, over such a long period of time," he said. With statues of Richards and Collingwood legend Bob Rose outside its training headquarters, McGuire said it was now time for a Magpies footballer to join the likes of Essendon great John Coleman immortalised outside the MCG. "Maybe Jock McHale, given the fact he won eight premierships on the MCG, should be the bloke that has the first Collingwood connection over there," he said. "Yes it would be nice if the MCC commemorated one of our champions. "But you know what, we’ve got plenty of room here, Collingwood looks after its own and we don’t care about anyone else." Richards played for 15 seasons at Collingwood, captaining the club from 1952-1955. After football he embarked on a media career that spanned more than five decades including sports journalism for the Sun News Pictorial, World of Sport and the Footy Show. The 1953 premiership captain and media trail blazer was celebrated in a stirring ceremony flanked by Magpies greats and a guard of honour from current Pies players.