Welcome to the Western Bulldogs - Ed Richards

[Remi Moses]

Thought he was a real positive last night

[Bulldog4life]

Best player for us last night in my opinion.

[bulldogtragic]

Thought he was a real positive last night

Yep. He started with the fumbles and then played like a senior player since the senior players around him were doing very little (Wood, JJ, Crozier etc). Broke many of his good personal bests. He's going to be a hell of a player down the track.

[anfo27]

You could see playing against the pies meant something to him. Thought he was very good.

[Twodogs]

You could see playing against the pies meant something to him. Thought he was very good.

We talk a lot about guys like Lippa and Roughy and Wallis and Libba playing with the club they grew up barracking for but I've never really thought before that pretty much everyone else has a first time when they play against the team they grew up following. It'd be a bit weird running around playing against all your heroes. It'd be funny tackling someone to the ground and just as they are getting up and you go to give them that nasty shove back into the ground you realise it's Scott Pendlebury or that Steele Sidebottom just ran past and said something nasty about your mum!


Or that it's your turn to go and you have to run back with the flight of the ball and you are pretty sure that rumbling sound behind you is Brodie Grundy coming in the other direction.

[Topdog]

Could he be a midfielder for us in the future. Good kicking into the f50 is fantastic

[bornadog]

Could he be a midfielder for us in the future. Good kicking into the f50 is fantastic

Could be the speedy outside mid we are looking for.

[jeemak]

Yep. He started with the fumbles and then played like a senior player since the senior players around him were doing very little (Wood, JJ, Crozier etc). Broke many of his good personal bests. He's going to be a hell of a player down the track.

I called him out in the game day thread as probably needing a rest because his touch was off, but he really laid it on when needed and showed character we'll come to love very quickly, because his character is backed by skill and dare.

We talk a lot about guys like Lippa and Roughy and Wallis and Libba playing with the club they grew up barracking for but I've never really thought before that pretty much everyone else has a first time when they play against the team they grew up following. It'd be a bit weird running around playing against all your heroes. It'd be funny tackling someone to the ground and just as they are getting up and you go to give them that nasty shove back into the ground you realise it's Scott Pendlebury or that Steele Sidebottom just ran past and said something nasty about your mum!


Or that it's your turn to go and you have to run back with the flight of the ball and you are pretty sure that rumbling sound behind you is Brodie Grundy coming in the other direction.

It wouldn't really cross their mind in the moment in my view TD, in retrospect definitely. Any decent standard of footy you don't have time for even realising who you're going at unless you have it in the mind to go at them.

Could be the speedy outside mid we are looking for.

Yeah I get why Sedat and others are pissed at us for not drafting midfielders specifically over recent years, but, unless you get the top end draft picks (which as an aside we haven't had between 2015-2017) you draft players who you think can become midfielders (players like Toby McLean). Ed is likely to be one of those.

[bornadog]

Yeah I get why Sedat and others are pissed at us for not drafting midfielders specifically over recent years, but, unless you get the top end draft picks (which as an aside we haven't had between 2015-2017) you draft players who you think can become midfielders (players like Toby McLean). Ed is likely to be one of those.

Completely agree Jeemak, Lippa may be another and Porter could also develop. We need to throw big dollars at an A Grader if we want instant top mid

[jeemak]

Completely agree Jeemak, Lippa may be another and Porter could also develop. We need to throw big dollars at an A Grader if we want instant top mid

I'd be going for Marc Murphy, see if we can get three genuinely good years out of him post 30, and possibly one more. I'd also be throwing the absolute house at Wines, I wanted him and Stringer in their draft year, now Stringer is gone I want him to complement Macrae.

I'd also throw a lot of money at Robbie Gray.

[ratsmac]

I'd be going for Marc Murphy, see if we can get three genuinely good years out of him post 30, and possibly one more. I'd also be throwing the absolute house at Wines, I wanted him and Stringer in their draft year, now Stringer is gone I want him to complement Macrae.

I'd also throw a lot of money at Robbie Gray.

You sound like you have plenty of money

Murphy is too old. Great player but turns 31 in July.

Wines is a big yes please but what would he cost?

Is Robby Gray even gettable? I would've thought Port would make sure he's locked away on a long term deal.

I'd have a sneaky crack at Wingard while we're at it.

[Mofra]

Yeah I get why Sedat and others are pissed at us for not drafting midfielders specifically over recent years, but, unless you get the top end draft picks (which as an aside we haven't had between 2015-2017) you draft players who you think can become midfielders (players like Toby McLean). Ed is likely to be one of those.

A lot of people were harsh on Lipinski from Friday's game, I was fairly happy with it. You could see his style will translate pretty well from forward to midfield and he clearly has a natural football brain. He should develop into someone who can rotate through the centre in time and hopefully he'll be best 22 come next year. We can certainly use someone like him who is excellent by foot. I see a bit of Gia in the way he plays.

[Mofra]

I'd have a sneaky crack at Wingard while we're at it.

I'd think Wingard is the least gettable of the lot - GWS overlooked him with their first 5 picks that draft because he would be off to SA as soon as his two years were up. Can't see him leaving the state.

[bornadog]

By golly, a Richards playing for the Doggies


In any other time Ed Richards would be playing for Collingwood on Friday night, not against them.
Playing for Collingwood was the family business. Ed was born into it.

But there is no grandfather-son rule, there is no scion rule that would permit Ed Richards to carry the family torch in black and white.

The Richards-Pannam families are as fundamental to Collingwood as black and white stripes. They span the history of the club for a hundred years from the first game though to the 1990 premiership side.

From his grandparent to his great uncles and his great-great-grand father across five generations, the Richards and Pannams played about 1000 games of VFL football for Collingwood. The patriarch Charlie Pannam snr played for Collingwood in 1894 when it was in the VFA and then in the club’s first game in the new VFL.

Charlie Pannam snr was Ron Richards’ grandfather. Ron’s uncles played for Collingwood too. When Ron and Lou were good enough to ply vFL there was only one club for them. It was out of their hands. Ironically now it was also of Ed’s hands who he would play for – it was the draft that would decide, not family history.

Ron knew Ed had it. "He’s got something," he told Ed’s dad, Kane, as they watched him play juniors.
"Ron used to go to Ed's games all the time until he got a bit ill and the cold would get to him," Kane said.

"Dad could spot good young players anywhere. He said to me, 'Make sure he follows through with it because he has got something'. Ed was only nine or 10 at that stage, but Ron could see it."

Ron Richards did everything at Collingwood. He came to the club as a player, the younger brother of Lou, but made his own mark. He was voted their best player in the finals and won a flag as a player alongside Lou in 1953.

He coached the under 19s and the reserves for years and even filled in as senior coach for two matches. He was the chairman of selectors and Leigh Matthews assistant coach in 1990 when they won the flag. He worked for Collingwood in some capacity for six decades.

He was the talkative but never quoted backroom man. Lou was the front man – football's first and ultimate showman.
Ronnie was out of Collingwood by the time Ed was along so Ed didn't really know that side of him.

"As a junior I didn't know much about it but then kids moved around in teams and new kids came in and they knew me and I became aware the family was prominent in football, but to me he was just Poppa."

Going through the system Ed knew that the Magpies had no tie to him so he just aimed to make it as a footballer, not a Collingwood player.

"Every player grows up dreaming of playing for he club they barrack for and I was no different, I had the family history too, but it was always more unlikely than likely it would be at Collingwood. I just wanted to focus on myself then and be good enough to play. I couldn't be happier. I am at a great club," Ed said.

The idea that Ed the Grndson of this family that is as intrinsically Collingwood as the Magpie itself, would play somewhere else breaks the heart of the club's own Ed, president Eddie McGuire.

“We would love to have him. It doesn’t feel right to me that he is not at Collingwood. In these days when 25 per cent of the kids in the draft will go to clubs through zones and academies the grandson of probably the strongest family tie in the history of the AFL-VFL doesn’t go to that club. [It] doesn't feel right,” McGuire said.

“I like seeing families in football, I would like to see a brothers rule where brothers play together – I think the Brayshaws should all be playing together at North where their dad was on the board and their uncle was president. We saw Tom Phillips and his brother Ed playing against one another last week.

“At the moment the way the rules are if my sons were good enough to be drafted they couldn’t go to Collingwood despite 20 years as unpaid president but if I was in the draft I’d be in a zone to a club because my dad is Irish and my mum Scottish. That's the way it is.”

Collingwood could have drafted Richards last year with their first pick but they chose Jayden Stephenson. Pick six was a little too high in the draft for him.

The Bulldogs were thrilled. Their then recruiter Simon Dalrymple, now at Sydney Swans, liked Richards enough that after taking Aaron Naughton at 9 they regarded Richards the next best talent. They were chuffed that he was still there when hey had their next crack at 16.

Kane sees his dad in Ed. “He has a lot of Ronnie about him,” he said. Though he thinks football has to thank his wife, Carey, for Ed making it as a footballer, not the Richards family.

At 16 Ed was no good thing to make it. He was too short.
“He had the Richards height!” Kane said. “Then he shot up, so he has his mum’s side to thank for that."

He also has his mum's side to thank for the red hair – a great aunt had bright red hair like Ed's. He's a throwback to her. And to the four Charlies and Albies and to Lou and Ron.

"Where Ed is now and how well he is going is down to him. It’s about Ed’s story now not Collingwood.”

PANNAM-RICHARDS DYNASTY

Charlie Pannam snr
229 games for Collingwood
111 goals
League leading goal kicker (1905)
2 premierships (1902, 1903)
Collingwood captain (1905)
Collingwood Hall of Fame

Albert Pannam
Charlie’s younger brother
28 games (1907- 09)

Charlie Pannam jr
Charlie snr’s son and the first father-son in Collingwood history
97 games for Collingwood
2 premierships (1917, 1919)

Alby Pannam
Charlie snr’s son
181 games for Collingwood
453 goals
Collingwood Captain (1945)
2 premierships (1935, 36)
Copeland Trophy (1942)
Collingwood Hall of fame

Lou Richards
Charles and Alby’s nephew, Ron’s older brother
250 games for Collingwood
423 goals
1 premiership (1953)
Collingwood captain (1952-55)
Collingwood Hall of Fame

Ron Richards
Charles and Alby’s nephew, Lou’s younger brother
143 games for Collingwood
1 premiership (1953)
Collingwood Under 19s coach, reserves coach, senior coach
Collingwood Hall of Fame

Ed Richards
Grandson of Ron, great-great-grandson of Charlie Pannam snr
9th game for Western Bulldogs this week

[G-Mo77]

One of the very few, if not the only positive on Friday night. Well done young man!