Richmond coaching legend Tom Hafey started his incredible run as captain-coach of Shepparton

This year is the diamond jubilee of Hafey leading Shepparton’s 1963 triumph over Kyabram in the Goulburn Valley league.

It’s appropriate the Tigers now have the Goulburn Valley region as their Academy zone. In the space of 11 years, Hafey would coach three premierships at Shepparton and then four at Richmond.

He told Richmond historian Rhett Bartlett in 2004 that “the premierships at Shepparton were equally as important to me”.

Current triple-premiership Tiger Nick Vlastuin and his teammates recently took part in an education session on their club’s history, and Vlastuin was intrigued to learn more.

While on the Tigers’ community camp this week in the region he lobbed at Deakin Reserve in Shepparton to meet Hafey’s dependable ‘Shep’ half-back flanker in those flags, Gerald Howard.

“I met Tommy a couple of times,” Vlastuin tells CODE Sports.

“But through Steve Morris’ dad Kevin (one of Hafey’s players at Richmond), I’d regularly hear stories about him.”

Vlastuin asked Howard how Hafey got to Shepparton, revealing just how lucky they were to unlock his coaching talents.

“He got the job by default,” Howard explains.

“This chap Vin Williams from Fitzroy applied for the Shepparton job, but he’d also applied for the Benalla job. He was appointed at both clubs, but he opted for Benalla, so Tom got the Shep job as the second choice.”

That was 1960. The club helped him get a printing job in town and after a battling 67-game VFL career, he was Shepparton’s new captain-coach.

He’d implement a style that VFL supporters would come to recognise over the next three decades.

“When I went to Shepparton I followed the Norm Smith style of coaching; kicking the ball long, not stuffing around,” he told Bartlett.

Howard says Hafey would be turning in his grave today seeing players chipping the ball sideways and backwards.

After an inauspicious start, success came in 1963 and flags would follow in 1964 and 1965.

“He was tough,” Howard says.

“How we didn’t get pneumonia from training so hard in winter … but our fitness wore down most sides.”

It was certainly the case in his farewell triumph of 1965 when Shepparton came back from six goals down at three-quarter time to defeat Kyabram again.

Ironically the biggest stumbling block for Hafey that day was a young Kyabram player by the name of Dick Clay who would go on to play in all four of Hafey’s premierships at Richmond.

As always, the party was back at Tom and wife Maureen’s house.

“We were young yobbos drinking plenty of grog but it was no problem, Tom would be sitting there sipping on his Lipton tea,” Howard laughs.

“Maureen would knock up a little feast for us to have while we partied.”

Howard says Maureen was central to the coaching success of her husband, something Richmond also recognised when she had the honour of presenting the 2019 AFL Premiership Cup to Vlastuin’s team.

Last month she received an OAM for services to the community.

“Maureen always referred to us as ‘her boys’,’” Howard says.

After that 1965 success, Richmond called their former player, hoping he could rescue a club that had not won a flag since 1943.

He loved Shepparton, but he couldn‘t resist the challenge now that he had faith in his coaching style.

“The fact that I‘d coached Shepparton … (meant) I wasn’t nervous (coming back to Richmond)” he told Bartlett in 2004.

Success followed just two years later when Richmond won the 1967 flag. Hafey delivered further success in 1969, 1973 and 1974. He’d then go on to take Collingwood to five grand finals.

“We were extremely happy for them, because they were two people that loved the Shepparton football club,” Howards says.

Howard says Hafey’s influence in Shepparton went well beyond football.

A wayward local at the club was on his way to becoming “the town drunk” he remembers.

“Tommy took him under his wing, got him to open up a bank account and saw that he put in his wages every fortnight.

“He would come back regularly to check up on him. He’d got married, had three children, got a job with the council, he’d turned his life around.”

Hafey’s players at Shepparton would regularly come to Melbourne to have dinner with him right up to his death, and while the numbers are dwindling, the reunions of those teams are as strong in spirit today.

“He built a camaraderie among all of us,” Howard says.

Hafey never forgot Shepparton either.

“He would regularly come back,” current Shepparton president Brendan Bicknell tells CODE Sports.

“In my playing days, Tommy would always come down in his T-shirt in the middle of winter and take us for training. He always gave back to the club where he cut his teeth.”

If any Shepparton team made a grand final, someone would call Tommy and there he’d be at training with some words of wisdom.

As Howard shows Vlastuin the photos of Hafey and his teammates on the wall, the pride swells up as he thinks back 60 years and tells tales of those premierships.

Howard finishes with a refrain that Vlastuin has heard from Morris and many other former Tiger greats who benefited from Hafey’s lore.

“We were so fortunate to have a man like him. He lived for football.”