He had picked me for an Australian. It was his way of gaining the attention of Gallipoli-bound tourists in order to drag them towards the leather jackets he sold.

"I lived in Melbourne for eight years," he explained, growing wistful. "Bridge Road, Richmond. Best bloody footy team in the world, Richmond. Up the mighty Tigers!"

That a Turk in Istanbul would remain misty-eyed about the suburb and football team of his Australian childhood says something about Richmond's ability to capture and hold hearts, despite its history of poverty and evictions, the Tammany Hall corruption of its old council and its reputation for street brawls sparked by politics and sly grog.

The epithet of Struggletown hasn't properly applied since gentrification began in the 1990s, when Richmond's pinched lanes became cool, its proximity to the city made it desirable and house prices went north. The real struggle today is to find a house that is valued less than the $1.35 million median.

But all along, those who have spent time there have found you can leave Richmond, but it will never quite leave you.

Jeanette Powell's grandfather, Patrick Gorman, established a woodyard in Richmond about 115 years ago and her father was born there in 1918. She was raised in Oakleigh, where her parents moved, seeking space. All her Christmases, weekends and school holidays were spent in Richmond, however, and the place took a hold on her very being.

With their children grown, Jeanette moved in 1991 to Richmond with her husband, Billy, and felt she'd come home.

"When I was a child and we'd come to Richmond, I was always happy," she said this week, having finished painting her front fence in the yellow and black of the Richmond Tigers, the team she's followed all her life. She and Billy were ecstatic to have drawn two tickets in the ballot for Saturday's grand final.

"There were almost no cars those days, back in the '50s, and it was safe for all us kids. On summer nights we'd run around the laneways, playing knick-knock. We'd knock on a door and run and hide and squeal with laughter when the owner answered the door and there was no one there. Christmas lunch was always at the Royal Oak Hotel, on the corner of Bridge Road and Burnley Street, and in the winter, we'd often go on Saturdays to Punt Road Oval, watching the Tigers."

She had always been aware of the poverty in many of the pinched houses in the laneways, too. Her grandmother, Winifred "Nan" Gorman, was a nurse. Richmond residents, too poor to call a doctor, often came to her door, and she was always prepared to hurry into the night to dispense care.

Old Dimmeys store clock, Swan Street. Picture by Joe Armao.

Vasilios Nikola, out for a stroll on Wednesday from his home in Burgess Street, said he came to Richmond 51 years ago, aged 26, from Greece. He'd found the perfect place, he said.

"I moved to Mount Waverley in 1978 and stayed only a year. I couldn't wait to get back. I say to my wife, I'll take a suitcase and go back to Richmond by myself if I have to. But of course she came, too. I love Richmond.

"My family, too. My two daughters and three grandchildren. They all moved away and they all came back and live here now.

"From here, I'll move only to Springvale Cemetery."

Mr Nikola lit a cigarette and reviewed the years: a job at General Motors Holden, the purchase of a milk bar in Richmond's Brighton Street, a gelati van, a council position on parks and gardens and 20 years on the railways.

"Plenty has changed. I bought my house here for $8400 in 1967," he said. "The rates notice says it's $1.35 million now. I was the only European when I arrived in Burgess Street. All the Australians welcomed me and looked after us.

"Football. Oh, yes. First for me and my family was soccer, Hellas [the South Melbourne Football Club].

"But always it was Tigers, Tigers, Tigers, too. I would walk with my daughters and the other families to Punt Road on Saturdays. This was Richmond. The mighty Tigers."

Heather Ho, born 69 years ago in Richmond as Heather Grace, is another returnee from years living in other Melbourne suburbs.

She never lost the feeling of belonging to the distinctive community of her childhood, a Richmond set apart from the outside world by geography and what others saw as hardship.

"We all played football and cricket in the streets," she said. "It was such a free life".

Richmond. The children's playground, ca.1935. Photo: State Library of Victoria

"Football was cheap and great entertainment, and it was something everyone could attend. It bound us together.

"We'd go to the seconds match as well as the firsts, because the local boys could get a game.

"On Sundays all the Irish-Catholic players would go to Mass at St Ignatius [the Jesuits' church on Richmond hill]. A lot of them came from outside Melbourne and they'd board with local families. Of course, they'd only stay 10 minutes at the church, but they'd still go.

"On Sunday afternoons a lot of the young people would gather at Jack Dyers' milk bar half way down the hill."

No one has to explain the name Jack Dyer to anyone who has lived in Richmond. Known as "Captain Blood" on the football field, Dyer gave Richmond a mighty sense of pride with his uncompromising style of play, bursting through packs, fending off opponents with one outstretched arm, the ball tucked beneath the other. He played for Richmond from 1931 to 1952, and later became a much-loved commentator, famed for his malapropisms ["It's as dark out there as the Black Hole of Dakota."]

The president of the Richmond Historical Society, David Langdon, said the essence of Richmond was its working-class and family-oriented roots, attributes still valued by residents who were no longer working class.

The people of Richmond had always been bound together by their love for their football club. It gave them a sense of identity that cut through all the many ethnic groups that had settled in the suburb, Mr Langdon said.

"It's all about a fighting spirit."

You can, if you look around, begin to understand this need for identity.

To the west rise the gleaming towers of Melbourne's city, almost shadowing Richmond. To the east, across the meandering Yarra, stands genteel Hawthorn. To the south are wealthy South Yarra and Toorak. North and north-west are the old suburbs of Collingwood and Fitzroy, which once competed with Richmond for the title of the toughest neighbourhoods, and thus despised each other.

Janet McCalman's 1984 magisterial history of Richmond, Struggletown, includes the words of a Richmond-born woman, Lillian Campbell, who had married and moved away in the 1930s. She had become "desolate with loneliness" in Sandringham and she and her husband eventually settled in Toorak.

One day Lillian walked to the river and realised that across the other side, within walking distance, was her mother's house. It cheered her immediately.

"Maybe it's my early childhood where I'm Richmond born and bred and I'm Richmond in my blood," McCalman quotes Lillian Campbell as saying.

"I could gladly go back to Richmond and feel at home."