IT MAY be a new year but this is still the year of the Tiger for Richmond supporters – and Ballarat’s Libby Callanan has an added personal reason to keep celebrating after the club’s roaring AFL premiership win.
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Ms Callanan has collected what her son has referred to as perhaps the only award Tiger star Dustin Martin did not win this year.
Richmond Football Club has recognised Ms Callanan as one of the inaugural Alice Wills Award recipients for her tireless tigerish volunteer efforts.
For more than a decade, Ms Callanan has coordinated buses to ferry fans to the Tigers’ AFL for Ballarat Tigers Supporters Group.
Supporter numbers on the bus fluctuate according to how the Tigers are performing but Ms Callanan said it was important to keep a constant service. There were waiting lists last season as the Tigers clawed their way to the club’s first AFL premiership in 37 years.
Ballarat Tigers put Ms Callanan’s name forward for the new service awarded with Richmond wanting to recognise parochial behind-the-scenes support in a special ceremony at the club’s annual general meeting last month.
This was also the first chance Ms Callanan and her family had to hold the coveted Holy Grail.
“It’s such a proud moment...They read out my nomination and I shook hands with Peggy (Richmond president Peggy O’Neal,” Ms Callanan said.
“I knew Alice (Wills) in 60s and 70s when we’re queue up for finals tickets and she was the one giving ou the tickets. Alice was a tireless worker – anything Richmond wanted doing she did.”
Ballarat Tigers Supporters Group has been running about 25 years and is one of the city’s longest continuous running AFL supporters groups in the city.
The group runs buses to home games from Victoria Bowling Club with raffles on the way. Ms Callanan said it was an easy, casual way for families or solo supporters to get to a game without negotiating traffic or public transport.
Her own family maintains a meeting point tradition near Punt Road so they could walk to the ground together.
AFL Grand Final Day was a slight change of plans. The supporters group opted to make their own way to the game so they could each savour every moment in their own time – and Ms Callanan did not have to worry about rounding up supporters in the wake of victory.
“(The premiership) has been like a dream...the training vibe was real good when we were there,” Ms Callanan said. “As long as they keep that going.”
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