What I love about Dusty’s football story: he could have gone to Nth or elsewhere for megacash, a trend that is now well and truly entrenched in the game, trickling down from the powers that be and culture in general - for whom sport is entertainment and the dollars it brings, and whose traditions manipulated and corrupted to that end. In the end he stayed because he said he ‘felt like it would be cheating’ to leave. At that point Richmond didn’t look even close to success. Fast forward 6 or 7 years…
I’m sure that he wouldn’t have been short on cash either way, but I will remember the statement and sentiment as one of the last vestiges of loyalty in a sport still deeply rooted in its particularly Australian tribalism. It’s an old fashioned narrative worthy of the greats - even though the game is fast moving toward being more or less unrecognizable in both it’s soul and it’s spectacle.
’Everything I know most surely about morality and duty, I owe to football’ .
Camus.
