When Nick Vlastuin plays his fourth game for the Tigers in 2019 he will lift the bar to be a member of the Tiger’s top-100 game players to 121 games and cause the exit of William ‘Bustling Billy’ Barrot and Graeme Landy.
Both these players played AFL and VFL games with other clubs as well, so potentially they could have been higher up the list at Richmond rather than staring down the barrel of being usurped by Vlastuin.
Remarkably for a club admitted to the league 111 years ago, Vlastuin will become the ninth current-day player to achieve top-100 status, and the reason is the durability of the current crop of quality players. Only Bachar Houli from this group has failed to play at least 43 games in the past two years, with Alex Rance achieving 49 games.
Barrot and Landy were both born in May, albeit ten years apart – and their styles of play were miles apart too. Bustling Billy was an excitement machine and a loose cannon who often ran into trouble with officialdom. Renowned for his ability to run all day, his enthusiasm and his fitness, he played in the centre in Richmond’s last heyday and was flanked by two other champions in Francis Bourke and Dick Clay. This trio, all booming kicks, played in the 1967 and 1969 premierships together.
Barrot won the 1965 best and fairest and represented Victoria 11 times, but the hierarchy at Richmond eventually lost patience with him and subbed him for St Kilda’s Ian Stewart in the most famous swap of two champions in VFL/AFL history. Despite kicking four goals in his first game for the Saints, he was ‘dragged’ at three-quarter-time in his second game and never played another game for St Kilda.
He crossed to Carlton, which he had haunted in the 1969 year, kicking eight goals from only 17 possessions in Round 19, which he followed up four games later in the grand final that Richmond won by 25 points.
While more successful than his move to St Kilda, he failed to set the world on fire at the Blues except for one memorable game against South Melbourne in which he kicked six goals in Round 17 in 1971, his last year of league football.
Unfortunately Barrot died in 2016 aged 72, and while his time as a Richmond top-100 game player may last as little as four weeks into season 2019, his goal-kicking achievements should see his descendants being invited to top-100 functions to represent him for many years to come.
Equal with the legendary Kevin Sheedy in 78th position among Richmond’s all-time top-100 goal scorers, only Shaun Grigg, Josh Caddy and now Tom Lynch appear to offer any threat to his position.
Graeme Landy, born in 1954, originally came from Murray River town Echuca but transferred from Geelong after 41 games in four seasons and was reborn as a solid, no-nonsense backman who unfortunately missed the Tiger’s 1980 flag through suspension.
His only piece of silverware was a reserves premiership at the Cats in his first year, and he returned to Geelong in 1987 and gave them two more serviceable years to lift his game tally to 54 at the Cats.
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