What YOU Say About Jack Dyer

He did a radio show called The Captain & The Major (his co commentator was called Ian Major) on 3KZ for years. They broadcast games and when it was Richmond sense went out the window for Jack, he fair dinkum barracked. In fact Jack could talk about the Tigers even when he wasn't doing their game!

In 1987 he made a bet with the Brisbane Bears (that's what they were then) chairman, former actor Paul Cronin that the Tigers, who had collected the wooden spoon the year before, would finish ahead of the Bears on the ladder. It was for $1,000, which for Jack was a lot of money. Late in the season we were playing Melbourne, who were a good side that year and we were not expected to beat them. If we won then Jack won his bet, the Bears could not cach us, if we lost the bet was still on.

In the last quarter it was obvious that Richmond were going to win and the commentary had turned into the Jack Dyer show, Jack was delirious. Here's how it went:

Jack: Oh if ya don't mind umpire! He just bowled over Stephen Ryan! (played for us back then) Give 'im 15. (we had 15 metre penalties then).

Stephen got 15.

Jack: Oh the crowd don't like it, they're booing! Give 'em all 15!

Jack was chortling into his microphone as he said it. His co commentator Ian Major tried to restore some sanity into the broadcast:

Ian: Uhhh, Jack...Jack...I think you may be upsetting some our Melbourne listeners.

Jack turned to Major and crowed: I don't care! and then continued to describe the game with one black eye and one yellow one.

I have a few others, but that was one that kept me laughing for days.

From Greg Allen:
G'day Becky, I am a 39 year old Tiger fan from Melbourne. I was just reading your tribute about the great man and thought I'd like to congratulate you on it! He was an old man and is now in a better place.

Regards
Greg

From Chris Greenway:
My next Jack Dyer story is about an incident in his playing days. This is how I remember him telling the story on The Footy Show one night.

Richmond were playing Melbourne and one of the Melbourne players put a young Richmond player into the fence, so Jack thought he'd even it up. They had a young, tall, skinny ruckman, as Jack said: "I hit 'im. I hit 'im pretty hard. He went up in the air, he stayed there for a while and then he hit the ground, he bounced a couple of times and lay very still." It was nearly halftime and they brought a stretcher out. At the time Melbourne had Dr Don Cordner playing for them. Don Cordner was an actual medical doctor. Jack said: "The Doc took a look at 'im, shook his head and then pulled the blanket over his face. I thought I've killed 'im! We went off for halftime and Ray Dunn met me in the rooms (Ray Dunn was a Richmond committeeman and one of Melbourne's top criminal lawyers at the time), he asked me 'How are you Jack?'

I said 'Not too good Mr Dunn. I think I've just killed a bloke.'

He looked across the field and said 'Was it during play?'

'Yes Mr Dunn.'

'I'll tellya what Jack, if you play well in the 2nd half I'll see if I can get the charge reduced to manslaughter!'"

There are a lot of them, he had a pretty eventful life. From Chris Greenway:
There are a lot of great Jack Dyer stories. I have another one which did the rounds some years ago and I'm not sure if it's really true, but Jack never denied it.

Many years ago we had a show on Sunday morning/afternoon here called World Of Sport (some people referred to it as World Of Football, it was about 90% Aussie Rules) and Jack was a panellist on it. They also had a weekly woodchop. I don't know if you've ever heard of the woodchop. Basically you get 3 big blokes with axes who stand on a log and whack into it, the first one to chop through his log wins. There was a famous axeman called Jack O'Toole, he was to woodchopping what Jack Dyer was to football. When he retired he still came into WoS to start the axemen off. This big booming voice would shout: "AXEMEN READY! 123!" and away they'd go. Well the 2 Jacks got along very well and often used to share a beer. Well Jack O'Toole died and I'm sure Dyer knew about it, he prob'ly even went to the funeral, but even then his memory was going. They kept a recording of O'Toole's voice to start the woodchop. Jack O'Toole had been dead for about 3 years and one day Jack Dyer said to his friend, show presenter Ron Casey: "That bloody Jack O'Toole has become an aloof so and so."

Casey said: "How do you mean, Jack?"

"Well, we haven't had a beer for ages, yet he comes in every week to start the woodchop."

A stunned Casey could only reply "Jack, that's a recording. Jack O'Toole has been dead for 3 years!"

I'm gonna miss the old bloke.

From Chris Greenway:
Hi again, I have another one about Collingwood. Back in the days Jack played, Richmond had a volatile centre half back called Mopsy Fraser. This guy was wild. Jack once said: "Oh even I was scared of him! He could start a fight in an empty room!" He and Jack teamed well and worked well together. They used to set players up for each other to run through. Well at the time Collingwood had 3 brothers by the name of Twomey playing for them. Richmond and Collingwood were mortal enemies. This one time they played Jack and Mopsy took out all 3 of the Twomey's: Jack got one, Mopsy got another and they cleaned up the 3rd between them. I think the Tigers won, it was at Victoria Park (Collingwood's home ground) and the supporters wanted blood. Jack and Mopsy waited for ages after the game in the rooms, but the supporters were still baying for their blood. Eventually a police escort got Jack and Mopsy out of the rooms and into their car. The supporters surrounded the car, banged on the roof, kicked the sides, screamed abuse at them, spat on it, lifted the wheels off the ground so they couldn't leave. Jack thought that they were going to be killed. All of a sudden Mopsy started to laugh. Jack turned to him and said "What the bloody hell are you laughing about?"

Mopsy stopped laughing, looked at Jack and replied "It's your car, Jack!"

God! He was an original old Jack.