John Shearer played Richmond reserves in 1943 but never a senior game. What does his story expose about the way football history decides who remains visible?

The record looks like four quarters of domination. It wasn’t. St Kilda led after one, and Richmond’s record second half began with a problem.

Richmond’s 80-point record quarter was not the end of a procession. It began with the game suddenly alive again.

A teenage Checker Hughes chose football over military drill. Richmond stayed interested when Collingwood cooled.

A tiger on a wartime RAAF Beaufighter would be one thing. The words beside it — “Eat ’Em Alive” — turn it into a Richmond question.

Richmond’s 1943 flag was won at Princes Park while wartime Melbourne had already altered the competition around it. What did those conditions actually change about the world in which the Tigers built a premiership?

Jack Dyer captained Richmond through wartime while friends served overseas. What did staying home mean inside a club and community living through war?

A forgotten Richmond medallion led back to Alexander Salton and a larger question: how can men connected to a football club disappear from its remembered history?

ANZAC Day begins with Gallipoli, but its meaning has expanded across generations, wars and forms of service. What, exactly, are Australians being asked to remember now?

Royce Hart was told in 1969 that he was going to Vietnam. Hours later, that posting had changed. What does that episode reveal about Richmond, national service and a dynasty being built?

Richmond and Melbourne now share one of the AFL calendar’s most recognisable commemorative fixtures. How did that pairing become the ANZAC Eve tradition?

Richmond’s wartime archive contains stories that do not fit neatly into football statistics. One of them begins with a man who returned to the club carrying a very different experience of the world.

Frank Tudor was Richmond president and a federal Labor leader before and during the First World War. What happened when football, working-class life and national duty collided?

An honour roll can look like a list until each name is put back into a Richmond life. Who were the men behind the names?

Richmond’s wartime history records what happened. But what about the seasons, careers, teams and possibilities that never got the chance to exist?

What did keeping a football club alive actually require when gate receipts, membership, players and normal civic life were all disrupted? Which decisions belonged to football, which belonged to survival, and how much of the Richmond that emerged after the war depended on people whose names rarely appear in match reports?

The guns stopped and Richmond’s servicemen came home. But what happened after the parades, when war service continued to shape lives, families and the club for years?

Wartime football history naturally follows those who enlisted. But what about the Richmond men who stayed?

The war ended, but normal life did not simply switch back on. What did Richmond have to rebuild when football tried to begin again in 1919?

Factories changed purpose, the MCG became a military site and neighbourhood routines shifted. Why did Punt Road remain such an important gathering place for Richmond?