Percy Page Helped Create the Finals System Australia Grew Up With. So Why Is the Richmond Man Almost Forgotten?
We've just dropped another deep dive feature called Percy Page Helped Create the Finals System Australia Grew Up With. So Why Is the Richmond Man Almost Forgotten? on rtssg.com.
In Jack Dyer’s debut season, the VFL introduced a new finals structure that gave the top teams a double chance, created a guaranteed Grand Final and established a September rhythm Australian football would recognise for decades. One of the men whose name became attached to that system was Richmond secretary Percy Page.
The question Tiger supporters should be asking is simple: how could a Richmond life member and eight-year secretary help reshape the competition, then help take Checker Hughes to Melbourne, and still almost disappear from Richmond’s popular memory?
The feature follows Page from Punt Road’s own reform battles into the Page–McIntyre finals system, the first Grand Final played under it, his departure from Richmond and the organisational knowledge he later carried to Melbourne. It also separates Page’s real role from the lazy claim that Richmond simply “invented” the finals system by itself.
What did the old challenge system fail to provide? Why did the new structure last so long? What did Page actually contribute alongside Ken McIntyre? And what does his disappearance tell us about the kind of Richmond people football history is built to forget?
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