Why Did Richmond Trade Away a Footballer Who Had Helped Win Two Premierships?
Updated: Oct 14
Richmond had a dual-premiership centreman whose football could alter a Grand Final, yet at the end of 1970 it agreed to exchange him. Bill Barrot had been central to the Tigers' 1967 breakthrough and decisive again in 1969. So why would Richmond contemplate losing a footballer who had already delivered what the club had waited twenty-four seasons to achieve? The answer cannot simply be that Ian Stewart later won a Brownlow Medal. That had not happened when the choice was made. In our full Members investigation, we examine what Richmond could genuinely know before agreeing to the exchange, and why the timing changes the way this extraordinary decision should be judged.
The familiar story presents a champion departing and another arriving, as though the clubs exchanged names on a team sheet. But Barrot had been more than a name in the centre. Richmond had trusted him to influence its biggest matches, sometimes by asking him to do something quite different. How much of a premiership structure can be changed without changing the football that makes it work? In the full feature, we dissect the relationship between Barrot's particular strengths, Hafey's tactical decisions and the risks of breaking a celebrated combination. The question is not whether Barrot had been brilliant. It is what Richmond believed would happen next.
What had changed when Richmond reconsidered its champion?
A year after the 1969 premiership, Richmond had missed the finals. Barrot's 1970 season had been interrupted, and the club's later accounts describe a relationship with its hierarchy that was no longer straightforward. Which mattered more: his capacity to play, the uncertainty around his position at Punt Road or the possibility that neither side could recover what they once had together? Our Members investigation tests those competing explanations against the surviving historical accounts, including what is documented and what would be invented if we pretended to know every private conversation.
It is tempting to picture the exchange as the inevitable correction of a mistake, but that lets hindsight do the work of evidence. St Kilda's Ian Stewart had his own remarkable record and his own reasons for wanting change. Why did the circumstances of two champion footballers create an opportunity that might not have existed in any ordinary recruiting year? In the full investigation, we examine Stewart's availability and the price Richmond had to accept to pursue it. The uncomfortable question is whether the club was solving a genuine problem or taking a gamble it could not afford to lose.
Was Richmond buying a better player, or a different future?
Stewart and Barrot were both outstanding centremen, but Richmond was not simply deciding which footballer had the better collection of honours. A club that had already won flags with one combination was preparing to alter it. What new possibilities might that create for the footballers around the centre, and what familiar advantages could disappear? In our full Members feature, we look closely at the different footballing qualities involved and the consequences for Richmond's premiership structure. The evidence supports a far more interesting inquiry than a retrospective scoreboard declaring who won the trade.
For Richmond supporters, the difficulty went beyond recruiting. Barrot represented memories of the club's return to greatness, not just a place on the next team sheet. Could an administration honour what a player had done while still deciding that keeping him was not the best way forward? Could the opposite decision have been defended? Our full investigation examines both the football judgment and the supporter cost of surrendering a much-loved champion. It also asks what an honest historical assessment must refuse to assume about motives and private disagreements.
What would prove the gamble was justified—and what cannot be proved?
What happened after the exchange certainly matters. But does a spectacular outcome prove the original judgment was inevitable, or does it make us forget the uncertainty Richmond accepted? And how should a club remember a player whose great contributions remain secure even when its next decision takes it in another direction? Those are the questions we pursue without reducing two Richmond eras to a simple winner-and-loser story. The central issue is whether Richmond recognised the moment to change—or whether the result has made a dangerous choice look simpler than it ever was.
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