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Thread: Collingwood legend Lou Richards dies aged 94

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    Immortal Contributor The InnFORCEr's Avatar
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    Collingwood legend Lou Richards dies aged 94

    LOU Richards has died aged 94.

    The Collingwood legend and TV personality paved the way for many others in the football world.

    The term icon is overused, but ‘Louie’ was one.

    From 1927 to 1936, the Pies had won an incredible six of the 10 flags on offer.

    After then, though, the club was in the doldrums.

    Lou, who would later coin the term Colliwobbles, knew what a premiership drought was.

    By 1953, he was skipper of a team that hadn’t tasted victory for 17 years.

    Geelong was near-invincible coming off back-to-back flags, the last over Collingwood.

    During the season it chalked up a VFL-AFL record winning streak.

    Under Lou, the Pies ended it, beat the Cats again in the semis and held on grimly to win by 12 points on the last Saturday in September.

    When he retired his accomplishments were counted: 250 games, 423 goals, nine broken bones, “mostly accidents, a few backhanders,” he said.

    In an era when the career path of past players meant a pub or, less often, the media, Lou’s life moved on.

    He already had a pub.

    Daughters Kim and Nicole never lived in a proper house until they got married.

    The media came in 1956, when The Sun News Pictorial asked him to fill in for Jack Dyer.

    Later, Dyer would say the only things Lou ever gave away were boomerangs, homing pigeons and handshakes.

    For the inflated wage, Lou started writing straight football commentary of no real distinction.

    In 1957, though, sports editor Harry Gordon gave the Lip free-rein to joke around.

    Lou’s columns clowned around all right, and the one-liners and nicknames came fast.

    “Sometimes I’d get an idea for a gag in the middle of the night and jump out of bed to write it down,’’ Lou remembered.

    With a series of ghost writers polishing his prose, jokes were often a team-effort, Lou’s columns became required reading for footy fans.

    Players were branded for life with nicknames like ‘The Flying Doormat’ and ‘The Galloping Gasometer’.

    At the same time, his footy calling on 3XY, and the on-air jousting, took broadcasts into the entertainment era.

    Later callers such as Rex Hunt follow the lead.

    Television was the next step and Lou was the heart of the most iconic shows of several decades.

    Dyer, Geelong’s Bob Davis and Lou were the three wise monkeys of League Teams where match selections were lost amid the wisecracking.

    World of Sport, a shambolic few hours, came to define Sunday mornings.
    Lou would be a fixture on Channel 7 for 27 years before moving to Nine in 1987.

    http://www.perthnow.com.au/sport/afl...52a9da47378941

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    Immortal Contributor The InnFORCEr's Avatar
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    RIP Louie

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    Veteran chibi's Avatar
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    Rest in peace, Louie the Lip.

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