"I'm a pessimistic person. I think a few decades of supporting Richmond will do that to you," says ABC broadcaster Waleed Aly. But the fact that the Tigers are in the finals has put him in a different frame of mind. "I feel a genuine sense of excitement, because this is something that only happens to other people - to be there twice in a row, which we haven't done since 1975, which is to say we haven't done it in my lifetime."
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Yet he can't help having flashbacks to last year's finals appearance against Carlton, "a game we were expected to win, and should have won, against a team that shouldn't have been there, at home, in front of 95,000 people. There was every reason that was going to be difficult." Next week against Port Adelaide, he says, "it really feels like we have a free swing". He's in the midst of figuring out how to get to Adelaide for the game.
Treasurer Joe Hockey takes a positive view of the Tigers' performance so far. "The team has shown real depth of character that shows no matter how far behind you get, nothing is insurmountable," he says.
And Greens senator Richard Di Natale will be wearing his Richmond tie to Parliament. "I brought it last week, just in case. The defining characteristic of a Richmond supporter is that you don't ever give up hope," although, he adds, "you have to get used to disappointment." But the game against Sydney "defied the script. And everything that happens next is a bonus."
Di Natale, who played for VFA clubs Coburg and Oakleigh in the 1990s, remembers seeing the 1980 grand final (the Tigers last premiership) at the age of 10, coming home from Italian school to watch the last quarter on a black-and-white TV and doing cartwheels round the house. "But by the time I was old enough to appreciate the game, it was just tragedy after tragedy."
