David Norman, the passionate leader of Richmond’s Cheer Squad from 1980 to 2012, who oversaw the creation of their iconic banners – including the largest ever made for a League match – has died. He was 63.
David died on October 15th, 2025, his lifelong friend and current Cheer Squad leader, Gerard Egan, confirmed.
His entirely voluntary service at Tigerland began in 1974 when he joined the Cheer Squad, and he was then appointed President of the group in the 1980 Premiership season by Hall of Famer Alice Wills.
What couldn’t David do! At the Club’s family days he’d set up tents and tables, in the pre-season sold membership tickets, decorated venues for Club auctions and player testimonials, and turned the Richmond Town Hall into a sea of yellow and black for jumper presentation nights and the Annual General Meetings.
He was an inaugural member of the Richmond History and Traditions committee, a keen collector of Tiger memorabilia, and in the ‘80s and ‘90s, rescued historical items and documents with Roland Weeks that were being discarded by the Club into mini skips.
Every year he helped organise “Dimmey’s Day”, an opportunity for supporters to purchase discount tickets from the famed department store on Swan Street. It was consistently their biggest membership drive.
He was one of the first people to wear the 1980s Tiggy the Tiger mascot uniform – “it was like a furry bathmat with the rubber backing…they weren’t made of the highest quality, but you have to remember that usually you are running around on a muddy oval in the rain”.
David helped organise for the Cheer Squad to collect tens of thousands of dollars for the Red Cross, the Royal Children’s Hospital, and the Salvation Army.
During the height of the Save our Skin campaign, he rattled the tins everywhere, and at all times of the day, collecting coins and bank notes that made its way back to the makeshift counting room under the old Grandstand.
“We stood and fought. We wouldn’t let it go under,” he said in Cheryl Critchley’s Our Footy publication.
“We were on our knees. The arse was ripped out of our pockets, on our knees begging. The supporters saved the Club.”
His commitment to Tigerland was personified by the “in any weather” lyric from our themesong. Rain, hail or shine, he was there at 11am on match days setting up the cheer squad while the curtain raiser was played (in the old days they sat on the first level of the Southern Stand, at the Punt Road end).
He also helped with those incredible alliterative banners that would snake around the southern and western stands. Remember “Ruthless Richmond – Esso Tigers, our powerful premiership predators”, that was one of his.
For 40 years, from Round 3, 1972, to Round 3, 2012, he attended every Richmond match.
Image courtesy of Gerard Egan
In 1983 he helped design and build the Cheer Squad’s pièce de résistance, a 33-foot-tall banner celebrating Kevin Bartlett’s 400th game.
No cheer squad before had attempted such a construction. The standard tall wooden stakes would be insufficient with what the Cheer Squad had in mind.
“We wanted to do something different for K.B.’s milestone,” he said in the 2021 book, Footy Banners.
“But the sheer weight of the poles and the double thickness of the banner made things challenging.”
So, David and co commissioned a Melbourne lumberyard to mill a tree large enough to make the 10 metre poles.
Another genius move was introducing a countdown strip on each banner in the preceding weeks, to generate further anticipation.
Six days before the milestone match, the Cheer Squad unveiled the majestic banner on the Punt Road Ground for a Football Record shoot, and private viewing for Bartlett and his kids.
From David Norman’s collection
But not everything went to plan. When the poles were thrown onto the ground, a crack was heard and a knothole appeared 1.5 metres from the base of one. Heavy taping seemingly fixed it, but on match day, just 20 minutes before Bartlett was due to run out, the pole snapped at that exact spot.
A spare shorter pole had to be retrieved from back at the Punt Road Ground, and was rushed onto the MCG.
As Bartlett ran down the race and through a guard of honour, the banner slowly rose, but with the different pole sizes the reinforced crepe paper draped onto the ground.
It was this that KB famously tripped over when he broke through.
The Cheer Squad’s record for the largest footy banner ever lasted just three weeks when, for KB’s 403rd and last game, they erected something even bigger – a 40ft tall x 120ft wide run-through.
This time the poles supporting the extraordinary creation were made of aluminum.
David was in charge of so many memorable banners in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. We will never forget the caricature of John Northey riding a white horse into battle for the 1995 Semi Final vs Essendon, or the moving recognition of Jack Dyer’s death in 2003, which they made on just one day’s notice.
David John Norman was born in Sydney in 1962. His mother, a South Melbourne supporter, met his father, who was working for the rope and twines manufacturer, James Miller & Co.
Growing up he followed Balmain in the rugby, and when the family moved to Melbourne at the end of 1969, he was first introduced to Aussie Rules Football.
“My first memory of footy is my first day of school in Melbourne and I had the 1969 Scanlens footy cards. I was trying to trade them with some kid at school and they were that horse shoe style. We were trying to figure out why our number ones were different. I had the Sydney rugby ones.”
David asked if there was a corresponding ‘Tigers’ team in the VFL competition, and from that moment onwards his love of Richmond began.
At age 10 he regularly attended Richmond games with a neighbour’s father who was an MCC member. For matches not at the MCG, he simply caught a bus to Box Hill then a train to Flinders Street Station and joined up with whatever group of people he spotted wearing the yellow and black colours.
The love that David had for Richmond was reciprocated by all Tiger supporters throughout the decades. He was particularly nurturing towards the younger Tiger fans who perhaps were attending their first game, or trying to find a way to fit in and find new friends.
“Everything from the garbo to the millionaire, we all have one thing that we’re passionate about and in love with, and it’s Richmond,” he said in a 2016 interview on the Richmond website.
“It doesn’t matter about your background, your religion, your sexual orientations, what your politics are or wealth status, you’re a Richmond supporter. And it’s the one thing we can all sit down and talk about on equal terms, together.”
David is survived by his sister Rhonda, and son Jack Dyer Norman.
Jack was appointed to the prestigious Richmond Cheer Squad committee on Tuesday – the day before his father’s passing.
David Norman and Gerard Egan embrace after the drought-breaking 2017 Premiership