One-Eyed Richmond Forum
Football => Richmond Rant => Topic started by: richmondrules on March 18, 2008, 11:05:05 AM
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Toothless Tigers no longer: Wallace
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,23393448-23211,00.html
By Chip Le Grand
March 18, 2008
RICHMOND for years have been the butt of jokes. Some of their own making, some the gags of rivals. This year, the Tigers are widely tipped to finish stone-cold motherless last. Again.
Yet within this most primal of football clubs, something has stirred.
Before a lavish dinner in Melbourne, coach Terry Wallace likened his players to scrawny kids in a sandpit. He urged them to stop being bullied. To stand up. As a call to arms, it was hardly original. Yet it was met with a Tiger's roar.
"There are a lot of people doubting us," Wallace said. "There is a lot of crap being thrown on this football club.
"I have had a gutful of it myself and I just hope the players understand that if you get bullied around in the school yard and you keep taking it from people, they will keep dishing it out to you. It is about time we stand up."
If Richmond players required an even blunter assessment, they had only to talk to Royce Hart, who was made an immortal of the club. When asked if he watched many Tigers games, the revered premiership captain remarked: "Not as much as I used to because we are not winning many. I don't like watching losing sides."
This is the week when 1000 deaths await the loser.
To play on a Friday night in the regular season is to subject yourself to intense scrutiny on national television. To play on Easter Thursday, in the opening night of the AFL season, is to be stripped bare. Whoever loses will know they will be feasted upon for the next two days, with no promise of an ascent when Sunday comes.
Wallace knows he, too, has nowhere to hide this season. He has coached Richmond for three years without success.
Last year his club won three matches, drew one and finished 16th. Richmond coaches have been sacked for far less - or more, as it were. It is no bold prediction to say he will not survive another wretched year.
This year, though, Wallace is feeling better about his lot. He likes how his leadership group has taken a firm grip of culture and club.
On the same night that Channel Seven showed security footage of Carlton forward Brendon Fevola urinating outside a nightclub at 4am - another transgression Carlton have been left to deal with - Wallace revealed that his team's leaders had six weeks ago placed a ban on all players attending nightclubs and pubs. More to the point, they had kept to it.
Fevola's fate will be decided by newly appointed captain Chris Judd and his leadership group. At stake is whether the club's leading goal kicker spends this week in the goal square of the MCG or somewhere in the stands.
It is an invidious position for Fevola's teammates to be in given they would like nothing more than to see him leading out against Carlton. It is also a test for new coach Brett Ratten, who decided to keep Fevola at a time when some within the club were keen to give him the boot.
Mercifully, this is of no concern to Wallace, who has a full list to pick his side from and a playing depth he has not experienced in his time at Punt Road. Wallace warned that when the side was announced, there would be up to eight players bitterly disappointed and some supporters left without a favourite player to cheer for.
He also place the onus on the Deledio generation - the group of talented 20-, 21- and 22-year-olds taken in and around the same drafts as Brett Deledio - to make their presence felt.
"They are not kids any more, they are young men," Wallace said.
"They are not 18, 19 years of age any more. There are 21- and 22-year-olds in world sport who have been world champions. We have got to have an expectation that our blokes who are 21, 22 and 23 years of age are going to start having an impact on this competition.
"We now have some depth in our list. There are going to be some guys who are incredibly disappointed. There are going to be some supporters who have favourite players who won't get a game this Thursday night. When we wear the yellow and black, we wear it for keeps.
"The 22 guys who get the opportunity on Thursday night ought to be honoured because I reckon there are half a dozen to eight blokes here today who would love to be out there taking your place and probably reckon they deserve to take your spot."
It is no dramatic departure from what coaches have been telling Richmond players in the 100-year history of the club. The difference this year is Wallace will be held to his word.
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talk talk talk i been hearing it for 20 odd years
actions speak louder than words my friend.
put up thursday night or shut up
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l'm happy with that speech
it was said at the function & not direct to the media but to the players & staff
its time to play, this is elite football
l like to see Richmond take control of there home games on the MCG, like its some haunted ground for visiting clubs
l like to see the supporters louder than never before & to curse all opposition clubs who venture to the MCG
l have even put my holiday on hold for 1 day just to see the win that l'm so starved for & they better deliver it :gotigers
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talk talk talk i been hearing it for 20 odd years
actions speak louder than words my friend.
put up thursday night or shut up
He is accountable to Richmond supporters, so has every right to say what's happening at the club. The people there probably paid an arm and a leg for their lettuce entrees and expected something more substantial from the evening. I can't see a problem with it, but no doubt others will ;)
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talk talk talk i been hearing it for 20 odd years
actions speak louder than words my friend.
put up thursday night or shut up
He is accountable to Richmond supporters, so has every right to say what's happening at the club. The people there probably paid an arm and a leg for their lettuce entrees and expected something more substantial from the evening. I can't see a problem with it, but no doubt others will ;)
i just want to smash carlton thats all.
i dont want to hear or see anything till thursday night, i just want to whipe the smile off those cheating pricks
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i have no problem with what wallace said, many of the thing said are true. its time for the players to show us something.
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l'm happy with that speech
it was said at the function & not direct to the media but to the players & staff
its time to play, this is elite football
Ditto.
As teammates they need to stick up for each other as well as themselves.
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l'm happy with that speech
it was said at the function & not direct to the media but to the players & staff
its time to play, this is elite football
l like to see Richmond take control of there home games on the MCG, like its some haunted ground for visiting clubs
l like to see the supporters louder than never before & to curse all opposition clubs who venture to the MCG
l have even put my holiday on hold for 1 day just to see the win that l'm so starved for & they better deliver it :gotigers
Fxxxin Ay :cheers
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l'm happy with that speech
it was said at the function & not direct to the media but to the players & staff
its time to play, this is elite football
l like to see Richmond take control of there home games on the MCG, like its some haunted ground for visiting clubs
l like to see the supporters louder than never before & to curse all opposition clubs who venture to the MCG
l have even put my holiday on hold for 1 day just to see the win that l'm so starved for & they better deliver it :gotigers
They say the say thing every year at the launch, ::)
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Yep good positive stuff, well done AGAIN Terry & players!!
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Nice speech, and true too.
We live and die by our words and actions.
Good luck to them all.
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l'm happy with that speech
it was said at the function & not direct to the media but to the players & staff
its time to play, this is elite football
l like to see Richmond take control of there home games on the MCG, like its some haunted ground for visiting clubs
l like to see the supporters louder than never before & to curse all opposition clubs who venture to the MCG
l have even put my holiday on hold for 1 day just to see the win that l'm so starved for & they better deliver it :gotigers
They say the say thing every year at the launch, ::)
True Jackstar as per most other clubs. ;) so lets not get blinded by the negative factor mate.
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:clapping
I hope we win.
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:clapping
I hope we win.
poo Jackstar are you sure someone else hasn't jumped onto your computer while you were away cleanining some of the **** out of your mouth?? That cant be you hoping we win...... ::)
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We'll know within the first 5-10 minutes if we're on and backing up these words.
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We'll know within the first 5-10 minutes if we're on and backing up these words.
That's the truth! ;)
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Im getting seriously pumped already and I havent seen the teams and there's 30 -odd hours to go. ;D :thumbsup
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This year, though, Wallace is feeling better about his lot. He likes how his leadership group has taken a firm grip of culture and club.
On the same night that Channel Seven showed security footage of Carlton forward Brendon Fevola urinating outside a nightclub at 4am - another transgression Carlton have been left to deal with - Wallace revealed that his team's leaders had six weeks ago placed a ban on all players attending nightclubs and pubs. More to the point, they had kept to it.
:banghead
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Did Johnson attend a pub or nightclub?
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This year, though, Wallace is feeling better about his lot. He likes how his leadership group has taken a firm grip of culture and club.
On the same night that Channel Seven showed security footage of Carlton forward Brendon Fevola urinating outside a nightclub at 4am - another transgression Carlton have been left to deal with - Wallace revealed that his team's leaders had six weeks ago placed a ban on all players attending nightclubs and pubs. More to the point, they had kept to it.
:banghead
Shows what a fool Wallet is as well
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Shows what a fool Wallet is as well
So, which pub or nightclub did he attend then? ???
(He lives next door to the police station)
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There must be more to it - nobody, even Fev can be so stupid.
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Did Johnson attend a pub or nightclub?
He lives next door to St Kilda police complex apparently. Still he's an idiot to get so drunk that he leaves his home tanked up to the hilt and wees on the front window of the police complex :banghead.
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I heard it reported he was peeing on a statue.
Bottom line, he has been stupid but he hasn't broken the team pact.
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I heard it reported he was peeing on a statue.
Bottom line, he has been stupid but he hasn't broken the team pact.
must be a farcical pact
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must be a farcical pact
So what?
The point is it hasn't been broken, as has been alluded to.
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must be a farcical pact
So what?
The point is it hasn't been broken, as has been alluded to.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
No wonder our club cant fire a shot and give our supporters some success to be proud of.
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Perhaps technically he didn't break it but I don't think the principle behind the pact excluded peeing on a statue outside the main police complex next door lol :wallywink