Fiora's fresh start
Wed 2 March, 2005
Paul Gough
afl.com.au
Fiora, the number three pick in the 1999 national draft who was taken one place ahead of Dockers' powerhouse Pavlich, admits that without realising it, he coasted through his last couple of seasons at Punt Road.
"I needed the change, even though I probably wasn't expecting it (Fiora went to St Kilda on the last day of trading as part of a three way deal that saw Heath Black return to Fremantle and Troy Simmons join Richmond)," he said in an exclusive interview.
"I think I am just starting to realise how hard I really have to work to get a kick and hang around a bit longer in the AFL."
"I was just going through the motions, I thought I was training well but I obviously wasn't and you could see coming here how much more intense the training was than compared to Richmond the last couple of years."
Fiora played 78 games for the Tigers but was twice dropped in the second half of last season from a side that lost its last 14 games to finish on the bottom.
But he says he wasn't aware of the criticism he was receiving from Richmond fans until after he had left the club but admitted the constant comparisons to Pavlich had begun to eat away at his confidence at Richmond.
"I suppose I got sick of it, I couldn’t say it wore me down but when I did get down I did have that in the back of my mind, which isn’t good," Fiora said.
"I was pretty inconsistent at Richmond and it comes down to not pushing myself hard enough to play at the elite level."
http://afl.com.au/default.asp?pg=feature&spg=display&articleid=188112Similar to Ottens in some ways. Given he had Spud as coach for the whole first 5 years of his AFL career Fiora would have realised he wasn't working hard enough amongst other things if he had remained at Punt Road under Wallace.
