When there's nowhere to go but up
By Jake Niall
The Age
April 18, 2005
Hawthorn and Richmond won four games each last year. They sacked their affable five-year coaches, replacing them with more uncompromising men. They gutted their football departments like dead fish and were given an infusion of elite young talent.
The results were seen twice in 24 hours at the MCG. On Saturday, with confidence born of their near-miss against Essendon, the Hawks smashed the Lions. Yesterday, Richmond dismantled the Dockers, a less robust and capable outfit than Brisbane, but the manner and margin of the victory was the same.
In both cases, much has been made of the role of young blood. In truth, however, the major contribution to date of Richmond's Brett Deledio and Andrew Raines and Hawthorn's debutants has been to freshen up the senior men who had spent 2004 waiting for condemned seasons to end.
Hawthorn's Lion slayers were not Lance Franklin, Jarryd Roughead and Jordan Lewis, but Peter Everitt, Shane Crawford, John Barker and Trent Croad. And yesterday, as the Dockers reverted back to their Damian Drum-era worst, Nathan Brown landed the most telling blows and Matthew Richardson finished them off.
Not that Brown, Richardson or Joel Bowden were duds last year, when they actually were the best of a terrible lot. Yesterday, Brown and Richardson were easily the most influential players; Brown by surgically slicing the Docker "defence" by foot, Richo by monstering an undersized Shane Parker in the one-on-one contests that Terry Wallace's game plan gives him.
The combination of new coach, fresh blood and a changed environment has energised Richmond's best, just as born again Crawford, Everitt, Barker and Croad are heeding the tough gospel of Alastair Clarkson. The new blood is their transfusion, as much as the club's.
"Some of the guys feel it's like being at a new club," said Richmond chief executive Steve Wright, who joined the club just before the Wallace-inspired clean-out of players and staff.
The pattern of bottomed-out teams gaining what Wright called "positive momentum" the following year isn't new and has become more marked under the draft system. The benefits of the early picks, however, is mainly down the track.
What is no less significant is the stocktake, or thorough audit of a club's operations, that invariably follows a stint at the bottom. When a team finishes 15th or 16th, there's no room for self-delusion and the club also has the mandate for harsh decisions that 10 or 11 wins would delay.
"You're coming on the bottom. You can't just live there any more," Wright said. "If you're finishing eighth - or ninth, you might just be a game away from the finals - but if you're 15th or 16th you've got a lot of work to do. So you really have to go back to basic principles."
"Middle of the ladder's a bit of a nothing position, isn't it, these days," said Richmond's football director and board member, Greg Miller. "On the bottom of the ladder, yes, you're faced with a loss of pride, a loss of a sense of . . . a pretty poor sense of where you are and you cop it left, right and centre.
"Obviously in both of our cases (Richmond and Hawthorn), new coaches are making a difference. And probably the coaching panel spends a fair bit of time in assisting you in regaining your confidence again.
"We were lucky in some of the practice matches to play against teams that were undermanned. That gave us confidence and belief that we could win."
Wallace's positive nature has been underpinned by the coach's non-negotiable stance on certain issues.
Yesterday, Richo flouted a rule when he played on inside 50 twice, once spraying the shot in his inimitable way, the second time goalling from the goal square. Wallace sent the runner to Richardson, with the message that he was not to play on inside 50 again, or he'd be benched. Was this a team rule? "It is for Richo," Wallace explained.
From that news conference, it was confirmed that, however Richmond fares this year and next, the senior players will not wag the Tiger as they might have in seasons past.
For the basketcase, change becomes radical, rather than incremental. From the scorched earth, a new club emerges. The survivors, such as Richo, Bowden and Brown, are grateful just to have emerged to see the new dawn.
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