Jack Riewoldt says good news not far away for club with players on verge of re-signing with club Bruce Matthews
•From: Herald Sun
•July 10, 2013 12:18PM
RICHMOND goalkicking ace Jack Riewoldt has reassured fans that good news on a new contract is not far away.
Riewoldt indicated today that he and other teammates would be prepared to take a pay cut to try to keep together the current group.
"Yeah, it's the million-dollar question ... I wish it was the million dollar question, that would be nice, wouldn't it?," Riewoldt said before a football clinic at Xavier College.
"As I've said often in the past two weeks, it's just a matter of getting the finer details (done). I really want to be at Richmond next year and I know the club really wants me there.
"There are plenty of contracts going around at the club, so we're sorting that out. Hopefully, we've got some good news for the football club and the fans in the not-too-distant future.
"I think every football club would like to pay their players as much as possible to keep them there. But it's about making those sacrifices.
"Obviously, over the last two or three years, players' prices have been put up by the two expansion sides and the salary cap relief that they do have. So it's a matter of coming to terms that the player and the football club think are fair."
Riewoldt said the Tigers are not spooked by two previous losses to the Gold Coast up north as they prepare for Saturday's assignment in Cairns.
"With Darwin and Cairns, it was getting used to the climate. Last year was just disappointing, we had a bad three minutes in a game we should have won right at the end when Karmichael (Hunt) kicked that goal after the siren," he said.
"But our squad is completely different to last year and Gold Coast has a more experienced side as well, so we're looking forward to the challenge.
"Speaking about hoodoos, we obviously had lost a lot of games to Carlton before the start of this year and came out and beat them in round 1. So this group is ready to attack and ready to take the challenge of the Gold Coast in Cairns."
The Coleman Medal contender described last week's poor performance against North Melbourne as a "hiccup" and a "wake up" call on the consistency required to be a top-eight team.
"We've picked a few things out that didn't go to plan last week.
"Unfortunately, it was one of those weeks where most of our 22 didn't play their roles," he said.
"We understand that and we know what we can fix. Not taking anything away from North Melbourne, they played some really good football and something that we struggled to combat.
"So hopefully when we come up against something like that again, we can put some things in place to stop the flow. I think they kicked eight goals in 18 minutes which put us out of the game. We'll figure out ways to stem the bleeding next time and get the game back on our terms."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/jack-riewoldt-says-good-news-not-far-away-for-club-with-players-on-verge-of-re-signing-with-club/story-fni5f9jb-1226677060980
