Confronting questions for Tigers after finals exitJennifer Phelan
afl.com.au
January 23, 2014 A MARK Williams-designed survey that forced the Richmond players to analyse their performances in the Tigers' finals loss to Carlton helped them get over it, defender Alex Rance says.
The Tigers made the finals for the first time since 2001 last year but fell to the Blues by 20 points in an elimination final after leading by 26 at half-time.
A week later, the former Port Adelaide coach emailed the players with a questionnaire surrounding their own games, to be completed in their own time.
Rance said he initially dismissed the lengthy survey as something he "wanted to be done with as soon as possible".
But then he realised the worth in what he described as a "painful" exercise that helped the players break down where the game went wrong.
"When I first started doing it, I just felt like I just want to whiz through it, get it done, get it out of my hand, I don't want to deal with this anymore," Rance told AFL.com.au this week.
"But, it was so long that you needed to take some time and halfway through you almost felt like starting again because I wanted to do it properly and do it right because you knew it was going to be so beneficial."
Examples of the questions focused on communication - what each player did in certain situations and if they could hear their teammates.
Coach Damien Hardwick said the mentality behind the delayed review came from his own experiences as a player and his belief a loss like that can't be processed in the days following.
"We decided to give them some time to think about it and then give them the questionnaire but then also review the game at a later date," Hardwick said.
"The next pre-season, it's a great motivating force when you've had a bad loss in a final and you sort of lose that if you review it straight away.
"That's my feeling anyway, and I always felt as a player, well, I just want to get the hell out of here, so that's something we took on board."
Rance said Williams' survey showed the players the importance of taking ownership for their own actions.
"You always try to point fingers and make it someone else's problem when we really had to take control of what we individually contributed to the decay that happened after half-time," he said.
"I can't remember the exact questions but I remember it became a lot clearer to me what I did wrong during the game, and what I should have done and what I will do in the future."
Rance said former Port Adelaide defender Troy Chaplin had described Williams – who is the Tigers' development coach – as the best coach he'd had.
He said the support of the Power premiership coach had continued through the pre-season when he accompanied the players on time trials on his bike.
"He's a bit of a mad scientist, Choco, he's got a lot of ideas and he's always thinking," he said.
"Even when we had a time trial, he was pretty much riding with us and setting the pace for the blokes who weren't all the way up the front.
"He's a fantastic bloke to have around the club."
Rance's assessment of his performance against Carlton forward Jarrad Waite is a tale of two halves.
He was pleased with his first half but believed he became distracted after the main break when Waite powered away to end with four goals.
"In the first half, I thought it was nearly one of the best on ground and then after that, I don't know whether it was fatigue or what but it was just small lapses in concentration," he said.
"I remember one was a quick kick out of stoppage and it landed in Waite's lap and it's just one of those ones where I was trying to communicate with everyone else to get a spare and things like that.
"Instead of worrying about doing my job I was trying to do too many other jobs."
The performance, in a year where the 24-year-old said he had the best finish to a season he's had so far in his career, hasn't haunted him.
He's over the anger and hurt, and is now focused on putting together a consistent season and getting back to the finals stage.
"If you live your life constantly thinking about the things you've done wrong, you're going to have a pretty dark life," he said.
"Footy is just a game of mistakes anyway so it's something you think about and process and it's probably made me a little bit mentally stronger but it's not really something I have nightmares and wake up in a cold sweat about.
"To get the taste of that 95,000 crowd and being the focal point of that night rather than being just another round was probably the main thing I'll take out of it.
"I want that again. I want it five more times after that. You don't play footy to make up the numbers; you want to be the best."
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2014-01-23/tigers-question-time
