Field Marshall: Richmond slows down to make rapid improvementSam Edmund
Herald-Sun
June 15, 2015 8:30PMRICHMOND’S dramatic mid-season transformation may as well have been inspired by Guns N’ Roses 1989 power ballad, Patience.
The Tigers’ turnaround has been based on a more patient game style after a kamikaze attacking philosophy in the first six rounds threatened to send their season into meltdown.
Coach Damien Hardwick and his staff sat down after Richmond’s turnover-infested Round 6 loss to North Melbourne to tinker with their side’s game style.
The result is a slower, keepings-off strategy that has made the Tigers formidable instead of vulnerable.
They have won their past four, including inflicting Fremantle’s only loss of the season, at Subiaco.
“At times we found we were playing way too fast,’’ assistant coach Brendon Lade told 3AW.
“We found that controlling the ball for certain periods has definitely helped us stay in games longer, but defend a lot better as well.
“Patience is a good word. Composure was another one we used a fair bit.”
The crouching tiger approach means two things — Richmond doesn’t commit as many turnovers and when it does it is able to absorb the mistake rather than leak goals.
In the opening six rounds, the Tigers were tearing down field with reckless abandon, conceding 58 points a game from turnovers — ranked 16th in the competition.
A whopping 69.3 per cent of their opponents’ total score came from Tiger clangers, the highest percentage in the AFL.
The opposition would retreat, wait for Richmond to stuff up and then sweep forward under such little pressure Alex Rance and his backline colleagues were like lambs to the slaughter.
“Turnovers, turnovers, they were horrible turnovers,” a furious Hardwick said after the loss to North.
But in the past four matches, the Tigers have given up the second-fewest points from turnovers.
Their time-in-possession differential has more than doubled, which shows they are getting the ball and keeping it.
Cue a significant rise in uncontested-possession differential (eighth to second) and uncontested-marks differential (10th to third).
The Tigers are pushing deeper into defence to help out and defend the turnover.
The retreating means they have gone from averaging 8.2 more inside-50s a game (sixth) to 5.8 less (14th).
But this has helped Richmond go from the fourth-easiest unit to goal against once inside 50m to the second-hardest since Round 7.
“If we play our best footy we’ll beat anyone,” Hardwick maintained after the Round 4 loss to Melbourne.
How right he was.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/field-marshall-richmond-slows-down-to-make-rapid-improvement/story-fndv8t7m-1227399322505
