Tigers’ decision to change game plan paying offThe Australian
23 September 2017The Tigers have lowered their eyes. They are kicking shorter — much shorter — than they were early in the season. Back then they stood alone as a dinosaur among higher evolutionary species.
For the first half of the year the Tigers were playing a very old-fashioned game indeed.
A check of the round 12 stats shows Richmond averaged 66.5 long kicks per game, way ahead of the second-placed Giants (61.4).
The anomaly stood out like a brontosaurus neck-craning through the tree line: the Tigers were playing like no one else in the competition. But something happened. By round 23 the Tigers were averaging just 56.3 long kicks a game to rank fifth for the stat.
No meteor or disease or earthquake caused this rent; rather the side with the longest game evolved to playing a shorter one.
The Tigers have reined in the Dustin Johnson power game for a more delicate Seve Ballesteros short game, which has led them to tonight’s preliminary final with GWS and perhaps a first grand final in … quite a while.
The stats tell a stark story. As well as dropping 10 long kicks per game in half a season, the Tigers’ short kicks have risen accordingly.
In round 12 they averaged 65.3 short kicks a game; at the end of the minor rounds, that was up to 73.5 a game.
So, on the face of it, Damien Hardwick changed his game plan halfway through the season.
Maybe he did. But perhaps this is about something else; perhaps outside forces are at play.
“It could be about what their opponents are forcing them to do,” Fox Footy’s Dwayne Russell told The Weekend Australian.
“After seeing what Richmond was doing, the opposition decided to not allow them that long kick to clear an area. Maybe they saw those big long kicks that enabled them to get out the back and decided to deny them that.”
Which makes sense. The other possible explanation is the round 12 sample size might have been small enough to make Richmond’s huge long kick average a statistical outlier.
Russell reckons that’s a possibility but doubts it’s the reason for the dramatic change in Richmond’s kicking game.
“I’ve got no doubt they were definitely kicking longer earlier in the season; it was a deliberate ploy,” he said.
Whatever the reason, the Tigers have changed the way they play. Moving to a shorter game has brought them back to the pack in terms of playing style.
But they still play a different brand. They don’t like to handball, these Tigers — they’re 17th for handball receives.
They don’t care much for long leads, or short ones for that matter — they’re 17th for marks taken on a lead.
They don’t chip it around too much — they’re 15th for uncontested marks.
The answer to that might be in their poor kicking skills — they’re behind only Melbourne for clangers.
But enough about what they aren’t.
The Tigers are great at pressuring their opponents and they devour anything in open space — they’re third for loose ball gets.
And there’s no stat for the power surge provided by the Tiger army; several armies in fact, and an attached corps or two.
Nor can the numbers measure a word so overused in sport, so hackneyed and overblown — except in Richmond’s case.
“There comes a time when momentum is everything,” inaugural Crows coach Graham Cornes said this week.
“And there’s so much momentum behind this Richmond team.”
That momentum is enough to overcome the side’s many deficiencies, including a forward line very reliant on Jack Riewoldt.
“Just the one key forward rarely works,” Cornes told FiveAA.
“(So) from a football purist’s point of view, if you’re looking at structuring up a team, they’re not structured up all that well.
“They’re relying on a small forward line being able to apply enormous pressure, to cause turnovers and kick goals.”
But that is a mere qualification as far as Cornes is concerned.
Asked if the Giants are any show tonight, Cornes said: “No, I don’t think they are. It’s Richmond’s time.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/afl/richmond-v-gws-tigers-decision-to-change-game-plan-paying-off/news-story/4a0ad916287785cc6ccd0be2a67a1592
