14 June 2004
Herald Sun
Trevor Grant
IT'S groundhog day at Richmond. Another capitulation. Another press conference. Another swag of heartfelt promises.
Let us roll the tape and listen to Danny Frawley as he explains to the world how he'll respond to yet another pitiful defeat.
"I still believe our group is good enough to win games of football.
"We've just got to make sure we look at why we got beaten and make sure we learn from it.
"We've just got to make sure we get the spirits up.
"We've just got to take this on the chin.
"There's been a thousand distractions. It doesn't worry us.
"The buck stops with me."
About the only cliches Frawley left aside this time were that his players were going to put their hands up, step up to the plate and be cherry ripe for the next game against Carlton.
But he did say that there was plenty upon which to hang your Richmond beanie, such as the first two quarters. "Our first half was probably the best footy we've played for a number of weeks. We've just got to look at that and use it as a positive, keep coaching the positives," he said.
You can look at this reaction to a performance which set new lows, even for Richmond, in two ways.
With senior officials having made a conscious decision to try to do the impossible and counter the belief the club is about to implode, Frawley has decided to defend his men, no matter what.
Or Frawley is a man trapped in a cycle of decline so severe that he's gone giddy and lost all sense of perspective.
The mythology of coaching tells us that the man who sits behind the glass yelling down the phone has all the answers.
The reality of coaching is that he doesn't, no matter who he might be. Never has, in fact.
It is clear that Frawley has no meaningful answers that will impact on a group of players, many of whom love the trappings of AFL football but aren't all that willing to meet their end of the bargain.
Frawley has always been a players' man. His modus operandi in times of stress is to bunker down and man the barriers with the troops.
Just listen to him. Every time it's the same: "I'll look at tape . . . we'll get out on the track and get our hands dirty . . . we'll get the confidence up for next week . . . don't worry, we'll be right."
It's a noble premise but the whole world knows that in the end all he's doing is trying to defend the indefensible.
Attacking your players in public is often self-defeating for a coach, and Frawley, and his advisers within the club, obviously believe there is nothing to gain from it.
But there comes a time when a team boss has to stop dancing around fragile egos, if for no other reason than to let the world know that the club is not as weak and submissive as some of its players.
Otherwise he can too easily create an impression he is so overwhelmed by mediocrity that he, too, has learned to tolerate it.
However, Frawley made his intentions clear last night.
"We've just got to pull them through and get them playing with a lot of confidence," he said.
He then went on to try to explain why a team that had led by 39 points collectively drops it head when it is loses the lead halfway through the last quarter and appears to accept its fate.
Frawley said that they were affected by the fact they got so little out of expending so much energy in the first half of the last quarter.
"You've also got to know that when you don't get reward for effort you are going to stop turning up," he said.
He may not have meant it to sound this way but you could easily interpret this as saying this side gives up when things don't go its way.
Surely, there could be no greater condemnation.
And an objective observer might say it's a fair summary of Richmond's performance yesterday.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,9834714%255E19771,00.html
