Rebuilding clubs want every win
By Jake Niall
The Age
August 22, 2005
Hawthorn's Jarryd Roughhead has the reach to beat some other handy players at Telstra Dome yesterday.
Photo: Vince Caligiuri
THE Hawks didn't tank. They just didn't have enough left in theirs to survive a wasteful Richmond's withering finish. An effort that defined the Tigers' season as respectable and upwardly mobile, and a notch or two above the competition's fallen aristocracy.
Richmond was so inaccurate, it almost cost the Hawks a priority pick. Now, with Sydney to come, they seem assured of not crossing that five-win Rubicon that has sparked so much treacherous talk.
Happily, there was nothing dead about this rubber. It had an Andrew Demetriou-approved style of footy — fast, open, with Sherrin squatters getting pinged, highly-rated draftees exhilarating both sets of supporters and the game in doubt until the final seconds.
Did it mean anything? Wayne Campbell has seen his share of meaningless Richmond games, but he thought yesterday, his 296th and penultimate game in yellow and black, meant plenty.
"To me going in, it was almost our season, as to whether our season had been almost good or bad," Campbell explained. "It puts us just outside the eight, as opposed to in the bottom rung I reckon. I thought it was massively important, more so now that we've won."
Terry Wallace noted with satisfaction that, in the corresponding late season game last year, he had sat in the grandstand and watched as the Hawks prevailed comfortably over his old club in what recruiters rightly called the "Brett Deledio Cup".
Plough's boys have 10 wins and the team he might have coached — though he was never formally offered the Hawthorn job — has exactly half that number. Yet, there does not seem to be much separating these aspirational clubs, which, like a pair of winos, began their journey from the cellar together. One's progress will be measured against the other's.
Richmond is ahead of Hawthorn, to be sure. The Tigers have more players capable of playing at the required level, more of what David Parkin calls "bona fides" than Hawthorn, which does not have quite as much senior scaffolding to support its highly promising teens, with no sorcerer of Nathan Brown's class to bring back, either.
The flipside is that the Hawks have been prepared to go further backwards, have treated 2005 as Year Zero and will now pick up more early picks; the system rewards this strategy and in 12 months their playing list might be hold the greater talent.
Campbell could see the parallels between the Hawks and Tigers, but also the point of difference. "I mean, we won the wooden spoon, so we were coming off just as low a base as they were coming off. They've chosen to go a different path. They went strictly youth, whereas we went a blend of youth and a bit of experience as well.
As the first step in their respective reconstructions, the Tigers chose mediums and smalls (Deledio and Richard Tambling) under a "best available player" philosophy with their prized picks, while the Hawks went tall (Jarryd Roughead and Lance Franklin). Yesterday became like a talent quest for this gifted teens, with Deledio finishing, fittingly, as the most impressive.
The Tigers have to find replacements for Richo, Darren Gaspar and need a ruckman. The Hawks have no less of an imminent hole in the form of Shane Crawford and Peter Everitt, the latter, at 31, is still the club's most influential performer.
Richmond might have been less pure in its pursuit of a youth policy, it was also more willing to commit long term to a coach. Wallace has the luxury of a further four years on his contract, Alastair Clarkson, as an unproven coaching talent, has only 12 months. Plough, thus, has more margin for failure than his Hawk counterpart and, in turn, might influence steps that each club takes.
"Time will tell," said Campbell. "But I think the path that Terry's chosen is a good one."
It's possible that both clubs might scale the mountain, more or less in unison, so that like yesterday, each will emerge victorious.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/08/21/1124562753055.html
