Hope for Richo
4:37:40 PM Tue 27 June, 2006
Jennifer Witham
Sportal for afl.com.au
Richmond coach Terry Wallace remains optimistic that star forward Matthew Richardson will be available to play this week against Collingwood, despite the big man having pins removed from his wrist only four days ahead of the game.
Richardson fractured his wrist in round nine against Geelong and had surgery to insert the pins into the site of the break. He will now have those pins removed on Wednesday, ahead of Sunday's clash at the MCG.
But, Wallace believes Richardson is a genuine chance of proving his fitness before this weekend's clash, should he regain an acceptable range of movement and is pain-free following the minor operation.
"We hope Matthew will be back playing," Wallace said on Tuesday.
"The decision can't be made (yet)…he won't train tomorrow, we've got our major training session on tomorrow.
"He's got to have some pins removed from the fracture site and that will be done tomorrow. All the medical advice was that the longer we could leave it, the better it would be for his ability to mend.
"So he won't train, he'll be out there running around and doing everything else that the guys will be doing, but he's still doing stuff one handed until those pins come out tomorrow afternoon."
Wallace said the likely situation will be that Richardson will be named on Thursday night in the side's extended squad and will then be given until the last moment to prove his fitness once the pins are removed.
"Then we've just got to see how much freedom and movement he gets from that in the later part of the week. To be honest, I think it will be one those where most likely it will be selection and the final decision not until the last training session on Friday," he said.
The Tigers are also a chance of regaining another big man with ruck option Trent Knobel facing a fitness test on his sprained ankle
"Trent is a chance; he's coming off an ankle sprain from about a week ago," Wallace said.
"He's been getting gradually getting better every day and I would expect him to train tomorrow and we'll work through the week."
Another Tiger in the mix is key position player Jay Schulz, who has played only two senior games this year after injuring his collarbone in round two.
Schulz was best on ground for Coburg Tigers last weekend and has shown promise in the past month playing at VFL level, and Wallace said match fitness was the only thing keeping the talented utility from breaking into the side.
"He was excellent (on the weekend), he's probably been very good for two or three weeks, (but) he's a little bit underdone in relation to coming back from the shoulder injury," he said.
"I'm very much of the belief that if you can possibly bring them back through the VFL and play them for two or three weeks so they have almost have a mini-preseason, practice match series again, that's the best way.
"Jay has come through that process now, kicked six on the weekend, I think he kicked five or six the week before, so he's very much up for selection."
Meanwhile, Wallace also revealed the club wouldn't hesitate in resting champion midfielder Nathan Brown if he again began to suffer from complications following the horrifically broken leg he sustained last season.
Brown played the last two rounds before the club's mid-season break after taking an indefinite period of leave from the game when his leg became troublesome.
Wallace said the club would continue to ease Brown back into football, although the signs from his recent pair of performances were certainly positive.
"Our planning for him is to now run him through the next two or three games and then revaluate it again at that stage," Wallace said.
"We think that he's come through everything ok, he got through the two games ok. Last time when he was playing, he was having a bit of a downward spiral and just gradually getting worse."
Wallace said the key indicator was that Brown did not require any type of pain medication before or after his two games. But, despite the positive signs to come from Brown's second comeback, the Tigers coach said the long-term goal was ultimately round one, 2007.
"This time around he didn't have any (medication), he was needing to take pain killers the last time he played to get up and play games and be right," he said.
"This time around he hasn't had to have any type of pain intervention at all, which is really positive signs for us, but in saying that, we're not going to get him to that stage this time around.
"We're all about where he's going to be at round one next year, at that's where we always have been…we think that he'll handle two or three games on end without any problems, as he did prior to the break, and then we'll assess again about does he need a week off to recuperate."
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