Tigers primed for physical encounter

[one-eyed]

Tigers primed for physical encounter
Nick Sheridan and Michael Cowley | April 7, 2007
The Age

THE Tigers are expecting to face a "fired-up and physical" Sydney side when the teams meet at the MCG this afternoon.

Assistant coach Brian Royal said Richmond would be under no illusions about the strength of the Swans, who are still smarting from their one-point loss to West Coast last weekend. "We played them a couple of times last year and the result didn't go our way. We got belted the first time we played them (round seven) — by 118 points," he said. "Obviously, we're expecting a pretty tough game (with Sydney on the rebound). We're expecting a pretty fired-up and physical Sydney."

Royal said the Tigers' main focus would be on maintaining a consistent performance throughout the game, after a second-half fade-out cost them the match against Carlton last week.

"What we can change is to play four quarters," he said. "Last week, we played some very good footy for probably 2½ quarters, and for the second half of the third quarter and (in) the last quarter we were fairly insipid …" he said.

Royal also said he felt Richmond was let down by the performance of its senior players last week. "We probably felt that it was more our senior leaders that let us down when the game became really tight and we probably need those guys to stand up as well."

Royal ruled out a re-run of the keepings-off style of play it employed to beat Adelaide in round eight last year, saying Richmond would instead focus on playing footy that it would expect to take it to a premiership.

"That was a one-off game when we were undermanned and we probably felt that we were going to come undone unless we did something extraordinary," he said.

"We're trying to develop a team for the future and I'll think you find that those sorts of statistics won't occur again.

"We're trying to build a team to win a premiership and for us to do that, we have to play a style or manner of football like what premiership football is all about, and that's not what you saw against Adelaide last year."

Going in with an unchanged side today, there is a question mark over Nathan Brown, who is still struggling to fully recover from a badly broken leg against Melbourne in round 10, 2005.

"He's going OK. He's starting to feel all right," Royal said. "But it's sort of hard to put a number of days or weeks on how far he's off."

Sydney midfielder Jude Bolton said yesterday the Swans planned to capitalise on the absence of injured Richmond ruckmen Troy Simmonds and Trent Knobel, both sidelined with ankle injuries.

"We are going to be asking for some dominance from 'Jolls' (Darren Jolly) and 'Spida' (Peter Everitt)," Bolton said.

He said the players were all disappointed with last week's one-point loss to West Coast. "We hope we don't rue that missed chance later in the year. Taking on Richmond, we've got to make sure we're 1-1 (win-loss). We want to get a win on board and get our season under way."

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/tigers-primed-for-physical-encounter/2007/04/06/1175366477184.html

[one-eyed]

Pattison answers ruck call
07 April 2007   Herald-Sun
Gareth Trickey

RICHMOND is calling on young ruckman Adam Pattison to step up and go toe-to-toe with experienced Sydney pair Darren Jolly and Peter Everitt today.

Pattison, 21, will try to fill the void left by injured Tigers ruck pair Troy Simmonds and Trent Knobel.

"We played Sydney a couple of weeks ago in Canberra and we had a couple of inexperienced ruckmen going against Jolly and Everitt that day and we handled ourselves quite well," Richmond assistant coach Brian Royal said yesterday.

"Certainly, Pattison has got to play at his best if he is to compete with two of the better ruckman in the competition.

"I thought our rucks last week got dominated against and allowed Carlton's midfield to dominate the clearances, so we can't allow that tomorrow."

Sydney is well aware of the opportunity that presents itself in the ruck at the MCG today.

"That's where we are going to be asking for some dominance from Jols (Jolly) and Spida (Everitt)," midfielder Jude Bolton said.

"With Simmonds out it sort of gives us that opportunity, but we are not taking Pattison and (Graham) Polak lightly.

"They are both good jumpers and they've got a good midfield around them."

The two sides met twice last season, with Sydney winning by 118 points in Round 7 and 48 points in Round 16.

Royal said he expected the Swans to again try to control the style of play.

"I think you will find Sydney won't allow us to play the way we want," Royal said. "They always try to make it a stoppage game, so we've got to be at our best in that area of the game.

"We've got to be physically better inside the packs. Sydney pride themselves on that part of the game.

"We've got to make sure we're prepared to go with them."

Royal also weighed in to the debate over the increased number of holding-the-ball decisions in Round 1.

Royal said AFL umpires' boss Jeff Gieschen's comments this week, which highlighted the trend of players holding on to the ball as a tactical ploy to avoid turnovers were "on the ball".

"Certainly, we don't like to knock it out and allow the opposition to run away, so we've got to be careful in the manner we go about it," he said.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,21516444%255E19742,00.html

[mightytiges]

I thought before the game this article would come back to bite us after what happened last year but we were able to match the Swans in close despite the dominance of Everitt in the ruck. In fact watching the game live I thought we won enough of the footy in close in the second half to win the game. Just lacked some footy smarts and forgot some basic rules of footy strategy in the last 15 minutes.

A couple of times today you could hear the loud slap of body on body from the top deck of the Northern Stand, we were hitting the Swannies that hard.

ps. message to Petts. You probably wouldn't have injured yourself if you didn't hesitate and instead went straight at the footy in the second quarter  .