Wallace: Skill errors cost us
21 April 2007 Herald-Sun
Bruce Matthews
RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace lamented his players' skill errors that he said cost them any chance of winning last night.
The wayward Tigers paid a high price for failing to convert chances when they had wrested the momentum in the third quarter.
"We had 20 scoring shots in the second half of the game. To kick 3.8 in the third quarter when you've got any chance of keeping the game alive, that was a disappointment," Wallace said after the Tigers' fourth consecutive loss and the largest in a dismal start to the season.
"They kicked eight straight in the last quarter and that's where they really hurt us.
"That was the difference, when they came forward they looked very damaging and with a little more poise and skill execution with the ball.
"I thought we just butchered a lot of opportunities to make ourselves closer on the scoreboard."
Richmond had clawed back a 39-point deficit to 15 before it gave up a couple of soft goals, allowing the Bulldogs to boot five of the next six in a critical eight minutes of the last quarter to regain control.
"Tonight's game we were playing catch-up all night. And when you're doing that, you've got to do everything right," Wallace said.
"And when you're kicking 3.8 in a quarter, you're not doing everything right. At some stage it's going to go back their way. And when it did they kicked eight straight. It's just all in the execution."
Wallace was satisfied with the workrate of his players, but said they must correct what he described as "massive" overuse of the ball in the second term.
"If you keep pushing the ball around like that, you're going to get hurt at some stage," he said.
"All you do is handpass to one guy and put him under pressure and handpass to the next and he's under the pump as well.
"You've got to be able to step out of those situations and use your feet."
Not surprisingly, Wallace remains upbeat, almost in denial, as the Tigers prepare to face West Coast at the MCG next Saturday.
"I think in this game you can't afford to ever hit panic stations. All you can do is front yourself up for the next challenge ahead of you," he said.
"I don't think panic stations help anyone within the whole nature of the club. We were beaten by a better side tonight.
"We understand that and we just have to keep working until we can turn that around.
"We thought we gave ourselves a chance and probably, for the second week in a row, we were beaten out of the middle of the ground when the game was alive and up for grabs.
"From the point of view of effort, work-levels, I didn't have a problem with our guys at all. I just thought we were beaten on execution.
"The opposition was far better in those areas. I think we had 60 more possessions, but 50 of those were handballs and a lot of those were unnecessary handballs in the middle of the ground."
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