Richo feels pain of false glory
May 27, 2007
The Age
MATTHEW Richardson stood on the boundary line near the Richmond bench last night, waiting to get back on the ground for the last few minutes of the first quarter.
As he stood there, jiggling his legs, rubbing his hands together, and getting warmed up, the player he was to replace came sprinting towards the bench. It's a wonder Richo didn't duck: the teammate was Andrew Krakouer.
Perhaps the pair was not quite ready to be in the same place at the same time again.
Both Krakouer and Richardson were interesting figures in last night's match, before it had even begun. Krakouer for more reasons than the boot that made accidental contact with Richardson's head last week, causing a lot of blood, a fractured eye socket and not one nose break, but two of them.
He was playing his 100th match last night, in a career on which there are two takes. Some may say Krakouer has not become what he has hinted he could, and yet others would look at his challenging upbringing, and point out how well he has done to come, and to stay.
Half an hour before the game, David King did a radio interview and spoke about the mood in the winless Tigers' rooms. Then he paused at the end to make special mention of Krakouer. "He'll be the difference tonight," promised the assistant coach.
He was right, for a while. Krakouer didn't have an enormous night, as it turned out, but he did things at important times. His first goal was his 100th career goal, and helped the Tigers turn a three-goal gap into a two-goal gap, midway through the first term.
His second came in the second term, and was a slow-motion, thought-out moment in a match rushing quickly from end to end and becoming a game about who could miss the most shots.
As his opponent, Richard Cole, charged at a bouncing ball, Krakouer sat back and let it drop into his hands. He turned to face the goal and then tucked the ball to his stomach as Cole stormed past him for a second time, clearing enough time and space to score.
Krakouer was not the reason Richmond got so close. The Tigers almost broke their duck because Brett Deledio bounced and bounced his way down the ground.
It was his most decisive game in a long time.
They got close because Graham Polak and Andrew Raines were steady in defence, because they kicked (a bit) better than the Bombers and because Daniel Jackson used three of his five kicks to score goals.
But someone else helped out, too. Richardson was at first expected to miss many weeks with his facial fractures, blackened eye and swollen nose. Then, he was supposed to sit out at least three.
Only the fact that his eye socket was not displaced spared him surgery, and when he turned up at Terry Wallace's office last Monday to say he still wanted to keep playing, the coach thought he looked like he should be in a Rocky movie.
Richardson was brave to play last night, but didn't play like he was doing much out of the ordinary. He took marks on the lead and he backed into packs. He kicked more goals than points (just), which suggested he was seeing straight through the bruising.
His very presence was enough to unsettle the Essendon defence, with both Mal Michael and Dustin Fletcher switching between him, and both players sent off to the forward line for brief periods. He allowed for the likes of Jackson to slip under guards, and get goals.
But funny things happen in football games. If Krakouer's quick thinking outdid Cole early, Cole's ferocious attacks on a couple of balls late in the last quarter were what gave Essendon what seemed an entirely unrealistic shot at victory. The late tone was more important than the early tone, as it turned out, and Cole was a player who set it.
Then there was Richo. So much had gone right, which meant if something did go wrong, it was going to be very obvious. Richardson kicked his fourth goal 18 minutes into the final quarter, and it put the Tigers 18 points up. It seemed enough; it should have been enough.
The Bombers kicked three quick goals after that, and then Richo made what might have been the ultimate difference. He turned and kicked his fifth goal into an open goal, deep into time on, but didn't notice that the umpire had already penalised him for placing his hands in Michael's back.
Essendon didn't make the most of that 50-metre penalty, but the ball did not leave the Bombers' forward line for the remainder of the night. It was fitting that, on another inaccurate night, two missed snaps secured their fifth win for the season. The real differences were difficult to pick in this match.
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