Tigers on the move under Wallace
Analysis
By Rohan Connolly
The Age
December 15, 2004
From the wreckage of one wretched AFL season springs genuine hope for the next. That's no longer just the pipedream of the wishful fan; it's the reality.
Carlton proved it in 2004. It finished 2003 second-last on the ladder and an uncompetitive rabble. A purge the likes of which a senior list has seldom, if ever, had previously followed, with 16 players, close enough to half the senior playing contingent, either retired, traded or delisted.
Despite much scepticism about the influx of imports who replaced the fallen, the Blues emerged a different outfit altogether in performance as well as appearance, their 10 wins for the season more than double the paltry four eked out in 2003.
You can see the same signs beginning to emerge with Richmond for 2005. The Tigers, under new coach Terry Wallace, have wielded the axe more tellingly than any of their competitors, lopping a full dozen of their 2004 senior list.
Their replacements, rounded out in yesterday's pre-season draft with the addition of St Kilda ruckman Trent Knobel, collectively don't have nearly the same level of senior experience as did the Carlton imports, but there's enough there alongside the host of young talent acquired with five of the national draft's first 20 picks to make the Richmond we'll see run out next season a different team altogether.
And as with the Blues, the difference will come not only through what the newcomers have to offer, but the options they provide for those already in the mix.
Certainly, the loss of big man Brad Ottens doesn't look nearly so critical now. In trade pick-up Troy Simmonds and yesterday's acquisition Knobel, Richmond has two genuine senior ruckmen to partner Greg Stafford, giving the Tigers flexibility they haven't known for some time.
Unlike most ruckmen, both Simmonds and Stafford have shown they are also capable key-position forwards and goalkickers. Wallace obviously has sufficient confidence in them as such to explore the idea of Matthew Richardson as a roaming half-forward. The addition of the talls also will allow the coach to groom another key-position player in Jay Schulz as a centre half-back.
That, in turn, will let undersized and overworked backman Andrew Kellaway, and another defensive pick-up in Hawthorn's Mark Graham, to take the third or fourth opposition tall they should always be assigned. It's potentially the same for the much-maligned Tiger midfield.
Best-and-fairest winner Mark Coughlan is a virtual recruit for 2005, Kane Johnson is proven, and in two of the top four picks in the national draft, Brett Deledio and Richard Tambling, Richmond has potential stars likely to make an impact at senior level sooner rather than later.
Again, that releases others, such as veteran Wayne Campbell, forever the whipping boy for an inadequate engine room, and now being touted by the Tiger brainstrust as a potentially dangerous small forward. Ditto Nathan Brown, who spent much of 2004 being flung this, that and every way in a futile attempt to plug Richmond's many holes.
You'd have to count on a forward set-up featuring that pair, a free-roaming wildcard in Richardson, and either Simmonds, Stafford or both, to kick bigger scores than the measly 77 points a game the Tigers averaged in 2004, the second-lowest tally in the AFL.
It all amounts to a substantial makeover, certainly compared with the likes of Brisbane, which after three retirements, moved on by choice only one senior player in Aaron Shattock, or Port Adelaide, confident enough in its depth of talent to have let premiership midfield pair Josh Carr and Jarrad Schofield go for Brisbane's Shattock, Melbourne's Peter Walsh and yesterday's addition of a young local in Elijah Ware.
Richmond's rebuilding under Wallace, like Carlton's under Denis Pagan, will be ongoing. The Blues have turned over a fair number of players this post-season as well, two retirements and seven more delistings replaced by another host of new faces including West Australian pair Troy Longmuir and Callum Chambers, and a clutch of talented kids.
But Pagan made an important philosophical decision last summer, that the Blues could hardly pull up their socks when they didn't have any on. His influx of new faces at least gave Carlton back its self-respect, and that has made the rest of the task appear far less the Everest-like climb it appeared this time last year.
Wallace has five years to right the good ship Richmond, but already has been pro-active enough with his senior list to give the Tigers some chance of beginning that process meaningfully here and now. And that is a prospect of which even the most optimistic Tiger fan would not have dared dream just a few months ago after their team's 14th-straight defeat condemned it to the wooden spoon.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2004/12/14/1102787078470.html
