Keeping faithBy Leigh Matthews
Wed 06 Apr, 2011THERE'S a key question which every football club has to constantly answer both realistically and accurately - exactly where are we right now?
The answer determines where a team positions itself, both short- and long-term, in that fine balance between the extreme opposites of perseverance and change.
Last Friday night's St Kilda-Richmond game was a good example of the contrasting scenarios that different clubs confront.
It brought together a Saints team that has been beaten grand finalists the last two seasons and is still, at least prior to the Lenny Hayes injury, still a premiership threat, and a Tigers line-up that has been entrenched in the bottom group and is trying to fight its way up.
Only eternal Richmond optimists would have thought their team could lose Jack Riewoldt before he'd touched the footy and still salvage a draw with the heavily fancied Saints.
Yet they did exactly that as coach Damien Hardwick, having set his team on a new path, persevered unequivocally in an investment in the future, rather than falling for the temptation of chop and change.
The match-up that defined that attitude, whether by design or accident, was that between Richmond second-gamer Reece Conca and St Kilda veteran Stephen Milne.
Given that Milne is clearly the most dangerous small forward in the St Kilda side, and that Richmond captain Chris Newman was among Hardwick's defensive options, it was a match-up that intrigued me all night.
From early on it was clear that Milne was too good for his younger opponent in the one-on-one contest. And when Milney believes he has an opponent he can out-body he is at his most confident and most dangerous.
If it had been a grand final I am positive Conca would have been moved off Milne by mid-way through the first quarter.
But Richmond, understanding exactly where they are, chose not to treat it that way.
Instead, they balanced the immediate needs of the team against the impact of moving Conca off Milne too early, thereby sending a 'we have no faith in you' message, and how long was too long for Conca to play on Milne, perhaps affecting his ongoing confidence.
Without knowing the individual circumstances, I was thinking half time was a reasonable time for the switch considering the conflicting objectives. As it turned out the match-up remained until late in the game.
Fortunately for the Tigers, Milne kicked inaccurately. Had he kicked 7-4 instead of his 4-7 he would have been a clear match-winner.
Regardless, the point remains that Hardwick and his coaching staff chose perseverance over change because as a team and a club it is what they must do. There's been enough chopping and changing at Tigerland in recent years.
Conversely, St Kilda has genuine premiership aspirations - that was where it was leading into round two.
It's why in the off-season the Saints recruited the likes of Ryan Gamble and Dean Polo in preference to teenage draftees, just as Hawthorn have added Josh Gibson, Shaun Burgoyne, David Hale and Cameron Bruce over the past two years.
They believe their time is now. Or at least it could be.
The knock on St Kilda over the last couple of years has been that their last three or four players have not been as good as their counterparts at Geelong and Collingwood.
That's a fact, but I doubt whether the alternatives were any better. The Saints obviously thought not and criticising their selection policies is merely another unproven theory.
Irrespective, when you are competing for premierships, as much as there is still a necessary urge to improve, there is not as much logic in radically changing a winning formula.
On Friday night, in another interesting 'perseverance versus change' example, we found Brett Deledio picking up Brendon Goddard - one of Richmond's chief attacking weapons opposed to one of St Kilda's chief attacking weapons.
There was no future strategy in this match-up - it was totally about winning this game.
As the match progressed, not only was Deledio stopping the drive of Goddard but he was getting plenty of the footy himself, and was the best player on the field.
The question for Ross Lyon, even before he'd lost Lenny Hayes to injury, was a difficult one -where should he station the pairing?
Finally, and I thought belatedly, recognising the key attacking role that Deledio was playing, the Saints sent Goddard deep into the St Kilda forward line to make his opponent play out of his comfort zone as a medium-sized full-back.
It was a concession that what they were doing was not working, and that to win on Friday night they had to change the status quo.
At the opposite end of the ladder, reality for the Gold Coast Suns and the Brisbane Lions is that after thumping losses last weekend the immediate future looks very bleak.
The Suns, the new kids on the block, with half a team of teenagers, were always going to do it tough initially. Likewise the Lions, minus the injured Jonathan Brown and coming off 12 months of more change than many clubs have in a decade, need to stabilise.
When they ask themselves that critical question this week - exactly where are we right now? - both clubs will come up with the answer that wholesale change is not the best way forward. Perseverance is.
http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/110920/default.aspx
