Richmond captain Chris Newman and players take charge of training Bruce Matthews
From: Herald Sun
August 10, 2012 1:14PMRICHMOND captain Chris Newman and his leadership group have become more involved in training drills and directions for the rest of the season.
Coach Damien Hardwick said it was part of a strategy to maintain the players' weekly focus, particularly with the disruption of being forced to find alternate training venues thanks to the Punt Rd oval redevelopment.
"There are things that we (the coaching group) do to try to keep the group up as much as possible.
"It is cold and miserable this time of year, but we try to take the emotion out of most things we do at this stage of the year and just keep driving the performance on a win-to-win basis,'' he said.
"Chris and his group have taken a lot of the on-field training for the remainder of the year.
"Mathematically, we're still a small chance (to make the finals).
"Credit to the guys, it is easy to drop away when you realise some hope has been extinguished. But Chris and the leadership group took it upon themselves to drive it last week and we got a pleasing performance.
"It's always hard to travel away to Brisbane, you're four goals down before you even start with the home-ground advantage, so it was a great result.
"He (Newman) has been heavily tagged the last month and his numbers have come down. But his on-field leadership has been outstanding and something that you can't measure from a statistical point of view. He's just getting the job done for us.
"You would obviously love to have the ground outside (at Punt Rd) ready to go, but it's part of a long-term plan.
"Every now and then it is good to have a change of environment. We've been training at Vic Park, we've got the Junction Oval tomorrow, so it certainly adds to keeping things fresh and vibrant.
"We want to finish up with a positive win-loss record. If we can end up 12-10, that would be an outstanding result. If it gets us into the finals, that's probably yet to be seen.''
Hardwick agreed that the Tigers' recent poor record against the Western Bulldogs - Richmond's last victory against the Dogs was in 2004 - was one of those incentives for Sunday's game at the MCG.
"I didn't realise it was so long ago. The thing about the Dogs is their first halves are very, very good and their fall away a bit has been well documented.
"But they're a side that hunt the contested ball well, so we've got to be well and truly on our guard and play the game on our terms,'' he said.
"It's certainly an advantage when guys like (Daniel) Cross are out. They're outstanding players, but we just have to worry about how we play the game.''
While the Tigers are monitoring forward Jake King's knee ailment on a weekly basis, others will "play on merit'', with no plans to simply blooding young players with a view to next season.
"We've been through that period of our development. Our first two years were very much about that, the transformation of our list.
"But now it's about earning your jumper. So the guys we've got in there are relatively young anyway, they still need the experience and we've got to get up to that finals bracket of game-day experience that we're still trying to get into our players,'' Hardwick said.
"Some clubs will change up their line-ups with a few things and the players they bring in. But with us, it's all about winning.''
And Hardwick said the Tigers were behind the AFL's tough stance on vilification in light of the Stephen Milne-Harry O'Brien episode.
"It's the players workplace these days and there are standards that we set. Ten years ago was a hell of a long time ago and things have changed enormously on and off field. And it's important that players adhere to those standards and we're very much a part of it,'' he said.
"It's in the rules and umpires rightfully referred that. That's how it is, we now know the rules.''
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/afl/more-news/richmond-captain-chris-newman-and-players-take-charge-of-training/story-e6frf9jf-1226447559456
