Finals a realistic target for Tigers
09 May 2005
Herald Sun
Michael Horan
RICHMOND is armed, prepared and now well equipped to challenge for a finals berth this season.
The Tigers took another giant step forward at the MCG on Saturday when they beat Carlton by 85 points, their greatest winning margin against their arch enemy for more than a century.
Richmond has won five of its seven games – it finished last in 2004 with just four wins – and the Terry Wallace brand is already kicking in with dramatic effect.
New discipline, new personnel, the return to health of 2003 best-and-fairest winner Mark Coughlan and an awareness of their own potential has the Tigers primed to climb out of the AFL cellar after three dismal seasons.
The Tigers kicked the first 12 goals of the game on Saturday in a stunning repeat of their dominance in smashing Port Adelaide at Telstra Dome the previous week.
"It was off the back of where we finished last week, really. At one stage last week we were able to reel off 13 goals in a row. I hadn't seen that before in a side that I've coached," Wallace said.
"We did that again against Carlton. It's really pleasing that some of the stuff we've been working on – that we've been, I suppose, promising our supporters that we have an improved style of play – is starting to work for us.
"I think the guys are now believing it as it's going along as well, and they're getting reward for the effort that's been put in.
"We're really pleased with our lot at the moment. I think from where we've been to where we've come to, we've made up an enormous amount of ground."
Coughlan, who missed 15 games last season with osteitis pubis, ran the Blues ragged to gather 38 possessions and was back to full fitness and form.
"Our strength and conditioning boys deserve all the credit for how they've worked with him. I was getting a little impatient with him because he spent quite a bit of time off the track, but it has all come to fruition," Wallace said.
The Tiger coach described Coughlan as a "workaholic", but strict management kept him off the training track until after Christmas. Cross training for the three months he was off ensured he was as fit as any player on the list.
"He was as fit as our fittest player, but just hadn't done it in footy terms. He's a real worker and he's a huge bonus now back at full fitness," Wallace said.
Factor in former Fremantle tall Troy Simmonds, ex-Saint Trent Knoble, exciting draftees Brett Deledio and Richard Tambling, and the Tigers have plenty of exciting, new equipment with which to exorcise old demons.
Add the Wallace way and it all starts to work.
Two minutes before three-quarter time on Saturday, the Tigers were 92 points up and the side's superstar of the last decade, Matthew Richardson, was dragged for letting his opponent run off him.
"You talk about rebound footy, well he just didn't do what he was meant to do within our team rules. He allowed his opponent to run to the other side of the ground, so I just let him know and then he was straight back on," Wallace said.
"You've got to have everyone playing by the rules, that's what they're put in place for.
"It only takes one bloke to break it down and your disciplines go out the door.
"So it doesn't matter if it's Matthew, or Richard Tambling playing his second game."
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