Nathan Brown's injury will hit Tigers
29 May 2005
Sunday Herald Sun
Comment by Jon Ralph
THERE are injuries that significantly affect team structures and then there injuries that threaten to derail entire seasons.
Such are the talismanic qualities of Tiger Nathan Brown that the latter option is not out of the question for Richmond.
Coach Terry Wallace must have known the charmed run could not continue forever, but no one could have predicted such a cruel blow.
His challenge is to convince his players Brown's loss is a momentary inconvenience, not the start of a slide down the slippery slope – no small task.
Brown is a winner – he said it himself in the Herald Sun on Friday – and if he isn't winning games off his own boot he is infecting teammates with the confidence to do it themselves.
Anyone who disagrees wasn't in the Richmond rooms on Friday night, when a eerie silence engulfed all associated with the Tigers, right from the president down to the boot studder.
The lifeblood and confidence that course through a football club are fickle commodities.
Season-ending knee reconstructions are among the inevitables of football, but such a freakish, ghoulish injury knocked the stuffing out of a game that had the crowd in raptures for most of the first half.
Even Channel 9, with its array of swooping cameras and slow motion replays, showed suitable restraint in its coverage and avoided lingering too long as Brown's ankle hung at a 30 degree angle to his leg.
If it is easy to talk crisis within 48 hours of Brown's loss, Wallace was able to find perspective within minutes of the injury.
Already he was preaching to his side to respond just as the Bulldogs had in the weeks following the loss of captain Luke Darcy to an ACL reconstruction in Round 6.
Wallace drafted Trent Knobel and Troy Simmonds for this type of situation – last year, Brown's loss would have meant game over for the Tigers.
They have already shown this year they are made of sterner stuff.
Even the lowest of Tiger supporters couldn't have failed to miss Brett Deledio's soaring mark and goal from three-deep at the 23-minute mark of the last term.
From crisis comes opportunity.
Richmond is no trick pony any more, and in an even season may need only four more wins and a healthy percentage to make the eight.
At Round 1, every game looked a danger game, but the draw continues to unfold nicely.
After West Coast at the MCG this week, five Melbourne matches – against the Kangaroos, Adelaide, Sydney, Essendon and St Kilda – loom as possible wins.
Still, Richmond's golden boy is no more this year, and his teammates know it.
After the match, improving small forward Kayne Pettifer spoke of Brown's freakish talents, the invaluable advice he imparted on a weekly basis and the two games he had already won for the Tigers this year.
The first major road hurdle for this year has been placed in front of the Tigers, and how they overcome it will eventually define their season.
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