The Tackle: After a poor start, Richmond has its finals destiny in its own handsMark Robinson
Herald-Sun
August 25, 2014 HOW motivating can it be to have your destiny in your own hands.
We’ll find out next Saturday at 4.40pm, when Richmond plays Sydney at ANZ Stadium.
If the Tigers win, they play finals. If they lose, they’ll fret over a poor first half of the season and, less seriously, probably be the butt of Ninth-mond jokes.
Or this year, 10th might be the new ninth.
What a delightful final round. This season has been as eventful as the 150-odd seasons which preceded it, but few of them will have produced the final-round drama which is expected.
There is certainty and uncertainty.
The Swans will finish top.
Hawthorn and Geelong will finish either second or third.
Fremantle and Port Adelaide play at 3.10 next Saturday to decide who finishes fourth and fifth.
North Melbourne is locked in at sixth and Essendon, if they beat a dispirited Carlton, will finish seventh.
That leaves eighth spot.
Traditionally, eighth spot is cannon fodder in the first week of the finals, but that ain’t the point.
Richmond, Collingwood, Adelaide and West Coast will throw the kitchen sink at everything to fill the final position.
Even Gold Coast is a zephyr of a chance. They need teams to lose and they have to beat West Coast by a margin somewhere approaching 160 points.
It’s crazy isn’t it, that seasons for up to five clubs will be determined a success or failure depending on what happens next weekend.
Don’t matter that it is only eighth spot, and the opponent will be either Port at Adelaide Oval or Fremantle at Subiaco, which is like asking how do you want to die, eaten by a shark or eaten by a crocodile, the fact a team plays finals is good for their soul and bloody great for their fans.
The Tigers continued their fairytale finish to the season with a win over St Kilda at the MCG.
They kicked the first three goals inside four minutes and the game was over. Well, there were a few mid-game jitters, but that’s Richmond.
Much has been said about how Sydney will approach Round 23, whether they’ll rest players or not, but what Sydney does cannot be relevant to how Richmond plays the game.
They are playing slick, aggressive footy and better still, they know they can beat Sydney.
In what is pure Richmond fragility, they have trouble beating teams like Melbourne, Gold Coast and Carlton, but in recent seasons have beaten the two best teams in Sydney and Hawthorn.
In Round 14, the Tigers lost by 11 points to the Swans at the MCG.
It was a stinker of a match if you were to judge it by entertainment. The Swans crowded the contest to avoid a run and gun shoot out after an arduous match against Port Adelaide the week before, and the Tigers couldn’t get any substantial run going.
The positive was they matched Sydney’s grunt, only to have Lance Franklin tip the game in Sydney’s favour.
The fact is the Tigers and Swans have won three matches each of their past six outings, and curiously none of them were played at ANZ Stadium.
Two of Richmond’s wins were by more than five goals, and the other was four-point thriller at the MCG.
The Tigers are a better equipped team than what they produced in Round 14.
Matt Dea, Shaun Hampson, Aaron Edwards and Matt Thomas played in that game and didn’t play on Sunday. They have been replaced by Chris Newman, a re-engineered Shaun Grigg as a run-with player, and a couple of kids in Gordon and Lennon.
Ivan Maric, Bachar Houli, Alex Rance, Troy Chaplin, Anthony Miles, Ricky Petterd and Brandon Ellis are in career-best form, or close to it.
The personnel might be neither here or there, but clearly the Tigers are solid in all facets of the game, from contested ball, to ball movement from the back half, to shared goalkicking and to winning on the road.
They need all of that and more to beat Sydney this weekend.
Of course, the motivation couldn’t be any higher, but at the same time motivation doesn’t win you matches
Over to you, Tigers.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/breaking-news/the-tackle-after-a-poor-start-richmond-has-its-finals-destiny-in-its-own-hands/story-fnect155-1227035134148
