Finals pressure too much for Richmond: Robbo (Herald-Sun)

[one-eyed]

The Tackle: Finals pressure too much for Richmond, writes Mark Robinson

Herald-Sun
September 14, 2015

THE evidence is conclusive: The Tigers don’t handle the heat of September.

Choking is not about not kicking goals — the Tigers kicked 14.4 — it’s about standing up in big games. It’s being cool under finals pressure.

It’s about making the right decisions and, perhaps most of all, it’s coming with an attitude comparable to the high stakes.

The Tigers failed miserably in that regard on Sunday.

Forget all numbers except this one. The Kangaroos won the contested ball 148-115.

In another era, the Tigers would be labelled soft and that is an indictment on a team that waited 12 months to seek retribution and respect.

They talked tough, but couldn’t carry it out in front of 90,000 fans at the MCG.

That’s three consecutive elimination final losses and ­despite this one not being their most fragile defeat, it is clear the team that coach Damien Hardwick has been building for five years needs further renovation and imagination.

He will have a tough review.

Good players throughout the year made too many mistakes, such as Nick Vlastuin, Troy Chaplin and Jake Batchelor in defence.

Bachar Houli’s ball use was at 53 per cent, Shaun Grigg was 59 per cent and Kamdyn McIntosh was 53 per cent, while at the death Ty Vickery missed a shot at goal from 30m, when teammates were free, and the demand for a goal was absolute.

Worse, great players went missing.

The captain Trent Cotchin was completely shut down by Ben Jacobs, who is surely the most underrated run-with player in the competition. He has to live with that, Cotchin.

That’s two poor finals in a row for him and on Sunday he simply didn’t want to get to enough contests.

Questions need to be asked of Shane Edwards, Brandon Ellis and Brett Deledio.

With Cotchin, they were the four Tigers’ go-to men who did not have impact.

The coach, too, will ask himself questions.

Hardwick did not pull the trigger on Batchelor who was munched by Jarrad Waite, the same Jarrad Waite who kicked goals against the Tigers in the 2013 elimination final.

Waite should be proud of himself and coach Brad Scott proud of his decision to force the acquisition.

Should Hardwick have sent Alex Rance to Waite?

Probably yes, but that would’ve meant Batchelor heading to Drew Petrie. His other major match-up was Taylor Hunt on Brent Harvey.

Seriously, what Boomer can do at his age (37) is beyond legendary. He had 31 disposals, team-high 14 contested possessions, seven clearances and two goals, including a momentum builder at the start of the final quarter.

Hunt wanted to manhandle him last week, but Boomer played him on the break in the more important game.

Harvey, Petrie and skipper Andrew Swallow were ­supreme leaders.

Petrie, who conceded last week that Rance made a fool of him, kicked two huge goals in the third quarter, which ­ultimately was the quarter that won the Roos the game.

The Kangas kicked 5.5 to 3.0 and throughout that 30-minute period, the Tigers were under immense pressure.

Credit to North for not making it an easy exit from the back 50m, but the Tigers adopted the bailout kick, which didn’t help anyone except the North players who had set up the wall across half-back and wing. Repeat entries had the Tigers under siege.

In fact, the Tigers were probably lucky to be in the game for so long.

They had 283 possessions, which was their lowest tally of the season. They had just 51 tackles despite North having the ball almost 50 more times.

North Melbourne’s move to rest players has a tick beside it.

Swallow was hungry and aggressive with 22 disposals, nine tackles and seven clearances and played the type of ­captain’s game required in a cut-throat final.

Anthony Miles was one-out in the midfield. He had nine clearances for the Tigers and Deledio was next with four.

So, on to the next week. It’s Sydney in Sydney for the ­Kangas and they are in better position than they were last time they met in September. That resulted in a preliminary final shellacking.

The Roos’ fresh legs might prove even more important next week against a team that played war with the Dockers and who are banged up and who had to fly home.

As for the Tigers, it is yet another September dis­appointment.

The monkey on the back that the Tigers said they did not concern themselves about has morphed in to a gorilla and it’s plonked there for at least another 12 months.

http://www.news.com.au/national/the-tackle-finals-pressure-too-much-for-richmond-writes-mark-robinson/story-e6frfkp9-1227525377751

[Go Richo 12]

I wonder if that monkey that has morphed into a gorilla looks like Robbo?

[WA Tiger]

This article is spot on. Also names the culprits who most of us recognise but the rose coulered glass gang can't see it....

[WilliamPowell]

Hard to argue with anything in that article

Pains me to say it, spot on summation

Ironically, most on here said the same thing but when a journo says it the journo's a moron

Go figure 

[YellowandBlackBlood]

m

Hard to argue with anything in that article

Pains me to say it, spot on summation

Ironically, most on here said the same thing but when a journo says it the journo's a moron

Go figure 

Robbo probably reads OER WP!

[Go Richo 12]

Robbo is spot on but it doesn't take a learned journo to write what he did.