‘My god’: Silver lining amid Tigers ‘refresh’ as club looks to avoid 14-year AFL firstDavid Zita
Fox Sports
February 3rd, 2024 It’s a markedly different feel for Richmond ahead of the 2024 season than it was in 2023.
Rewind 12 months and there was no shortage of hype, with Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper marquee recruits and the Tigers expected to at least push for one final flag bid.
Four rounds in, the Tigers had won one match and spearhead Tom Lynch was ruled out with a foot injury that would ultimately end his season.
Unbeknownst to most of the football world, coach Damien Hardwick had decided 2023 would be his last year at the club and 10 rounds in pulled the plug on his 14-year tenure.
With three wins from 10 games at that point, hopes of a finals berth had been dashed and the prospect of one final premiership push with the current group along with it.
Rather than debating whether the club can make the top eight this season, most of the discourse now centres around whether it can avoid a bottom-four finish.
Failing to do so would result in Richmond’s first bottom-four finish since 2010 and a brutal reminder of how quick the footy world moves.
THE QUICK DROPAdem Yze, who has been a senior coach in waiting for some time, will not be daunted by the challenge ahead, which is a good approach to have given the scale of it.
The drop offs in 2023 compared to 2022 were significant.
Lynch may be closer to the end of his career than the start, but his loss proved a hammer blow to a Richmond front half that needs to show more in 2024.
The percentage of chains to scores went from second in the competition in 2022 to 12th in 2023, while points scored dropped from first to 11th.
While Richmond’s premiership dynasty was built on a brutality on turnover, the club’s ability to punish opposition sides dropped dramatically in 2023.
Even in a 2022 campaign that saw them lose in the opening week of the finals, the Tigers ranked first in the competition for points from turnover and first for points from forward half intercepts.
Fast forward a year, that had dropped to 12th and 10th in the competition respectively.
It suggests a paradigm shift is needed in how this new iteration of the Tigers plays.
NEW COACH’S GAMEPLAN... AND THE EARLY DOUBT OVER ITIf there’s someone up for the challenge, however, it’s Yze and a star-studded assistant coaching group.
David Teague and Ben Rutten are both respected assistants, while there are huge wraps on what Chris Newman can do and Jack Ziebell is still largely untapped so soon after his playing career.
Yze has already flagged a different look, noting at a member function late last year: “We’re tinkering with our game plan, we’re going to play a bit different to how we have the last couple of years.”
Fox Footy analyst David King noted the Tigers looked to be placing a greater emphasis on kicking than handball, in a potential hint at what Yze may have planned for his charges in 2024.
“I think Richmond’s ball movement model will be a lot safer than what it’s ever been under Damien Hardwick,” King said on SEN Breakfast on Friday, while stressing he had only seen a small sample.
“Kicking more, less risk, wider, that’s how it looks to me ... it just looks to me like they’re going to try and kick the ball a bit more and a bit longer. I’m just not sure they’re as skilled as some other teams in that facet.”
TIGERS STILL HAVE ‘OUT AND OUT BEAUTIES’The good news is Lynch is back running as he eyes an AFL return, which is desperately needed with the retirement of Jack Riewoldt following a 2023 campaign in which he got more than he bargained for in the forward half.
In more good news, Dustin Martin enters the final year of his current contract with Richmond in resurgent form as he closes in on his 300th AFL game, Shai Bolton can still improve on his prodigious talent and Jack Graham finally looks injury-free.
Martin makes up a top end of the Tigers that is still brimming with talent, with the signs from the three-time Norm Smith medallist ominous ahead of the 2024 season.
“Nothing’s changed with the top four or five, they’re out and out beauties. Dustin Martin, my god,” King said on SEN.
“For a man who’s generally not interested in this time of year, he just put 15 minutes together, you just went ‘he’s right’. I think Adem Yze would’ve said ‘get him off now, get him out of all traffic please’.”
At the other end of the ground, Josh Gibcus got through an intra-club this week after an overseas trip to try and rid himself of the hamstring woes that have plagued his career so far.
More consistency from the likes of Noah Balta is needed, while veterans such as Dylan Grimes have more in them than they showed in 2023.
In the middle, despite the conjecture over the length of their deals, Taranto starred and won the club’s best and fairest, while King saw enough this week to suggest Hopper’s sophomore season at the Tigers will be far bigger than his first.
‘COMPLETE REFRESH’ LOOMS FOR TIGERSA difference this year is that the Tigers are playing for more than just premiership success.
“I’m not sure they get to 10-and-a-half (wins), but they’re resetting as a footy club, I don’t think winning 13 games is on their priority sheet this season,” King said.
“It’s a complete refresh for me. It’s good to see some of their younger kids taking control.”
In any case, it seems fans are in for something a little different to the Tigers of old this season.
“It’s good to see the Tigers, good to see Adem Yze doing something different,” King said.
“They’re probably a club that needs regenerating, a fresh voice. Whether that be on or off field, they just maybe needed this.”
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