Catch-up Tigers ready for finals fling
08 April 2007 Sunday Herald Sun
David Reed
COACH Terry Wallace says 2011, but Richmond president Gary March has put the acid on the young Tigers by saying they should be a top eight side this season or next -- and be a genuine contender in 2009.
"What Terry was trying to get across was that when he came to the club -- it's pretty well documented -- we made some mistakes with our recruiting," March said.
"What he was saying is that by 2011 we should have the perfect list in terms of the cross sections of our age group. But before that we do have an opportunity. We certainly expect to be playing finals football, if not this year definitely next year and be a challenging side in 2009.
"What Terry was trying to get across was that, given our mistakes we had made in recruiting in the previous years, then 2010 and 2011 was when our list would have the right spread of age brackets.
"If you look at the Sydney's and West Coast's, they've had that spread and we are nowhere near that."
March said the club's football department had to take some responsibility for poor recruiting about 2000-'01 that set the club back.
"We finished third in 2001 under Danny (Frawley) and thought we were a little bit closer than we were," he said.
"We gave away some draft picks we shouldn't have done, which set us back. The rest is history and we've had to play catch up."
March said he had sorted out his differences with Western Bulldogs president David Smorgon after their spat over Nathan Brown.
Smorgon accused Brown of leaving Whitten Oval for money and not pulling his weight around the club when he was there; March went on the attack.
The presidents have since spoken by phone.
"David felt that, in the fullness of time, that he probably overstepped the boundaries about what he said personally about Nathan," march said.
"That was the bit that we got a bit angry about -- that it was such a personal attack on one of our players.
"One thing he attacked Nathan about -- community work -- he does a huge amount of work for us in the community and I felt it was a bit uncalled for."
March said former Docker Graham Polak would be outstanding.
"I think Polak is going to be a great player for us next year," he said.
"Unfortunately, he had to play in the ruck last week, but he'll be outstanding at either centre half-back or forward for us.
"I think we've got some pretty decent talent there."
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