'Basketball' return bout set to intrigue
Rohan Connolly | May 18, 2007 | The Age
IT'S A year ago this weekend that Richmond bounced back from a 118-point thrashing and revived a faltering season with an upset over Adelaide. But far from being a win for the ages, this was one seen more as an infamous victory.
Kevin Sheedy called the Tigers' three-point win "basketball crap". Richmond coach Terry Wallace recalls being compared to Bodyline anti-hero Douglas Jardine. And if you listened to the more hysterical of the hundreds of calls flooding talkback radio, it was the day football might have died.
The subject of the angst was the possession game Richmond took to extreme levels in an attempt to thwart Adelaide's run and skill, the Tigers basically playing keepings-off against a Crows outfit that refused to be drawn in by manning up the score of loose opponents stationed behind the ball.
It was as close to a stalemate as football gets, Richmond, once it established an early lead, continually chipping the ball around its back line, the ring-a-rosy of short passes backwards and sideways taking huge chunks off the timeclock as the football world looked on, both appalled and strangely fascinated. At one stage, Richmond took 20 disposals, and several minutes, to move the ball from deep in its defence to just past the centre.
The post-game figures were bizarre. Richmond finished with a record 181 marks, just 13 contested. For Adelaide, it was five out of 102 — just 18 marks out of the 283 taken by both teams coming under any sort of pressure. The Tigers, who had been averaging 80 short kicks a game, ended up with 159.
At times, it was soporific. But that would hardly have worried Wallace, who delivered one of 2006's most unlikely victories. And given the dark places the Tigers have already visited this season, and a highly rated opponent, it poses an obvious question — could we be in for a repeat at AAMI Stadium tonight?
No chance, Wallace insisted this week. "We've got a different team in now, a team of young boys," he said.
"There was a lot more experience in that side to be able to put that sort of game together. The other factor is, we're about a learning environment, and you're trying to teach them how you want them to play every week, not just on a one-week basis."
Maybe not. But after being caught out a little last year, Adelaide isn't leaving anything to chance this time. "That could occur again, I don't know," Crows coach Neil Craig said of Richmond's "uber-flood" yesterday. "What I do know is that we are better off having seen that and had that put against us.
"I think it will depend on the score. They employed a really good tactic last year and the score was in their favour, so you can do that. If you are four goals behind and you do that, you need to come up the ground to score, so it depends on the state of the game."
Craig said Adelaide had noticed Richmond working on some flooding drills at training this week, "but not a lot different to most clubs we have a look at". But Crows assistant Paul Hamilton recalled the Tigers didn't go overboard in preparation for their "basketball" game last year, either.
"We watched their training and they didn't do a massive amount of practice on it," he said. "They did a little bit, but I think (the tactic) just grew and grew as the game went on." Hamilton certainly remembers the discussion it sparked in the Adelaide coach's box on game day.
"There was a little bit of debate, but I suppose we remained reasonably patient," he said. "Craigy's certainly acknowledged we should have gone to a man-on-man scenario a little bit earlier. We allowed them to have that extra player, and eventually in the third quarter we manned it up, but in the end it was probably a little bit late."
What Craig and Hamilton both agree was overlooked in the hysteria that followed Richmond's shock win was that the Tigers had smashed Adelaide for both clearances and contested possession. Had the Crows won more of the 50-50s, their opponent wouldn't have been able to dictate so much of the play.
Neither team could dictate the immediate aftermath of the game, and the torrent of negative publicity it generated, views on the consequences for football as a spectacle sought from virtually every coach and leading commentator.
But the fear that the Tigers' gambit and Adelaide's response to it would be repeated on a weekly basis were to be proven unfounded. Keepings-off might sneak you an unexpected win, but both Wallace and the Crows agree it's never going to sneak you a premiership.
"In the end the charter of every coach is to establish a game plan that will win finals football, and I don't think that will," says Hamilton. "I think that's the main reason you haven't seen a lot of it since then. You might have seen it in tiny little patches for 10 minutes here and there, but certainly not to that extent."
Wallace says for Richmond, the impact of that Saturday afternoon has been only "to show everyone that seven days is a long time in footy, and that what happens one week doesn't necessarily have any impact on what happens the next".
That might offer some sort of hope to Tiger fans desperate just for a win, whether it's one played like a game of basketball or not. Neutral fans hoping to see some decent football tonight, however, will be hoping one infamous victory definitely doesn't have any impact on the next clash between the same clubs.
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