Wallace said he was "comfortable" with March's assessment.
"If we do not show improvement, people should start to ask questions," Wallace said.
But Wallace believes the Tigers are better placed now than at the corresponding time last season. In 2007, Richmond did not win a game until round 12 against Melbourne.
"What we've done differently this season was to have our core group of 24 players together for the final four weeks of practice matches," Wallace said.
"Most of our better players have played in all the lead-up games and no-one will be underdone for the first round."
To pin the hopes of our season on the availability of players is clutching at straws. It will improve the team, but the priority for me is not about winning games, because I think we’ll win more games this season than last, which wouldn’t be hard, but we’ve won games in the past, and what have we got to show for it?
To me it’s all about improvement, from an individual, and team perspective, that determines if anything has changed for the better. Sure, winning beats losing, but it doesn’t necessarily prove anything, especially if our style of play continues to deviate under pressure, and the circumstances under which games are won don’t point or lead to sustained improvement.
TW has been at the club for 4 pre seasons and 3 full seasons, and people are still asking us to be patient. When and at what point can we expect to see something from our players that gives us reason to be patient?
RFC has had almost three decades to learn from its mistakes and TW has been coaching for at least a decade. Yet, still we need to be patient. Apparently, then, the lot of a Richmond supporter is to be eternally patient, and just accept that a combined total of about 40 years isn’t anywhere near enough in which to learn from one’s mistakes and develop an understanding of how to build a competitive team?
Exactly how long are we supposed to give people until they get their eye in properly? You never ever stop learning, in any field, but in the meantime, some players get one chance at an AFL career. They get delisted, traded or retired early, on the back of the coach’s/club’s ability to get something half decent out of them.
Judging by some of their comments, RFC’s solution to achieving success seems to be to demand that the players grow up, and hurry up about it. If only they’d thought of that earlier?
When TW was appointed for 5 years, RFC needed to know his, and his assistants’, strengths and weaknesses and support them in the areas needed, because, from a perception point of view, in order for TW to be a successful coach, he seems to need a team of mature aged, experienced, self-motivated and confident players that he can simply instruct to stick to his game plan.
For a club to appoint him to a role that requires a teaching coach puts the onus back on RFC, because, from the outset, they failed to cover any areas of weakness and recognise the need to put in place resources that can help to bring about sustained development in players.
To then put the onus on TW, or the players, when things are looking shaky, would seem a bit rich, especially as they take a further three years into TW’s contract to take any sort of action, even though the writing was on the wall at least by the end of 2006. If both parties are to retrieve the situation now then one way that seems possible is if Jeff Bond and his team can work a miracle of sorts and have some impact in this area of player development. An area that RFC has failed in miserably, for the majority of the time I can remember.
More than anything else, we seem to need someone who knows how to get the best out of players. Someone who looks and sees beyond the skill of a player and can work with players who have traits that are more likely to bring success, rather than one who is seemingly blinded by players who show flashes of brilliance, at irregular intervals, and/or can run really fast. And if that’s the type of player the club’s hell bent on recruiting then they better be good at instilling in them the ability to persist, or bring someone in who can.
Mercifully, RFC has taken a belated step in the area of player development, and I’m interested to see what, if any, difference it will make to this and future seasons.
As things are at the moment, we are yet to see any real evidence to suggest that players have developed positive traits under TW and have progressed their careers further than just being a bit older and having played more games.
If that’s all it takes to develop players then they don’t need to be at a supposedly ‘professional’ organisation to achieve the degree of improvement that alone can bring, or even need coaching. If anything, the approach that RFC seems to have towards player development would seem to defeat, and go against, the purpose of playing sport at an elite level.
What would convince me of anything, and to be patient, is to see gradual, but sustained improvement, and that our wins point to real development as a team, rather than achieving victories that become hollow, when hindsight shows us that they ultimately contributed little towards the grand scheme of building a competitive and successful team.
