Tigers outworked, says Wallace
richmondfc.com.au
By Matt Burgan
6:50 PM Sat 28 June, 2008
RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace was "terribly disappointed" with his side's final-term fade at the MCG on Saturday afternoon. The Tigers led at every change but conceded seven goals to two in the final quarter to lose by 30 points.
After the match Wallace said his team was "outworked by a hard-running side on the day".
"I thought we marginally held sway in the first two quarters … but only just marginally. You could see it coming in the third quarter and it was a matter of whether we could re-adjust ourselves at three quarter-time.
"But it seemed very much that when the game was lost, the game was lost, and I thought that that was disappointing."
Wallace praised young charges Cleve Hughes and Mitch Morton for their three-goal efforts, and Trent Cotchin, who continues to impress in his first AFL season. He was also delighted with Kel Moore's effort on sharpshooter Brendan Fevola.
"I thought [Moore] did a fantastic job … 62 inside 50s Carlton had for the day – it was coming down at an almighty rate – and it wouldn't have mattered who you played on [Fevola] … when he's been kicking bags of goals," Wallace said.
"He kept Buddy Buddy (Lance Franklin) to one [goal] earlier in the year, so he's done some pretty good jobs and we would have liked to have had a little bit more assistance down there.
"We had to throw our team around a little bit with Will Thursfield coming out and losing Luke McGuane last week. We'd normally like to play with all of three boys in the line-up, so that probably hurt the balance a little bit.
"I know they had Juddy (Chris Judd) come out, so that's a massive one for them, but sometimes key defenders are hard to plug – you just can't grab a key defender from anywhere and fill a hole, so that hurt us a bit."
Wallace said it was a "smart move" by Carlton to announce on Friday that its skipper Judd would not be playing.
"I would have done exactly the same thing … it probably put more pressure on us with the end result, in regards to our supporters coming with great expectations," Wallace said.
"We dealt all week with both going on. We probably thought that he wasn't going to play for a fair portion of the week, so we planned for him in and we planned for him out."
As for how he rated the season at this point, Wallace said: "We just haven't beaten a side above us and that's been the whole crux of the season so far. Where we are is probably where we are at exactly this point in time."
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