Tigers are going down the Geelong road in their search for a premiershipJake Niall | November 25, 2009 IT DOESN'T contain the drama of the 1980s' poaching war with Collingwood, the 1982 grand final it lost to Carlton, or one of those storied coach sackings. Yet tomorrow night, the Richmond Football Club faces a couple of the most significant hours in its dismal recent history.
The Tigers will call out the names of seven or eight players. Nearly all will be teenagers. Most will be unfamiliar names. One - Dustin Martin, the club's first-choice-elect - is said to have star quality, and the Tigers are hoping that from a pool of players that has been weakened by the Gold Coast, there will be others capable of wearing the yellow and black jumper 150 times.
When the rookie draft is completed in December, the Tigers will have added 13 players - 14 if you count ex-Port player Mitch Farmer, acquired cheaply (Jay Schulz) in a trade. That's an astonishing turnover, given that most clubs view this draft as possessing the same strength as American beer. This is light ale, not a premium draft. Numerically, it is diluted by a third, due to the removal of 17-year-olds.
So Richmond has more riding on the 2009 national draft than any other club - more even than Melbourne, which will call out six names. The Tigers are investing heavily in a stock that others are dumping. Port Adelaide, Carlton and West Coast have only three choices tomorrow, Essendon and Collingwood just four each.
Obtaining almost a third of your 46 listed players from a Budweiser-strength draft might appear to be a questionable or courageous strategy. In truth, though, the Tigers have no alternative. There is no other way, and they know it.
If you doubt this, consider whether the players it culled were capable of lifting the club into the finals, much less premiership contention. The Tigers delisted, retired or traded 13 players, of whom four were older than 30. A few survivors, such Jordan McMahon, were fortunate to have contracts.
Richmond has four picks inside 44 and then four ''junk'' picks beyond 50. It is taking the stance that it is better to clean the joint out and chance your arm with teenagers, than to hang on proven non-performers and oldies.
The Tigers, clearly, have followed the Geelong model from 1999 and 2001, when the Cats were forced, largely by a deficient list, to pick up a mall's worth of teenagers. In terms of Geelong's rebuilding program, 1999 was year zero. Mark Thompson had just arrived, and the Cats entered the '99 draft with seven choices.
While they had three selections inside 17 - thanks to the Leigh Colbert trade - what is most striking about Geelong's regeneration in '99 and 2001 is that the club had its share of dud choices.
Ezra Bray and Daniel Foster, first- and second-round picks, were busts. David Spriggs, a first-rounder, didn't go the distance. But besides this trio, the Cats found the following premiership guns - Joel Corey, Paul Chapman, Cameron Ling and Corey Enright. Only Corey - pick No. 8 - was an early pick.
In 2001, Henry Playfair, Matthew McCarthy and Charlie Gardiner weren't long-term players, but Jimmy Bartel, Steve Johnson and Gary Ablett - a gift from the club's spectacular gene pool - proved to be freakish finds. James Kelly is a dual premiership player.
The lesson is that the draft is a number games. If you have lots of picks, there will be failures, but there ought to be some unexpected successes, too.
For Richmond, the longer it delayed a Geelong-like plunge into a draft - even into a dangerously shallow pool - the worse its situation would become. If the 2009 draft is Budweiser, then 2010 and 2011 - eviscerated by Gold Coast and western Sydney - will both be Bud Lite.
Richmond fans, traumatised by the draft mishaps of 2004-05, may fret about such a huge influx of Tiger recruits. Their concern is understandable.
There is, however, a significant difference between then and now. In 2005, the club had no full-time recruiter; today, it has three full-timers and a new coach with a mandate to avoid short cuts. Richmond isn't rolling the dice tomorrow. Rather, in a landscape transformed by new teams, it is playing the percentages, using the only cards available.
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