Terry Wallace
Fighting Tiger Bulletin
December 2004
.....
In 2005, our aim at Richmond is to play a more exciting, attacking brand of football. For the past two years, the team has averaged only 11 goals per game and we want desperately to be renowned as an exciting team to watch. Like it or not, we are now part of the sports entertainment industry, and fans want to see fast-flowing football. It's this brand of football that we will strive to deliver.
I'm really keen to making sure that we have forwards who are threatening. They have to be potential multiple goalkickers. I'm not saying they always have to kick multiple goals, but they have to be potential multiple goalkickers, because iryou haven't got players who are threatening in your forward structure, sides are so good at zoning off nowadays that they'll just chop you up.
What I'd like to do with Matty Richardson is play him out at half-forward. I just think that when he plays solely deep, the opposition can actually plan for him to be there and double-team (or sometimes even triple-team) him. If 'Richo' plays out across the forward 50, it allows us to get him one-out with his direct opponent more often, whether that be working back towards the goals, which he's very good at doing, or just being further up the ground. My whole aim is to try to get him one-out with his direct opponent because from a contested marking point of view, with his power and his strength, he just doesn't get beaten when he gets those opportunities.
But you also have to have some other players down that end who are actually capable of scoring as well.
I see Nathan Brown as being a player who should be kicking 35-plus goals for the season. That doesn't mean he won't spend time in the midfield, too, but he clearly has the ability to be the type of threatening forward we're looking for.
Andrew Krakouer also has a natural instinct around the goals as a crumbing forward. but he needs to raise the bar in this regard and become a 25-plus goalkicker for us next season if we're going to become a consistently higher-scoring side.
Then, we've got to have other players within our structure who are capable of going forward and contributing to the goal spread.
I think Wayne Campbell has shown in the past that he's very smart coming out of the goal square. He'll be used in that type of role fairly regularly next year and certainly will be working during the pre-season as a leading forward, learning the tricks of the trade in that region.
Troy Simmonds will also spend time in attack. Specifically, the reason we got him to the Club was to replace Brad Ottens. I think he's a very, very good replacement because he can go forward and kick goals as he's done over the past couple of years, but he also can be the ruck option for us.
Greg Stafford is another big man who has shown he can be quite dangerous when 'resting' up forward. He's such a strong mark and a reliable kick for goal as well.
You'll find that we'll rotate our rucks forward pretty regularly throughout next season. It's a balancing act between them having the ability to mark it and being-run off by their opponents. But they'll certainly be used in those sort of roles. Particularly late in games, when players are tiring, the ability to have big men forward can often cause problems for the opposition.
So, when you look at all that, we've probably got four or five players there straight away, who are capable of kicking multiple goals, which is a real plus. . .
