Tigers facing total humiliation Stephen Rielly
The Australian
May 03, 2010WITH each barren week, the prospect of Richmond making its way through the 2010 campaign without a win grows.
Not since Fitzroy in 1964 has a side been unable to take something, anything, from a season but after being humiliated by 108 points by Geelong at Skilled Stadium yesterday, the Tigers appear to drifting further from the basic requirements to compete in, let alone win, a game of football.
Admittedly, a lot of teams have been given the rod at Skilled in recent times. A fortnight ago, the Cats banged on 11.8 in a single term there, against Port Adelaide. The premiers have won 18 consecutive matches at home and 24 of their last 26, many of them by sizeable margins that have waved a finger of warning under the nose of any side thinking of a surprise.
But yesterday's Geelong side was without Gary Ablett, Matthew Scarlett, Joel Corey and Max Rooke and still the encounter was over inside 15 minutes of the first bounce, by which time four Cats had breezily slotted five goals without reply.
In fact, Geelong's quarter-time score of 7.2 finished only nine points shy of Richmond's final score of 7.11.
If it was a pitiless exhibition from the Cats, it was an equally pitiful display from the Tigers who had one goal kicker to half-time, Jack Riewoldt, and just two to three-quarter time, Riewoldt and Ben Nason.
There was domination from Geelong but a certain submission from Richmond, whose coach Damien Hardwick admitted afterwards that he had been unable to find any comfort at all in the match.
"They're a bloody good side. They got well beaten by Carlton the week before and we always knew they would come out as they did," Hardwick said.
"But we were really disappointed with the way we played. From the other games we were always able to take something from it. This one it is a struggle. Our commitment to the contest was poor, our tackling was poor . . . it was one of those games. I'm disappointed to lose every week, make no qualms about that, but this was the first time I was disappointed in all four quarters. We didn't offer a fight to Geelong at any stage."
Geelong did as it wished -- not an ideal preparation for the sort of physical challenge it will face from Sydney at home next Sunday but, perhaps, rediscovered its groove, or at least some of the aspects fundamental to its reign.
Three forwards James Podsiadly, Cameron Mooney and Steve Johnson kicked five goals each, with Shannon Byrnes and Paul Chapman sharing a further five. Chapman was superb, as was Joel Selwood, and Johnson finished with 20 creative touches to go with his goals.
But then, 14 Geelong players finished with 15 touches or more, where Richmond got the same contributions from just five of its number, chief among them the hard-bodied figure of Shane Tuck.
"Our boys got buffeted out of the way," said Hardwick, whose side will at least be up against the only other winless side in the game at present, Adelaide.
"We had to put blokes like Tuck, Polo and Rance in there (the centre square), bigger bodied guys, just so that we could compete."
That the Tigers were unable to do that at all -- they only managed to kick consecutive goals twice in the match and not until time-on of the third term -- of course pleased Geelong coach Mark Thompson.
"I thought it was a big improvement on last week," said Thompson, who then offered what may prove to be the understatement of the year.
"Really, the opposition today was irrelevant, it was about what we wanted to achieve and we achieved a fair bit of that.
"A, we wanted to go a little bit harder and win more of the ball. B, we wanted to use the ball better and then, the big C, when they won the ball we wanted to put them under a lot of pressure and try and win it back before they kicked a goal.
"We seemed to do that pretty well."
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