Our lack of money is entirely of our own making and we are the only ones who can control fixing it. We have already discussed the value of having a sufficiently resourced football department and if we want that then we have to make all the moves to achieve it. Whether we are subsidizing other clubs through stadia deal is quite irrelevant - it doesn't stop other clubs from being financially responsible enough to cope with similar bad deals and still provide their football departments with ample resources. The sooner we stop blaming everything around us for our problems and looking for assistance from anyone who will give it then the better off we will be. One second spent on worrying about financial inequalities or complaining because other clubs have conducted themselves more successfully and professionally than us is another second we have to wait until the realization sinks in that there are no knights in shining armour or Good Samaritans out there coming to our rescue. If we sit back thinking that our financial salvation will come from better crowds and memberships driven by increased on field success then we will only be repeating the stupid mistakes of years gone by. Any extra crowd-driven revenue should be the unplanned and unbudgeted icing on the cake, the real long term positive changes in our financial position will come from our efforts in conducting ourselves as a viable and professional business entity with multiple strong income sources, sound investments and controlled spending mechanisms. When, and only when we devote all our energies to improving our club's position by all the means at our disposal will true improvement come.
We signed those stadia deals, we failed to recruit well, we failed to staff well, we failed to govern and manage well, we failed to coach well, we failed to play well. Us, us, us, not them, them, them. We won't start to be successful on the field until we can afford to match the other successful clubs in spending wisely on development and other critical football areas, getting and wasting more and more high draft picks obtained through tanking or sheer incompetence will not make one scrap of difference. And that is why I have warmed to March as our president in recent years. He has been resolute in his efforts to stabilize our board and our finances, increasing the spending in our football department each and every year without risking further financial hardship before he has gone about changing the football department itself. Very thankfully he has put the horse before the cart.
No-one said it would be easy to climb out of the abyss successive regimes at Richmond have put this club into. But the ONLY way to climb out and stay out is through hard work, sacrifice, honesty, transparency and professionalism in all our dealings in all areas of the club. When we regain the respect of our supporters, our opponents and ourselves then we will be on the path to strength and success, and not a moment before. Respect will not come through reliance on tanking and it will not come through reliance on financial handouts.
I try (and don't always succeed) to live my life by an ethos of "don't blame me". By that I mean that to spend even one nano-second of my time blaming something or someone else for anything that hasn't gone my way is self-defeating and a sheer waste of my much too precious time. I am responsible for every single thing - good or bad - that has happened to me in my life and only I can change what I don't like. And that is how I see it for our club.
I only mentioned the poor stadia deals in response to you smokey asking Stripes or TM how would we like it if Richmond had to subsidise North as part of the AFL handing out handouts. I was just pointing out we already are.
Being pro-tanking is not blaming everyone else for the mess Richmond has been in for the past 30 years btw. Quite the opposite in fact as we want to use the existing draft system perfectly legally, with its priority picks designed to help bottom clubs improve their playing lists, so Richmond can improve more quickly as a club and become successful off our own back. You ask for professionalism yet professionalism is squeezing every ounce out of every legal means available to become the best - be it exploiting healthy/wealthy finances, sports science, maximising recruiting resources, exploiting the draft system, whatever to gain an advantage over all the other clubs. Not sure how anyone can say exploiting the first three of those is acting as a professional club while exploiting the draft system perfectly legally is classed as "cheating" ???. They are all legal means and all clubs have and would use them.
getting and wasting more and more high draft picks obtained through tanking or sheer incompetence will not make one scrap of difference.
Who says we're going to waste more and more high draft picks anymore. Martin and Cotchin are recent top 3 picks. Hardly a waste of high picks. Even if that were true about wasting high picks as it was in the past that statement makes no sense whatsoever as if we are still stupid enough to waste high draft picks where the better kids are then clearly the lower poorer quality picks will most certainly be wasted as well. At least high picks have more certainty nowdays given the vast sophisticated and superior methods and statistics used.
The thing is we've finally now put decent resources into our recruiting department so why deprive our recruiters now of access to a greater and higher quality draft pool just for the short-term thrill of a few meaningless win(s) that are forgotten about as soon the next season comes around. That's been the problem at Richmond for so long. Never having the foresight to see the big picture beyond the current season and in the past even beyond the next match where a cheap win covered up the cracks for another week before being exposed so easily again and the club imploding
. We are in rebuilding mode. That means we need to aim for a strong quality maturing list by 2013. 2010 is just a stepping stone on that path. Wins/losses aren't a priority. Having another top 20 pick last year plus two picks inside the top 6 this year would've accelerated our ability to rebuild the list with quality given our player development has also improved. Too me it's just so obviously playing the odds. A choice of a top 20 and top 6 picks or the two late picks you're left with by missing out on priority picks? It's a no brainer and a lost opportunity!
