Lethal's Richmond preview (afl)

[one-eyed]

The also-rans
By Leigh Matthews
Tue 22 Mar, 2011

ALTHOUGH every media outlet asks its commentators to make pre-season predictions, I'm not going to try and have a stab at where each club will finish in 2011. That's for the clairvoyants. It's slightly educated guesswork at best.

Today I'll start with the three teams who I cannot see have any chance of winning the 11 games necessary to play finals - Gold Coast, West Coast and Richmond.

Richmond

Richmond had a reasonable mid-season spell in Damien Hardwick's 2010 debut season when they went 6-3 after a 0-9 start and before an 0-4 finish.

This was built largely on the back of Jack Riewoldt's emergence as a high-class full-forward but as good as he was, the Tigers' reliance on the young Tasmanian to kick 78 of their 246 goals (32 per cent) was unhealthy. This situation had too much of the unsuccessful Fevola at Carlton look - a terrific forward but few wins.

For Richmond to push up out of the bottom four this year Trent Cotchin, pick two in the 2007 NAB AFL Draft and now going into his fourth year, needs to find another gear. He's shown glimpses but must develop the hard running to get involved in the play more often.

The Tigers fielded 12 debutants last year in a continued search for quality talent, with Dustin Martin a standout in his first year. A big positive could be the return from injury of high quality mid-fielder Nathan Foley, who played only four games last year.

The draw has been quite kind to them. The Tigers don't  play any of the top four from last year twice, although this is offset a bit by the fact that they play only one of the 2010 bottom group twice, the Brisbane Lions.

The irreplaceable must be Riewoldt, although a repeat of his 2010 season is the best that can be expected, and the big improver, if not Cotchin might be Daniel Connors, who as a ball carrier off half-back looks to have the raw talent if he can learn to consistently apply himself to his footy.   

But overall there is no logical reason to think that Richmond can make significant improvement, and that target of 11 wins for a finals berth looks well beyond the Tigers.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/109709/default.aspx

[Oiafi]

What the hell is he talking about "no logical reason to think that Richmond can make significant improvement". He craps on at the beginning about clairvoyants and then makes a stupid statement like that.

I tend to agree about not making the 8 but to say there's no logical reason we should improve significantly is just stupid in my opinion. All it takes is natural development of young players being well coached and "logically" you must see significant improvement.

If all potential improvement he can see is Cotchin and Connors and the return of Foley then he hasn't bothered looking at the list at all.

Disappointing article by Matthews. Makes him sound like an ill-informed and lazy tosser.

[Tiger Tragic]

He who assesses a developing team's upcoming fortune by an assessment of what happened in the previous year is a fool.  Young teams develop, improve and move upward.  Last year matters little because all players will go up a notch.  Whether it is enough to get to 11 wins, well, probably not this year.  But his level of analysis is very ordinary for such an illuminary of the game.

[mat073]

Lethal Leigh's opinion loses a little credibility when he doesn't list Brisbane in the "also ran" category.

Daniel Conners is definitely the new "Raines"-An over rated darling of the media.Its up to him to prove he has abit more substance than Andrew.

[tony_montana]

Until we show some real substance this is what we can expect from most expert commentators.

[Stripes]

You would suggest that given the stage of development our list finds itself in, the inclusion of more mature experienced ball carriers and the supposed ease of our draw after round 4, there is no logical reason why we should NOT make significant improvement. Couple the previous reasons witht he squads greater understanding and comfort with the game plan compared to the same time last year and Lethals prediction seems definitely hollow to me.

In fact I can not see how we could not improve given the state of our list; we have not lost any structural players of note, we have strengthen our depth and we have a year of education behind us. We occassionally are accussed of being too biased on here but sometimes I feel experts make snap judgements based on very little analysis which is what I believe Lethal has done here.

[wayne]

The also-rans
By Leigh Matthews

Today I'll start with the three teams who I cannot see have any chance of winning the 11 games necessary to play finals - Gold Coast, West Coast and Richmond.

So he thinks Brisbane could win 11 games this season!!

Deluded old fool.

[JVT]

Couldn't care less about any of the media predictions out there, let's just start with a win on Thursday and watch them all reassess our season after that 

[1965]

Couldn't care less about any of the media predictions out there, let's just start with a win on Thursday and watch them all reassess our season after that 

wouldn't that be cool

 

[Hellenic Tiger]

Beat Carlton on Thurday night and we'll be media darlings until Nick runs out for the Saints on Friday night.