Nothing moronic about it at all. When you sit in the middle of a Tiger crowd at the G you can literally feel the electricity we generate. I've seen it make the players go up a gear countless times. If I'm imagining it, then why does Dimma constantly refer to the 19th man in his e-mails to fans, urging us to come to the games?
What the club did on Saturday night was effectively take the 19th man out of the equation.
Richmond in the first half, though playing badly, were right in that game. They were just looking for a spark to ignite them which never came, and a lot of positive crowd noise could have provided it.
Port on the other hand were at their lowest ebb coming into that game. And the resolve they managed to scrape together when they sensed we were vulnerable would have evaporated away like dandelion spore under the blowtorch of intimidatory hatred that the Tiger masses subject visiting teams to at the G.
so perhaps you would care to explain why port beat us with dockland chock full of feral tiger heads. The atmosphere was electric that day... or how we beat port on such a big celebration for them in adelaide, with very little support.
to blame the administration for the pathetic effort from the players is moronic. It's ill conceived and illogical. They didn't turn up to play and port did - that is the bottom line. there was more support for richmond at the ground but the players simply did not give them anything to get excited about.
Unless the players get the crowd going with performance this 19th man BS will not even come into play.
If we are to hang our hat on the crowd support to win games then we might as well shut up shop now. FFS Norf won premierships will 1/4 of the support of the "19th man"
It's a national competition played all over the country. the players have to deal with playing in all conditions to be succesful. All the sooking in world from victorian centrics living in the past of a victorian only based competition played on Saturdays only will not change that.
The players are ones that need to take responsibility and thank stuff the coaching know that and are not pushing the blame onto the administration like petulant, spoilt brats, as many outside the club seem hell bent on doing