The junk-time TigersBURKE'S LAW – NATHAN BURKE
Inside Football If Richmond thinks it has a springboard for 2012, it has another think coming.
"This win will give Richmond a lot of confidence going into next season."
How often have we heard that one over the past 10 years and how often has it turned out to be a load of rubbish?
Sorry, Tigers fans still jubilant after beating the Crows, but this win will have absolutely no effect on season 2012 – and if anything will do you more harm than good.
Late wins are not the sign of emergence that most people think.
Teams that can't make the finals playing each other in late rounds is the equivalent of junk-time goals in a basketball game.
Certainly the stats show no correlation between just missing the eight and making it the following season.
If they did, then the Tigers would make the finals every second year and wouldn't have extended their finals drought to 10 years.
The key reason people get excited about late wins is the supposed increase in confidence gained by beating teams either lower or just above you.
The Tigers did beat Adelaide in Adelaide.
But let's remember that Adelaide has been in such crisis this season that it lost by the biggest margin ever, sacked its coach and was in fact two spots lower on the ladder than the Tigers.
Yep, that is something to inspire Richmond through pre-season.
I may be sounding a bit harsh on the Tigers but unfortunately I am speaking from experience.
Thirteen times I played in teams that missed the finals, so I consider myself a bit of an expert in this field.
Dermott Brereton may be an expert in Grand Finals having won five of them, however my numerous missed finals give me credence to talk about the Tigers.
Quite frankly, finishing last on the ladder can be better preparation for the next season than finishing ninth.
You can't hide behind anything with a wooden spoon.
Finishing ninth or 10th, which will happen if they beat the Kangaroos, takes the focus off what really happened to the Tigers in 2011.
They started off like a house on fire, fell in a heap and then came home strongly when the pressure was off.
In Round 2 the Tigers drew with the Saints, who should've beaten Geelong by a comfortable margin in Round 1.
The Tigers were up and about, playing good attacking football with a healthy element of fierceness. This is a positive and shows that their pre-season routines are adequate and prepare the players well.
They then fell away drastically through the middle third of the year.
This is the area that should drive the pre-season – not the junk-time wins, because without it being addressed heavily it will more than likely happen again.
I saw it first-hand so often throughout my career.
Pre-seasons are buoyed by late wins, and time and time again the real reason we missed the finals was glossed over.
No one wanted to revisit the dark days of the past winter to understand just why the team had failed to maintain momentum.
No one wanted to look backwards and make the harsh calls or recognise that the team felt safer out of the spotlight than in it.
No one was honest enough to say that we played well only when the pressure of finals football was gone.
Looking back on late-season good form was much more pleasant than addressing mid-season poor form.
It may be harsh but these are the terrible home truths for teams that regularly miss the finals.
Late wins give everybody at the club a false sense of confidence, not just the players. At the recruiting table there is a tendency to think they are close to being a good side and to postpone hard decisions.
They tend to look for top-up players rather than making wholesale changes, which should be the mantra of any club that fails to make the finals.
It isn't helped by marketing departments that create slogans about how the team is on the brink of greatness and force players to sing from the same songbook in order to bump up the membership.
Nothing makes marketing departments happier than late wins. They are often easier to spin and turn into memberships than finals knockouts.
Richmond will not progress as a club until it sees the late wins as not a tide that will carry it to 2012 glory but rather an indictment on a wasted season.
And that's how harsh and realistic they need to be.
Coming good when the season is done and dusted is in fact an indictment on them as a team and club.
That they couldn't play this sort of football when it counted should be giving them nightmares.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the Tigers haven't had a horrific injury list to contend with, nor a draw excessively weighted against them.
No, they simply failed to perform when the pressure was on and shone when the pressure released. That is a characteristic of all talented teams that regularly just miss the finals.
Along with confidence, the Tigers will also gain some comfort from winning three in a row.
Comfortable sides don't ask the tough questions; they don't make the tough decisions or address the tough issues.
At the Saints we were for too long comfortable with where we sat in the scheme of football.
The "everybody's second team" tag came about because opposition fans felt sorry for us and we posed no threat.
Until we felt ashamed of this, nothing changed.
Do the Tigers players feel ashamed of the "Richmond will finish ninth again" jokes?
I do not know Damien Hardwick well, but what I do know is that he is not a man to shirk a tough situation.
Fans can help him by not getting carried away with junk time.
Let the players know they are capable and must do better; that late wins fool nobody.
This mindset change is the only thing that will end the drought.
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