Wallace laments 'unacceptable' loss
8:13:51 PM Sun 27 March, 2005
Matt Burgan
Sportal for afl.com.au
Richmond coach Terry Wallace says his side's round one performance was totally unacceptable after it lost to Geelong by 62 points at the MCG on Sunday.
Wallace said the scoreboard reflected what both teams achieved last season, while he was adamant that it was not a true indication of what his players had shown over the pre-season period.
"It was a shockingly disappointing day. You drive into the MCG on such a beautiful day and you're hoping for something and really the thing that I was hoping for was that some of the stuff that we'd done over the summer was shown," Wallace said post-match.
"Now whether that got us a win or that didn't get us a win - that was the one thing I wanted. I just wanted to get here and let our supporters see that there's been a hell of a lot of bloody hard work into it.
"I said to the guys in the match committee that we might as well have gone to the pub for the summer, with what we showed today."
Wallace said once the game plan was not falling into place for the Tigers that it was equivalent to 'the air going out of the tyres'. He also gave the senior playing group a serve saying that they were 'selfish in their approach' to the game.
But he pointed to last year's round one fixture for some optimism, when Hawthorn defeated Melbourne by 49 points. The Demons then won their next six matches, while the Hawks lost their following six outings.
"It's a funny game that we play, but we're not going to win games if we play footy like we played today," Wallace said.
"A fortnight ago - and I know they're only practice matches and you only take them into play - but we played a style and a brand of footy that we thought was actually heading somewhere and we just did not bring that to the table at all today."
Wallace, who has been appointed senior coach for five seasons, said he wasn't expecting miracles to occur overnight.
"I never kidded myself when I came here and it's not necessarily born out of fairytales and things like that - a lot of hard work goes into getting a team up the ladder," Wallace said.
"I can only hope that our supporters stick with us and understand that it's a tough road and Denis (Pagan) went through a few of these when he first started with Carlton and you think you're going to be competitive and all of a sudden you get blown out of the water."
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