Richmond look to new recruit to stop final-quarter fadeoutsBy Daniel Miles
TheRoar.com.au
21 Mar 2013 Just like clockwork, every pre-season the familiar rumble of ‘our time’ erupts from Punt Road.
There’s talk of pre-season stars, fresh gun recruits, off-field gains and club expenditure – but what is it that will really help lift the Tigers out of their 11-year slumber to finally taste September action?
It’s hard to assess a club like Richmond who through patches can offer you glimpses of brilliance, yet still languish among the cellar dwellers.
Within the 2012 season Richmond comprehensively beat both grand finalists Hawthorn and Sydney, produced the Coleman Medallist and Brownlow Medal runner-up, along with two rising star nominations.
Yet they still were able to produce what Paul Roos coined “the worst 47 seconds in footy” when losing to the Gold Coast Suns.
All of the ingredients for premiership success are there, yet the Tigers remain little more than a constant source of frustration for supporters.
So what is it that keeps coming unstuck?
Under Damien Hardwick’s reign, the Tigers have done everything by the book. Gradual improvement has been the motto since the Essendon and Port Adelaide dual-premiership player took over in 2010.
Since Hardwick began the Tigers have won six, eight and ten games respectively while simultaneously increasing club expenditure and wiping out a debt that had crippled previous administrations.
They have increased membership to in excess of 50,000 for the first time and completely transformed the clubs facilities, fully resurfaced Punt Road and developed the multi-million dollar ME Bank Centre, finally putting themselves in a position to compete with its cross-town fat cat neighbours on Swan Street.
Yet all the off-field improvements in the world cannot hide what the Tigers lack, and that is quite simply and brutally the knowledge of how to win.
It is a plague that has cursed the yellow and black army for over 30 years, as the Tigers forever branded the under-achievers of the competition.
Taunted with melodies of ‘we finished ninth again’, the Tigers have become renowned for promising so much, yet stumbling at the final hurdle.
Richmond have not seen September action since 2001 when Danny Frawley was coach, Wayne Campbell was captain and Brendon Gale, now the club’s CEO, was attacking centre-clearances as the number one ruckman.
Since their last premiership way back in 1980, the Tigers have played in just eight finals, 17 fewer than any Victorian rival.
Even the now defunct Fitzroy, which merged with Brisbane in 1996 have played in eight finals, raising worrying questions for Richmond’s administrators.
A once-proud club has become stuck in a culture of losing, and Hardwick, the eighth coach to lead the Tigers in the past 20 years, has a job ahead to resurrect his team to a new era.
It will be a tough job for all involved at Tigerland, as they attempt to resurrect a team that often has proven it has what it takes to mix it with the best, yet lacked the tenacity to maintain the pressure for four quarters.
If the final quarter went for two minutes less in season 2012 – Richmond finish sixth and make the finals for just the third time in twenty years.
Last quarter lapses against Geelong, West Coast, Gold Coast, North Melbourne, Carlton and Port Adelaide in the 2012 season buried the Tigers’ hopes of breaking their finals curse, relegating them to be also-rans again.
Like a racehorse too often used as the pacemaker, Richmond have simply forgotten how to win the tough ones.
Perhaps they had read too much of their own bad press and become accustomed to disappointment?
Maybe a lack of on-field leadership is to blame, as the young Tiger cubs, the youngest team in the AFL but for GWS and the Gold Coast Suns, have not the resolve or experience to fight out tough encounters.
Ironically, even the two expansions sides have more finals experience on their list than the struggling Tigers.
In an attempt to arrest their last minute lapses, the Tigers are taking the innovative step of turning to their newest recruit.
The biggest recruit of the summer period for the Tigers did not arrive through the free player agency period, nor did they arrive in the rookie draft.
Richmond’s newest team member has finals experience at Geelong as well as experience working on a National platform with the Australian Swim Team.
Dr Pippa Grange, a doctor of applied psychology, started working at Richmond this December to instil a charter of premiership-winning characteristics.
Grange will be a regular on gameday in the coach’s box with Hardwick, as well as mentoring the club’s executive management and player leadership ground.
It is familiar territory for Grange, who spent two years at Geelong with Brad Scott through his 2011 premiership, as well as a stint at St Kilda, assisting as they grappled with the ‘St Kilda schoolgirl scandal’.
The willingness of Richmond and its directors to allow a stranger in to their inner sanctum should be applauded, as well as their willingness to chase what is holding back their success, even if it is an issue as abstract as theirs.
While not a sure-fire solution, Hardwick will be hoping Grange’s input will go some way to piecing together the scattered, yet brilliant pieces of the Richmond puzzle.
The yellow and black faithful have been patient, but another failure would make his position tenuous to say the least.
If he is successful in doing what favourite sons Francis Bourke, Kevin Bartlett and John Northey have failed to do and bring home a premiership cup, Hardwick will be lauded as a genius, the saviour of Punt Road.
However failure would devastate his and no doubt earn his head a place on the infamous Richmond coach’s chopping block.
http://www.theroar.com.au/2013/03/21/richmond-look-to-new-recruit-to-stop-final-quarter-fadeouts/
