Lofty ladder position a reward for Tigers' effortBy Jennifer Phelan
afl.com.au
4:50pm AEST Monday, July 22, 2013SHANE Edwards says morale is booming at Richmond as the club finds itself in an unfamiliarly lofty position heading into the final six rounds.
The Tigers are sixth on the ladder with 11 wins, half a game behind fifth-placed Fremantle and four points clear of Collingwood in seventh.
Their win over the Dockers on Sunday at the MCG boosted their hopes of returning to the finals for the first time since 2001.
Edwards said the group had been galvanised by the way things were coming together and they were playing for each other after a lean period in the club's history.
"Normally every other year, we're behind the eight ball after the first half of the year and chasing the ladder," Edwards told AFL.com.au after the Tigers' 27-point win over Fremantle on Sunday.
"It's good that what's happening is really working at the club and we've just got to keep doing it and evolving with new things."
Edwards was drafted in 2006 and has played through six full seasons that have ended without finals action - and he's not on his own.
Only five players from the Tigers' squad have played finals - and none of them have been for Richmond. Troy Chaplin (Port Adelaide), Aaron Edwards (North Melbourne), Shaun Grigg (Carlton), Chris Knights and Ivan Maric (Adelaide) all tasted September action at their previous clubs.
Edwards said their win over the Dockers wouldn't prompt the Tigers to start planning their assault on September but he admitted they considered Sunday's game as an example of what finals footy might be like.
"As the saying goes, you just keep taking it one week at a time," he said.
"We've got a lot of hard teams coming up and we just want to match them in contested ball and all the hard stuff that will happen in finals, and if we do that right, then hopefully we'll get there.
"It was a real contested game and we'd like to think it was the closest to playing a final for a lot of our players.
"It was a big challenge against one of the really good sides in the competition.
"They play hard and tough footy and it was good to perform against such a good side."
Sunday's game had scrappy elements, courtesy of a slippery surface brought about by a cold and wet Melbourne week, but the Tigers were slick when it counted.
They were careful and methodical in working their way around Fremantle's defensive set up in the first quarter, and then hit targets when it mattered in the last quarter.
"We were composed when the moments happened. We got a few good goals and some real clutch finishing from some of our good players, like Daniel Jackson's goal and Jack [Riewoldt] kicked some really good goals and so did Ty [Vickery]," Edwards said.
"It was a good finish and an overall team effort."
Edwards said the win over Fremantle was the sort of result that proved to the players their hard work was starting to pay off.
"There's definitely a high morale in the group and playing for each other is probably the best way to play," he said.
"We're just showing a lot of discipline out there and it's going well at the moment.
"We need to keep it up and keep plugging away at all the hard things."
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-07-22/tigers-reach-rare-heights
