RICHMOND players have their eyes set on a top-four berth this season and admit they panicked in their shock finals loss to Carlton.
A "painful" questionnaire prepared by development coach Mark Williams that asked every player to rate their own performance in the elimination final - when the Tigers gave up a 33-point lead - has helped the players get over the heartbreaking defeat.
But defender Bachar Houli says it won't be forgotten.
"It hurts in every single individual at the club, including the coaching staff. We're a family at Tigerland so we all feel it and hopefully we can make a difference this year," he said on radio station SEN.
Houli said the Tigers were making small changes to their game plan to give themselves a shot at a Grand Final appearance in 2014.
"It's that fine line, it's so small," he said. "We finished fifth two points away from fourth and you finish top-four and you give yourself every opportunity to go that next step so that's our aim."
Fellow defender Alex Rance has owned up to several lapses in concentration that allowed his opponent Jarrad Waite to kick four goals in the Blues' stunning win. Rance says he had "flashbacks" in the second half to Richmond's 2012 loss to Gold Coast in which the Suns came from 10 points down with less than a minute to play to win with a Karmichael Hunt goal after the siren.
"All I remember is the first half, the mistakes we made in the third quarter ... the fourth quarter I have no recollection and then sitting in the changerooms thinking 'What have we just done?'," Rance said in a video on the Richmond website.
"We knew that we should have won. We played better football ... whenever something goes wrong you always try to justify (it) ... They shouldn't have even been there in the first place, they were ninth, all that sort of drama comes into your head. But at the end of the day it's on our head, the mistakes that we made."
Rance said Williams' survey was hard to take but proved a masterstroke.
"He broke it down for us and made it more of a learning tool than just a rock in the guts that you can't get rid of.
"He sent us out a survey that he created himself that took was so painful, but we learnt so much from it just by being able to process what actually happened in the game. Instead of being just like, 'We don't want that to happen again' we learnt why it happened and what we should do if situations like that happen again."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/richmond-players-say-they-have-learnt-to-deal-with-panic-suffered-in-elimination-final-loss-to-carlton/story-fni5f9jb-1226810701713
