Summary:
* Maric - suffering from some ankle soreness for a couple of weeks. Tought he could carry it through the season and it'll settle down but that wasn't the case and we decided to get it tidied it up now. Lucky we recruited another ruckman.
* Didn't have an inkling Ivan would go down but we felt we needed a ruckman who was different to Ivan - more height and hence leap against the tall opposition ruckmen. That's why we targeted Hampson. We'd actually like both playing together. It is minor surgery but we needed to take some time to take in and of course the player needs to be on board with the decision.
* Newy - hopefully round 1 but not a certainty. (Knee) Improving faster than expected which is a good sign.
* Batch - sore corky in the calf. Bit early to tell how severe yet. Limping after the game. Need the bleeding to stop first. Expect him to be right with a bit of rest. Expect him to be right by round 1.
* King - our position have been the same all along. Only conservation with Jake was to check he was okay with it all. He's one of us and we're supportive of Jake and that will continue unless he does something illegal or anything horrinly wrong which we're confident he hasn't. That's where it sits.
* Would've liked to perform better against Melbourne obviously. Most of things we've been working on worked on the weekend. We believe the NAB Challenge has been a good lead up. You'd hope to have all your players available at all times but that's wishful thinking. Been getting a heavy workload into the players with training at high intensity given, plus it's a shorter preseason, and unfortunately some do break down.
* Schwarz reckons Maric is our hardest player to replace. Richardson replied that Ivan is an important player and ruckmen, and taller players in general, are harder to replace than mids. He's a great character and gives us leadership around the club. No doubt he's an important player in our side not only this year but in the years to come.
* Keen to get off to a good start as all clubs are. First 4 games are reasonably tough games. You do break it down into shorter periods but balance that knowing it's a long season so you don't just focus on round 1 or the first few games. Having said you want to get off to a good start.
* Jack, TV, King, Az Edwards up forward most weeks? Yeah, think so. We'll probably change the forward structure a little bit. Would've seen on the weekend midfielders such as Lids and Cotch up forward on the weekend. Want to get more goals from our mids. We'll also have our tall options - Vickery, A.Edwards. Jake King with be in the options. Good to see Sam lloyd kick a couple of goals - he brings some smarts and X-factor around the goals. Across the board with the way we've recruited including our rookie players has added to our depth and competition for spots which hopefully are signs of a team on the improve.
* Every side knows what it wants to achieve. Finals again would be a solid year but we're also aiming for bigger and better things.
* Schwarz has us in the bottom half of his Top 8 although he's worried that Maric is out for eight weeks and we would want to win games early. The other SEN commentator Mark Allen reckons Richmond will miss the finals.
