Who is to blame and why?

[Stripes]

Heard Jake King yesterday speak at half time yesterday about game plan etc
No wonder the RFC are loses

Who is to blame (I'm assuming here its the coaches) but why

It's the game plan, injuries token players and now confidence. We are playing a style that is designed to defeat zones and have players suited to this. Other teams are playing a congested and contested style which makes it difficult to get space and time to run it forward. Basically we have been found out.

[tdy]

OK My 2 cents, it's recruiting followed by development.

We have recruited players from other clubs to fill roles.  They are not A graders and they all have deficiencies.  This policy is fine to fill structural holes, Collingwood did it well with Jolly, we did too with Maric, but not as a general recruiting strategy.  That has left us with a team with a lot of senior players with technical holes like Grigg, Chapman or Matt Thomas.  OK senior players but not great and their poor is really poor.

Secondly we basically almost always fail to develop players from the 2nd round of the draft and deeper.  We possibly do better from our rookie list with hungry guys like Foley, Nahas and King.  This is terrible and reflects badly on our coaches and recruiters.

[Rampstar]

As an appointed apologist to this forum, I would like youse out there to educate me. Whose fault is this season 2014?
Why do you blame them?
What is required to fix?

No rhetoric like Tigeritis or culture - what exactly do you propose and how will this address our win/loss ratio?

I blame Hardwick and his coaching panel because they took short cuts.
I blame Hartley for bringing in rejects from other clubs who are no stuffing good.
I blame B.Gale for allowing this nonsense to occur and allowing good money to be wasted on Chaplin, Hampson and Grigg and to a lesser extent Houli and Thomas and Petterd. All up about $1.3 million in wages per year maybe more.
I blame the players for their gutless ineptitude and their disgraceful performances.
I blame the fitness staff for not pounding the crap out of the players over the summer leaving us with an uncompetitive team fitness wise.
I blame Francis Jackson and his team for not bringing in quality youngster after the 1st round of the national draft and for not recruiting players with any speed.
I blame them all.

What would I do:

I would terminate the employment of Blair Hartley coz his record isnt that flash
I would terminate the employment of the fitness staff right now.
I would delist Chaplin, Petterd, Thomas, Grigg and Hampson at the end of the year.
I would delist Newman, Foley, King and Stephenson
I would allow Hardwick to coach to the end of 2015 the end of next year but if their is no real improvement between now and then - 16 months (a very fair amount of time) I would sack him too.
I would pay major dollars to try and get the 2 best free agents over the next 2 years (ie. get 2 serious A graders)

And thats just as a start.

[tdy]

Heard Jake King yesterday speak at half time yesterday about game plan etc
No wonder the RFC are loses

Who is to blame (I'm assuming here its the coaches) but why

It's the game plan, injuries token players and now confidence. We are playing a style that is designed to defeat zones and have players suited to this. Other teams are playing a congested and contested style which makes it difficult to get space and time to run it forward. Basically we have been found out.

Yeah but Hawthorn play this style too, so why are they 6 and 2?  They have better players basically, playing with confidence and their key players are more mature.  They also filled holes like Full back with Brian Lake.  We're imitating their strategy which is fine, but doing it poorly.  We have no Hodge or Mitchell from the previous generation to compliment their new generation.  We have Newman and Foley instead, OK players but not great.

[Francois Jackson]

No Tidy
They recruited class and paid top dollar for it

Gibson Mcevoy Burgoyne all didn't come cheap

We got M Thomas, Chaplin, Grigg for nothing

You pay peanuts u get Monkeyball and that's what we got

[Rampstar]

yeah but when you add the salaries of all the monkies together they probably come up to about $1.3 million dollars and then when you add keeping Newman, King and Foley then theres about $800-900k is salaries so all up we are paying $2 million to keep all these blokes. Why?

For that amount of money you could put 2 A grade footballers into your list who could really help Richmond.

[tdy]

My biggest issue with the Hardwick era is not developing the back line more.  I appreciated when they drafted Batchelor and put him in the back line and when they moved Deledio back there too but that needed to continue.  It hasn't, we need a distributor if Lids is to move back into the midfield, who is that in our team, Rance?  Its not Newman, he's not that good and after 5 years we should have an Aussie Jones or a Leon Davis who gets 20-30 effective kicks out of the back line every game.

We also need tall defenders, we got Chaplin but he is limited, we must develop two more of our own.  We must spend our draft picks on key defenders, Corey Enright types and get them to 50+ games.

The failures of Post, Griffiths, Dea and Grimes to become this key defender is troubling, Astbury is the latest attempt and I think he is a flop but the jury is still out.

We should have built from the back in the first year and we'd have 6 good defenders now after trying 12 or more who would have 50-100+ games now.  I think we have 1 good one in Rance, and 4 or 5 ok one sin Morris, Chaplin etc
Maybe I'm wrong in my stats but I would have rathered they spent high draft picks on defenders every year, build form the back

[Judge Roughneck]

You ain't wrong

[Mr Magic]

1 elite player in Cotchin and a shedload of overrated/poor players.

Our talent pool is horrible.

[tdy]

No Tidy
They recruited class and paid top dollar for it

Gibson Mcevoy Burgoyne all didn't come cheap

We got M Thomas, Chaplin, Grigg for nothing

You pay peanuts u get Monkeyball and that's what we got

They did it well, Chaplin was just free agency.  Our similar trades are Hampson vs McEvoy.  I think they win by 10 miles on that one.
Chaplin vs Gibson, They win again but by a bit less.
How they hell they got Burgoyne amazes me, they have some genius's on their recruiting dept.

[Rampstar]

Chaplin might have been free agency but when youre wasting $400,000 a year on the tpp then its shameful recruiting.

[Andyy]

I blame: Hardwick

Reason: He's the coach and subsequently responsible for which players run out, as well as their state of mind/motivation.

Solution: Get a coach who inspires the team to go beyond the bar of what's at least acceptable. To push harder and risk themselves for the team, to put their bodies on the line for their mates and the club. Look at Hinkley for example...

[Hellenic Tiger]

Everyone has a valuable point on this one.
Some are more vehement in their arguments and that shows anger and passion to the situation and that's fine too while others make their points and leave it at that. What is certain is that the clubs issues are not solely attributed to one isolated problem but a number of them
Culture which leads to failure which leads to nepotism which then leads to quick fixes which leads to false hope which leads to limited success which leads to failure which leads to false promises and statements which leads to anger which leads to backtracking which leads to more failure to more anger and ultimate resignation that club was wrong which leads to change of the figurehead of the playing side which then leads to new hope and then gets back to culture.

Club's issues are much deeper than a string of bad losses over a part of the season or a lack of finals over a period of 3 decades. Fix the above and we're on our way.

[TigerMonk]

The President to start with.

It's the President who tells the coach the winning style of football the Richmond people want to see.

PROBLEM, we have a woman President who firstly is American & has no idea how football is played & is only holding that position because she is a rich Lawyer & has other interest in the club

Well she aint going to approach a premiership playing coach to tell him that's not the way to play as she don't know any better.

The COACH is next. Why do the players go short, very stuffing short that the man on the mark barely moved. enough to drive anyone out the gates of the MCG & it certainly did me.

PATHETIC.

long direct football gets the players out of danger & releases the pressure but these twits put themselves under pressure over hand balling to idle players & bang is the turnover & punishment.

& why would players play this horrible way ? when its against the play of basic football & coaching.  Match Fixing raises its ugly head.

[the claw]

Don't let the players off so easily Jack

They are as much to blame as the coaching dept.

Far too many have gotten ahead of themselves

And IMHO the Club has also got way too ahead of itself believing that we are far better than what we actually are, our recruiting last year in particular shows this

here here wp. the club and supporters thought we were a certainty for finals that we had become a genuine finals side. yet some of us knew we were nothing but a middling team and we still had heaps of building to do.