Are the Tigers too easily pleased? Garry Lyon
The Age
August 15, 2014 - 5:00PM The Richmond Football Club is gaining a reputation for being far too easily pleased. They won't like reading this, but what other conclusion are we to draw from their abysmal start to the 2014 season, given the comments of four of their most senior players in recent weeks.
In explaining the Tigers' three-win, 10-loss record after 13 weeks, Ivan Maric had this to say: "Our training standards, and our standards around the football club were so poor. The attention to detail for the little things were not up to the standards we set the season before."
It is an opinion that has been shared by Troy Chaplin, Jack Riewoldt and Brett Deledio in recent weeks. All four are to be commended for their honesty and their willingness to share, publicly, what amounts to an embarrassing admission.
For it is very difficult to fathom how this football side could come back from its compulsory eight-week break over summer, having just competed in their first finals series in 13 years, with anything other than a fanatical and totally uncompromising desire to improve on what they delivered.
After all, it wasn’t as though they had charged admirably into a preliminary or grand final, only to be denied late in the last quarter. The bottom line is, they were bundled out in the first week of the finals by a side that wasn't good enough to qualify on a win/loss ratio, but rather gained entry by virtue of Essendon's suspension.
Having led by 26 points at half-time, they were completely overrun by Carlton in the second half, resulting in a 46-point turnaround and an eventual 20-point loss. It's hardly an excuse for complacency.
After a 15-win home-and-away season, that finals loss should have hurt so badly that the pain of finals defeat should have been the motivating factor that drove their pre-season training and preparation to a whole new level this year.
But what we are hearing now, from the playing group, is that it was anything but. That, in hindsight, they allowed their standards to drop away so much that by the time the AFL season came around they were ill-equipped, both physically and mentally, to deal with the demands and pressure that a repeat finals campaign demands.
They were too easily pleased with what they delivered last year and didn't come prepared to pay the price to improve on that result.
And if they think a barnstorming, flashing finish to the season, that has them as an unlikely contender for a finals spot with three weeks to go is enough to wipe the sins of earlier in the year, then they are in grave danger of falling for the same old trap all over again.
Making the finals would not be enough to suggest they have advanced on last year. Winning a final would just be a pass mark, and anything less would be a failure in a season of lost opportunity. And if the players are not thinking that way, they are allowing themselves to be seduced by a series of results that have come about once the pressure valve of expectation was finally released.
Thoroughbred trainers will tell you they have all been seduced by horses in their stable that made a habit of getting back in their races, only to flash down the outside when the race was over to record an eye-catching fifth or sixth.
Ridden "on the speed" the following start, to be in a position to win at the top of the straight, the same horse drops the bit and tails off towards the rear of the field. Put simply, some horses are better chasers than they are leaders, but they never quite get to the finishing line first.
Richmond has played its best and most consistent football when it became almost certain that it would not be playing in September this year. And yes, I know there were injuries to Maric and Alex Rance and Brett Deledio early in the year, but so what? Take a look at the injury list of the competition leaders this season and you get an example of coping with adversity.
This was a side coming off a 15-win season. It needed to be able to cover the loss of important players and still find a way to win.
Yet, instead, it slumped to a series of embarrassing losses that led to some confused messaging and plenty of head scratching.
The positive news is the Tigers, belatedly, appear to have nailed down the issues that led to them at one stage being the biggest under-achievers in the competition. As stated, the players owned up to the fact that they had come back to training, lacking a hard edge. Then the acid was put on their captain, Trent Cotchin, to be harder and more demanding of the group.
A similar message was relayed to Damien Hardwick, that the playing group wanted stronger direction. The implied criticism there is that they were getting away with too much. That the leaders didn't identify that the standards of last year had dropped.
And while you would much prefer that the entire playing group were capable of addressing these issues as they arose, which you suspect would happen at a Sydney or a Hawthorn, the reality is the Tigers are still trying to develop a culture of "self diagnosis" and ‘"self medication" and in the interim they will need strong guidance and stuff.
Their form in the past six weeks, rather than stuff the form of last year, adds to the perception that they struggle with expectation. Their wins over West Coast, Port Adelaide and, last Friday night, Essendon, should not be celebrated as the surprise uprising of an emerging force.
They should be seen as a sign of the logical and continued development of a team that worked extremely hard last season to put itself in contention, and which has worked even harder again this year to benefit from, and improve on a long overdue finals appearance.
That there is undoubted excitement because of the unexpected push for a spot in the eight should not lose sight of the reasons the Tigers are on the outside in the first place.
They deserve credit for gathering themselves and being able to take stock in the middle of a season that was going horribly wrong. But unless they learn from the reasons why they find themselves in this position, they will be in danger of becoming one of those frustrating types that comes flying home when the race is well and truly over.
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