Change in attitude the key to Richmond’s form reversal Mark Robinson
Herald-Sun
August 30, 2014 HOW many times do we hear a coach talk about attitude?
At Punt Rd, Damien Hardwick sounds like an iPod stuck on repeat and not shuffle.
Attitude is performance. The contested ball. Using the corridor. Play the game how we want to play it. Plenty of run. Take the game on.
His problem, and it’s a problem for plenty of coaches with teams in various stages of maturity, is identifying, promoting and harnessing that attitude.
It’s why coaches play tricks with their players. They search for the trigger which motivates. They go to the movies or bring in Leading Teams. Not so long ago, a night’s drinking might be the answer.
And sometimes, it just happens without coach control.
At three wins, 10 losses, the Tigers were shot. The game plan, while having good intentions, was stuttering and safe. Players kicked the ball sideways and short. Risk football was replaced by conservatism. To borrow a tedious but true line from commentator Dwayne Russell, too many times the players made it someone else’s problem.
With each defeat, the mind became muddled. What are we doing wrong? Even Hardwick didn’t have an answer. The players tried and failed. By the time they got to play Sydney in Round 14, the breathtaking ball movement from the Tigers in 2013 was another era.
Truth be known, the Tigers believed they had turned the corner in Round 12 against North Melbourne, when they led by 35 points at half-time and still lost by 28.
Then they lost to Fremantle. And then to Sydney.
And then the Tigers met Nate Anderson.
You’ll remember him. He’s the young fella seriously ill with cancer who Jake King brought in to the inner circle ahead of the St Kilda game in Round 15. He was in the wheelchair. He’s the one the players touched as they ran out and high-fived when they returned after the final siren.
Jake King says Nate has changed his life.
It’s not folly to suggest Nate might’ve helped changed Richmond season, too.
At 3-10, the Tigers were besieged by the woe-is-us attitude. They were being examined and criticised and the players were defensive and irky.
Often, seeing others far less fortunate eases the troubles.
Nate is fighting for his life, all Richmond was doing was fighting for his season.
It’s called perspective.
Luke Ball, reflecting on his career this week, described as “just brilliant’’ what players feel after visiting a children’s hospital. Their power to bring a smile to a face on a tiny body struggling for life.
He spoke of the young girl who joined him to run through the banner for his 200th game. She had cancer and Ball was her favourite player. Ball made her day and the fact Ball remembered it tells us she made his day his well.
Always, the family thanks the player and the football club, when sometimes the player and the football club should thank the family.
Richmond has not lost a match since meeting Nate. It’s now eight on the trot and tonight they play the Swans for a position in the finals.
In those eight weeks, much has changed mechanically.
Deledio and Martin are centre-forward and not centre-back. Miles has given them grit and in doing so has released Cotchin. Chaplin is leading again. Maric’s enthusiasm and leadership has spread and been consumed. Rance is a giant, Petterd is playing the footy of his career. And so is Houli. And Ellis realised he had more in him and the team needed more out of him.
The team itself was mentally alive.
Yet, it’s too easy to say the mechanics — the strategy and tactics — changed Richmond’s season. For if they were the prerequisites for good footy teams, clubs would simply shop for the best tactical mind and plonk them in the chair.
No, something happened at the Tigers. They were living in their bubble, internalising, looking at each other and doubting and questioning. And then their bubble was pricked.
From an insular world, they saw the outside world, a real world. They met Nate Anderson.
Who really knows how much Nate helped Richmond.
How much doesn’t really matter.
He did. And here we are and Richmond is playing for their lives.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/change-in-attitude-the-key-to-richmonds-form-reversal-writes-mark-robinson/story-fnelctok-1227041746004
