Richmond coach Damian Hardwick frustrated by his side’s loss to the Western Bulldogs at the MCGSam Edmund
Herald-Sun
April 11, 2015 7:11PMRICHMOND coach Damien Hardwick was last night battling to bury his frustration after the Tigers surrendered to the Western Bulldogs in a game it statistically dominated.
The Tigers racked up 77 more disposals than the Dogs, won the contested and uncontested ball counts and had six more inside 50s, yet trailed at every change in a 19-point loss.
Hardwick was exasperated by his side’s sloppy ball use going forward and its drastic inability to lock the ball in the attacking arc.
“Yeah, don’t even look at the stats, don’t worry about it,” Hardwick started.
“Credit to the Bulldogs. I thought they played really well, their pressure around the contest was very good, their ability to score when they went inside 50m was very good.
“The fact of the matter is we made too many mistakes — that was one part of the game. The other part of the game is we went inside 50m 54 times, we win three loose ball gets and lay five tackles. You’re not going to win a game of footy doing that. It’s an area that we need to improve and we need to improve it quickly if we’re going to win footy games.”
In a press conference that sounded similar to several during the Tigers’ disastrous 3-11 start to last season, Hardwick said Richmond “only have ourselves to blame”.
Asked if it was a case of one step forward, two steps back, he said: “To a degree. Without taking anything away from the Bulldogs, we’ve just got some areas of our game that were incredibly frustrating today that we can fix, we should fix and we will fix.
“But unfortunately it’s cost us a win. That’s something we’ve got to take on-board and get better at because it’s not good enough at the moment.
“The fact is the delivery inside 50m wasn’t good enough and then when there was a contest they were harder. Loose ball gets inside 50m are golden. I think we had three, they had 16. You get smashed in that area it’s just coming straight out with no pressure on it. Just bang, straight down the other end.
“At the moment we’re well below expectation in that area. We know that, we’ll improve it, but we expected a better result than we got today.”
Hardwick praised his side’s defenders, lead by the brilliant Alex Rance, but said “unfortunately our offence hurt our defence”.
“They kicked five goals from the goalsquare, which indicates you’ve turned the ball over horribly, which we did,” he said.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/richmond-coach-damian-hardwick-frustrated-by-his-sides-loss-to-the-western-bulldogs-at-the-mcg/story-fndv8t7m-1227300019595
