Damien Hardwick seething after sloppy Tigers fall to Kangaroos Jesse Hogan
The Age
May 10, 2015 Exasperated Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has flagged scouring their VFL team for reinforcements able to follow his instructions after a horror end to the third quarter gifted North Melbourne a 35-point win in Hobart.
Hardwick bemoaned how the Tigers had, after a tight first half at Blundstone Arena, trailed the Kangaroos by only four points 11 minutes into the third quarter yet by three-quarter-time were down by 44.
"Consistency of performance is what we're after. Unfortunately this week, like last week, [there was a pivotal lapse]. A 15-minute block this week, an eight-minute block last week, the game's shot," he said.
"It's a hard one to fathom . . . at the end of the day it comes down to a 15-minute block in the third quarter. I think they had nine inside[-50] entries for the quarter and they kicked 7.2, some of them from our horrible turnovers, and the game is all of a sudden out of reach."
Senior players including Brett Deledio and Ivan Maric were to blame for some of those third-quarter turnovers, while Dustin Martin was singled out by his coach despite snaring an equal team-high 30 disposals.
"We had Dustin Martin, who did some really good things, gets two balls and kicks them across goals, too long to switch, the ball gets shut down. Our defenders can't defend that. It just goes straight through the sticks. You might as well line up at the centre bounce," he said.
"It's not what we ask him to do and it's not what he normally does, but unfortunately if you don't play to the team structure you get kicked in the backside."
Both coaches, Hardwick and North's Brad Scott, questioned the significance of inside-50 entries, both in terms of this match - the Tigers led 50:41 - and the season so far.
"You'd probably say so, because I think we're ranked No.2 for inside-50 differentials, and we had a number of players off turnover that hurt us," Hardwick said.
"What probably is killing us is . . . our forward line at the moment is not getting the job done. We're getting ample opportunities. Whether it's [thwarted] from our last disposal inside 50, whether it's our ability to hold a mark or ability to win the contested ball, we've got various issues - and a lot of sides are the same."
Hardwick did not reject the suggestion he may be forced into paring back his expectations for the team given their poor starts to 2014 and this season, too.
"It's an interesting one. We've just got to take stock, we've got to look at the tape, we've got to find guys playing at our VFL level - they had a good win today - that are capable of taking us forward, because at the moment the inconsistency of performance of some of our players is not good enough. We've got to find players that are prepared to put their hand up and play the Richmond way," he said.
"I'll still back all of my players in. At stages they can play better than what they have today - there's no doubt about that - but we've also got to be looking forward to those players that are prepared to play how we want to play and take the game on and play at a standard that is acceptable at AFL level. We've just got to make sure we continue to blood those players and get them into the side."
Ty Vickery's chances of a recall were helped not only by the Tigers' struggle to score against North - they kicked only six in the first three quarters - but by Ben Griffiths being forced out of the game in the first quarter with suspected concussion after a collision.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/damien-hardwick-seething-after-sloppy-tigers-fall-to-kangaroos-20150509-ggxzrr.html
