Why Richmond is a Shakespearean tragedyGraham Cornes
Adelaide Advertiser
September 19, 2015WILLIAM Shakespeare could not have scripted the tragedy that is the Richmond Football Club.
At various stages of the last three AFL seasons, the Tigers have shared premiership favouritism; have beaten the best of the other teams and finished respectably inside the top eight.
Its legion of long-suffering fans mobilise for September. However, they don’t dare to be optimistic.
They know their hearts are going to be broken.
No AFL club in the 21st century has promised so much but delivered so little.
So it was last week at the MCG when North Melbourne outplayed and outsmarted the hapless Tigers.
If they weren’t such an arrogant bunch you would feel sorry for them, however they take “unsociable football” to a Hawthorn-like level.
Unfortunately they don’t have the talent or the underlying discipline of Hawthorn and end up as pathetic parodies of tough, aggressive footballers. Instead of respect they get derision.
Yet, I feel for their coach, Damien Hardwick.
By any measure except one, he has done a fantastic job.
However when you continually fail in the first week of the finals, the football world judges you too harshly.
Mark Williams suffered in a similar fashion when Port Adelaide could not convert its minor round dominance to finals success.
Now a mentor to Hardwick at Richmond, he knows how to deal with this pressure.
When your major sponsor turns on you and calls for your head like Alan Scott did, you find untapped reserves of determination and resolve.
Hardwick will need that strength as he and his team face another summer of ridicule and criticism.
For all their self-inflicted mediocrity, however, the Tigers were a victim of one of the most unsporting acts in AFL history. In round 23, the week before the finals started, by a freak of scheduling, North Melbourne again had to play Richmond.
The Kangaroo scandalously tried to manipulate the positions of the final eight by resting 11 players from its best team. As it transpired the result of that North Melbourne/Richmond game was immaterial because the Crows could not beat Geelong and the ladder positions did not change.
Tigers supporters reacts as the North Melbourne loss.
However, there was another unexpected benefit for the Kangaroos in that its team was rested and refreshed for the first week of the finals, whereas Richmond, which had played the final minor round game on its merits could not enjoy a similar advantage.
Kangaroos coach, Brad Scott might feign indignation that he exploited a loop-hole but the AFL must immediately act and punish clubs for such blatant tanking.
Of course that will be too late help Richmond whose premiership window which was barely ajar anyway, is closing.
It still has a potent mid-field — Dustin Martin is the equal of Nat Fyfe and Patrick Dangerfield — and the captain, Trent Cotchin, despite last week’s disappointment, is also one of the best.
It has one of the great power forwards in Jack Riewoldt, and key defender, Alex Rance was first pick as an all-Australian this year.
The rest are foot-soldiers with an occasional burst of brilliance thrown in. They are the most enigmatic team in the competition.
No one epitomised that more last week than tall forward Ty Vickery.
Vickery is provocative at the best of times with a swagger and a confidence that is not always sustained by his performances.
He turned the game and his opponent on its head with a brilliant individual goal in the first quarter, soloed brilliantly to goal just before three quarter time, but the inevitable disaster befell him in the last quarter.
With the game in the balance he selfishly tried to do it all himself when a simple handball over the top would have resulted in a certain goal.
His form had been good leading into the finals but that one act defined him — a metaphor of disappointment in a black and gold jumper.
The football wheel eventually turns — even Shakespeare once wrote; “there are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”
Barring a football miracle however, one of those events will not be a Richmond premiership.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/graham-cornes-richmond-is-a-shakespearean-tragedy/story-fnia3m9p-1227533605267
