Another masterstroke hiring this bloke.
RICHMOND insists it doesn’t need to rebuild and has defended its recruiting strategy as its nightmare season lurches from bad to worse.
Tigers football boss Dan Richardson said the club knew its mature-age recruits couldn’t take it to a flag, but were forced to take them in the GWS and Gold Coast-forced compromised drafts.
Richardson said the club’s disastrous 1-5 start and slim chance of playing finals wouldn’t deter it from trading early picks for that elusive A-grade player.
“The list strategy won’t change. Clearly we need to improve our top-end talent and the best way to do that is through early draft picks, which we don’t know whether we’ve got yet, or by bringing in some A Grade talent and to do that you need to give up early draft picks,” Richardson said.
Richardson told Triple M that Richmond had recruited the right players in recent years.
“Through the compromised draft period we did bring in a balance of mature age players and draft picks and we were well aware a lot of those mature-age players wouldn’t be able to take us to the next step,” he said.
“We won 15 games last year with a list that’s not drastically different to what it is now. Clearly there’s some injuries and young players who are probably showing a bit of inconsistency at the moment,” he said.
“That certainly doesn’t mean that in Round 6 we’re throwing the white flag up and saying, ‘The season is over’. But clearly we’re not happy with where we’re at.
“We’re certainly not rebuilding, but we know we need to improve and move on from some of the mature-age talent we brought in during the compromised drafts that have taken us to three finals series without winning one.”
