Tigers froze, just poorJoshua Papanikolaou
SEN
16 Apr 2016, 12:21PMIn a game Richmond desperately needed to show improvement after a poor start to the season they froze and were overall very poor in their 68-point defeat to West Coast at Domain Stadium, says David King.
The Tigers now have only one win from their first four games and that is not even close to the most concerning statistic when analysing their first month of football.
"It was just poor, all around it was poor," said King on SEN's Crunch Time.
"They had no answers down back, I don't think I've seen a more dysfunctional defensive game - they didn't put any pressure on the Eagles.
"Well they froze down back, they couldn't execute out of the backline.
"I keep going back to what you can guarantee when you walk in the door, I can guarantee that I'll put pressure on and do my best to force the opposition into turnovers - they didn't bring any of that."
The first half in particular was largely one-sided as the Eagles simply refused the visitors any easy access into their own forward line, the inside 50 count finished 60 to 27.
Amazingly the Tigers only had two fewer possessions for the entire match but had just four scoring shots at half time.
"They kicked 15 points from turnovers, the average is almost ten goals across the competition, 56 points, they kicked 15 and they were laughable errors late," added King.
"It was so bad (the numbers), no you can't throw this one away (as the coach).
"The same thing happened last year."
Mark Robinson was stunned with how easily the Eagles dominated territory and suggested that coach Damien Hardwick may even consider forgetting the game altogether in terms of a review.
"It was unbelievable the stark difference in the numbers," he said.
"They went with the plan to handball out of the backline, that was going really well until they started missing targets.
"Then in the second quarter they couldn't even get it out of the backline.
"I mean the word froze, it just collapsed, everything collapsed... the only thing that can be done on this is work, head down and work their way through it."
Read more at: http://www.sen.com.au/news/04-16/david-king-dysfunctional-tigers-froze-just-poor#qB4AK9QiBZMEDW81.99