Hardwick remains upbeat despite big lossBrad Elborough
The Age
16 April 2016Tigers coach Damien Hardwick was accurate in his summation of Richmond's 68-point loss to West Coast on Friday night.
"We just got beaten tonight by a far superior unit. We played a side tonight that smashed us in contested ball, forward half, turnover, and on the scoreboard," he said.
"That's the game in a nutshell. It's quite easy to see why they won."
But you have to wonder if he has the answers as to how he's going to turn it around.
"We've got to mend the process. Obviously it's broken at the moment," he said.
"We'll take stock, look at some things that we're doing, tinker a few things and try and get a better result.
"So we'll work our way through it. We've got a pretty significant break (nine days), so we'll be able to get some training into the boys and try to rectify a few of the issues we're having at the minute."
There is a fair bit to rectify.
The Tigers are now 1-3 after consecutive losses to Collingwood, Adelaide and now West Coast.
After playing Melbourne in round five and then Port Adelaide in round six (both at the MCG), they have a tough run against Hawthorn, Sydney, and Fremantle (back in Perth). They also have to play North Melbourne and Gold Coast before their bye in round 13.
They look like being without David Astbury due to an ankle injury that resulted in him nearly having to be carried from Domain Stadium. And Shaun Hampson sat in the bench wrapped in ice bags for the second half – and should have been there a quarter earlier.
Ivan Maric and Brett Deledio will both come into contention for the game against the Demons, but both are under-done and in desperate need of a run.
But it is only round four and Hardwick remains confident that finals are still very much achievable this season.
"Very much so," he said. "It seems so far way at the moment. But we've been in this situation before. I'm pretty confident our players and our coaching group will bounce back.
"Prior to tonight we'd averaged 26, 27 shots on goal. We've been giving over the ball a little bit too early through back half transition, which we spoke about over the course of the last two weeks.
"We've been in a similar situation before. We'll modify a few things, and go back to the drawing board on a couple of others.
"The game changes, we've got to change. We tried to go with the change, it didn't work out, so we'll look at a few things to see how it works out from here on end."
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/afl-season-2016-tigers-coach-damien-hardwick-remains-upbeat-despite-big-loss-20160415-go7tuw.html
