Tigers list strategy hasn’t worked: FrawleyHerald-Sun
17 April 2016FORMER Richmond coach Danny Frawley says the Tigers are too reliant on their top six players and a Hawthorn-style rebuild hasn’t worked.
Richmond suffered its third loss of the season on Friday night, going down to West Coast by 68 points.
Frawley said Richmond tried to emulate Hawthorn by recruiting players including Troy Chaplin, Ivan Maric, Bachar Houli, Taylor Hunt and this season Chris Yarran in its bid to rise up the ladder.
“Yarran hasn’t played, but the other guys got them from 10th to eighth to seventh, but then there’s no improvement in those players now,” Frawley told Triple M radio.
“So they’ve actually taken up a lot of list and games in youngsters and they’ve relied on them to get to a certain level and they’re too reliant on their best six players.
“You’ve got to be careful. Hawthorn could afford to get Brian Lake, no one else wanted Brian Lake, but they can afford to take that risk because they’re already up there.
“Richmond tried to climb up and get them in and they got in the finals, but the facts, the last three years, they’ve performed miserably in their first final. They’re too reliant on their best six players.
“(Alex) Rance, (Trent) Cotchin and (Jack) Riewoldt they were all good, then throw in (Dustin) Martin and (Brandon) Ellis, whose form has been down on the last couple of years and (Brett) Deledio hasn’t played, so too reliant on six players.”
Former Richmond chief executive Steven Wright has blamed poor drafting a decade ago and more recent trade mistakes for the club’s current predicament.
Wright, who was in charge of the club from 2004 to 2009, and was involved in the process of appointing Damien Hardwick, said it was too easy to simply blame the senior coach for Tigers’ poor start to 2016.
“To be successful, you need resources, money, good quality coaching and a strong playing list,” Wright told AFL Live.
“And I think Richmond is still struggling with its playing list.
“That all goes back to the 2004 (national) draft. In that draft we had five players in the top 20, and we’ve only got one player from the top 20 who is still there.
“We are lacking that five or six really good players who are 28 years of age and who has been in the system for 10 years. We’ve got some good young kids and we’ve got (Brett) Deledio, but we are lacking in the middle.”
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