We don’t need to rebuild: TigersChris Vernuccio
Herald-Sun
May 1, 2016RICHMOND 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.
And Richmond coach Damien Hardwick insists the Tigers did not overrate their list after finishing within a win of the top four last season.
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 told Triple M.
“But that strategy was by necessity rather than choice because of the introduction of two new teams and at the start of Damien’s reign the club was rock bottom and we needed to find a way to become competitive again.
“We did that relatively quickly compared to a lot of other clubs at the bottom at that time and now the challenge, clearly, is for us to take the next step.”
Three weeks ago Hardwick said the Tigers needed to “take a little half-step back to go two steps forward”, but agreed a list overhaul wasn’t required.
The main problem for the Tigers, Hardwick said, was the team hasn’t performed to the level it’s capable of and had been unsettled by injuries to key players.
“I don’t know whether that’s necessary for us,” Hardwick told 3AW on Sunday.
“You look at the players that are playing at the moment. We’ve probably got six to seven first, second or third-year players playing at present.
“The thing that’s probably caught us a little off guard is the fact that guys like Dylan Grimes and Nick Vlaustin, these types of players haven’t been playing for a period of time and the guys that we’ve currently got within the side are not playing to the level of expectation we know they can.
“We’ve got a unified group and our playing group to their credit are very resilient,”
“We’ve been in this situation before, we’re playing nowhere near to the level what I feel is our potential and we’ve got to make sure we continue to consistently get the fundamentals in our game back up to the standard that we know we can.
“We had a level of performance last year that was able to be within a kick of top four but we haven’t reached that level this year, yet.”
Richmond’s injury issues deepened with captain Trent Cotchin fracturing his cheekbone and Kane Lambert suffering a punctured lung in Saturday night’s 35-point loss to Port Adelaide.
The Tigers face Hawthorn and Sydney in the next fortnight and are staring down the barrel of a 1-7 start, but Hardwick said they weren’t giving up on the season and would continue to pick their best side.
“We’re trying to win as many games as well possibly can, every team’s the same,” he said.
“We speak about our playing jumper and what it means to our players and every player will be playing accordingly to that.
“We will be picking our best available side for the majority of the year when they become available
“We’ve got some players out we’d love to have in the side at the moment but when we get those players back we think we’ll put in a more Richmond-like performance.”
Richardson said the club wouldn’t be panicked into wholesale shifts in philosophy.
“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.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/richmond-insist-it-doesnt-need-to-rebuild-despite-15-start-to-the-season/news-story/d921e58e881169eaca12eef36da6059e
