Richmond coach Damien Hardwick believes Tigers can play AFL finals this seasonRonny Lerner
The Age
13 May 2016Despite sitting in 15th spot on the ladder with a 1-6 record, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick is not giving up hope of finals this year and believes suggestions that his team requires a rebuild are premature.
After three consecutive elimination final losses, Richmond headed into this season with high expectations.
However, 2016 has been nothing short of a disaster with the Tigers losing their last six matches after an unconvincing first-round victory against a developing Carlton team.
Speaking ahead of their daunting task against Sydney this weekend, Hardwick admitted he was going through one of the toughest periods of his seven-year coaching career but insisted he still had a playing list at his disposal that could make the top eight and drew confidence from the fact that his side had started the last three seasons in similarly slow fashion.
"The great thing about our footy club is we've been in this situation before. We've been resilient by nature and we'll get ourselves out of it," Hardwick said at Punt Road Oval on Thursday.
"The hard thing is sometimes it's really difficult to see where the next win comes but it can quite easily turn at the stuff of the switch and we're hoping it's this week versus Sydney.
"I can feel it's coming, we've just got to make sure we believe in ourselves, have the confidence to play to the best of our ability and we'll get the result we're after.
"I have got enormous faith in this group and they've delivered for me before and I've got no doubt they'll deliver for me again.
"I've got no doubt our form will turn, we've got some good players playing well.
"We've been doing a lot of talking, now we need to start delivering some results because we're well short of where we need to be. We're not giving up on the season.
"We have done it previously, we're probably a little bit further back than what we'd like, there's no doubt about that, but it's a very even competition, sides can go up and down and injuries can come and go so we're looking forward to having a really good challenge over the next stuff block."
Club president Peggy O'Neal was recently forced to deny a comprehensive review of the football department was taking place and Hardwick insisted his team was not in rebuild mode despite seemingly going as far as it could go following three failed finals campaigns and a horrid start to 2016.
"From our point of view, our list management happens all the time," Hardwick said.
"We're really happy with our list. We've got some great quality players there, we've got some great emerging young talent as well. So from that point of view, I'm very, very happy with where we are at the moment.
"I've got a capable playing list, capable of playing finals. We're not playing anywhere near the level of expectation I know and the players believe they can.
"We're way off it at the moment but no doubt we've got the cattle to get us where we need to go."
Richmond's task of ending their run of outs won't get any easier this week as they attempt to knock off the red-hot Swans and Hardwick predicted the game would be like "trench warfare".
"We need to win the midfield battle and get the ball in our front half to give our forwards the chance of kicking a winning score and on the offset we need to deny them those entries going the other way because they've got some quality forwards there," Hardwick said.
"You look at the quality and the depth of their midfield, they're the envy of most other clubs in the AFL. We've got to give ourselves every chance of matching that and looking forward to the challenge of playing such a quality outfit."
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