Dimma: I still believe in our playersJustin Talent
SEN
05 Jun 2016Richmond coach Damien Hardwick believes his side can still play finals footy this year and trusts that his current playing group can do the job despite an increasingly worrying injury list.
Richmond was handed their seventh loss of the season by ladder leaders North Melbourne by 70 points, ending a three-win streak and severely denting their hopes of making the top eight.
This has been further impacted by a significant injury toll, with Steven Morris, Dylan Grimes and Ben Griffiths the new names to be added to a list that already includes Bachar Houli, Reece Conca and new recruit Chris Yarran, who is still yet to play a game in the yellow and black.
However Hardwick believes that the youngsters coming in to fill the shoes of the injured players can make a mark.
“I’ve got belief in the group, there’s no doubt about that,” he said on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“Some of the guys are not playing as well as what we would like but I’ve also got faith in the younger guys coming through.”
The Tigers coach confirmed that this means the Tigers will continue to try and recover their poor opening half of the season and try make their fourth consecutive finals appearance, stating that his side’s best footy was still in front of them.
“We’re not playing anywhere near as well as we can, we’re well below expectation… I still feel our best footy is in front of us,” said Hardwick.
“We have probably never had our best side available to pick. Most sides haven’t to be frank and we need to make sure we perform better with the players we have on the park. We’re off it, we’ll get better and we’ll keep striving to where we want to go.
“We are still firmly in the belief if we get everything right we can challenge for the eight. It’s tough, we know that, but we’ve done it before. We’ll back ourselves in and give ourselves every chance”
Hardwick says that questions will be asked of all aspects of the side as the Tigers prepare to bounce back against Gold Coast at the MCG next Sunday.
“We’ll question the way we played, we’ll question the way we coached and we’ll question the way the players came out and performed,” he said.
“That happens on a weekly basis and it’s a performance based industry and at the moment we’re well short.”
http://www.sen.com.au/news/afl/06-16/dimma-i-still-believe-in-our-players-----------------------------------------------------
Hardwick stressed the injuries were no excuse for the loss to North Melbourne, but yesterday admitted the interrupted seasons of Grimes and others had hurt the Tigers’ season.
“(Alex) Rance is our best defender, there’s no doubt ‘Grimsey’ is our second best,” Hardwick told SEN on Saturday.
“He’s incredibly underrated by those in AFL circles. I think he’s played four games for us so we haven’t had the consistency of his performance, which is probably the reason our backline hasn’t quite functioned the way we’d like it to.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/footy-form/richmond-can-still-make-finals-says-a-defiant-damien-hardwick-despite-seventh-defeat-of-the-season/news-story/4e52826508afc564a5aacc4fed4699df