By Cameron Rose, 7 Jun 2016
It’s widely acknowledged that Richmond have five gun players that all deserve their place in the upper echelon of the competition’s best – Alex Rance, Jack Riewoldt, Trent Cotchin, Dustin Martin and Brett Deledio.
There isn’t an AFL club where any single one of them wouldn’t be in the top five players on the list, and they are a balanced group in that you have a key forward, key defender, and midfielders with both an inside and outside game, and above average goal-kicking ability.
There is a strong case that no club in the AFL has a better collective group of five players, especially given that balance, so the question must be asked. Are the Tigers under coach Damien Hardwick making the most of their talents?
Hardwick has built Richmond from wooden spoon contender in 2010 to beaten elimination finalist across 2013-15. Twice they finished fifth on the ladder, in 2013 and 2015, but were unable to defeat the eighth placed teams in those elimination finals.
The loss to Carlton in the 2013 elimination final haunts the club still.
For all the progress made to get there, the events that transpired on that fateful day have their DNA imprinted on everything that has gone wrong at Punt Road since. The Tigers went in as prohibitive favourites, and built up a 33-point lead based largely off dazzling and unstoppable ball movement, before a Chris Judd-inspired third quarter sparked a comeback that took the Blues all the way to a famous victory.
In the aftermath, Hardwick and Richmond were roundly criticised for a game style that was too attacking, unable to stem the flow when the opposition got a run on and lacking a physical presence around the ball.
It seems those criticisms were taken to heart, and instead of trusting the years of build-up and 22 home-and-away games of football that put them one win outside a top-four finish, Hardwick instead decided to make changes based on two quarters of a final. Given that Carlton kicked five goals in eight minutes to get back in the game, those changes were perhaps made based on 500 seconds of football.
We all know that players and teams get rated on their output in finals, but often the balance is skewed, and overreactions are more commonplace than deductive reasoning. The baby gets thrown out with the bath-water.
Hardwick made a mistake by allowing Judd too much freedom at stoppages in that third term. Judd is in any conversation about the best player of this century, and he was a champion of the game for a reason. Sometimes they beat you, and this is more likely to happen when you leave them alone to run amok.
So bringing in players like Matt Thomas and Taylor Hunt, and elevating Ricky Petterd to the senior list on the basis of needing more toughness around the ball, was never the solution. How could it be? Imagine the thought process behind it. Talk about bringing tablespoons to a gun fight.
The 2013 final loss was only ever a question of inadequate match-day tactics, not a poor year-long gameplan.
This obsession with ‘hard, experienced bodies’, which is code for ‘slow and not good enough to make it at other clubs’ has continued through to the most recent off-season, with Jacob Townsend from GWS and Andrew Moore from Port added to the list. Both have struggled when given their chance at AFL level this season, as it was expected they would.
Even more destructive to Richmond’s future in the aftermath of that Carlton loss, Hardwick also implemented a slower game-style, nullifying the previous attacking instincts he had been honing.
In some ways, Richmond were three years ahead of their time, given they were playing 2016 football in 2013. If only the media-driven doubts hadn’t crept in, and the football department had believed in themselves, in much the manner that the board has believed in them.
Another common criticism of the Tigers in Hardwick’s early years was their reliance on Jack Riewoldt in the forward-line. Riewoldt won two Coleman medals in 2010 and 2012, and offered Tigers fans a beacon of hope in the dark periods, much as Matthew Richardson had done before him.
When your team is perennially down the bottom, supporters look for positivity through means other than wins, and are proud of individual awards or recognition their players receive.
Hardwick tried to build a forward-line that was less reliant on Riewoldt, and this became a microcosm for the entire team. The most consistent criticism of Richmond over the last three seasons, particularly off the back of those elimination final losses, was that the Tigers rely too heavily on their top end, and the bottom six falls away more markedly than at other clubs.
Like a lot of wisdom in the AFL, opinion and speculation quickly becomes fact.
Richmond’s second tier, which comprises Shane Edwards, Shaun Grigg, Bachar Houli, Brandon Ellis, Anthony Miles, Nick Vlastuin, Kane Lambert and Dylan Grimes have all proven they can play excellent football and have proven integral parts of an in-form Tiger unit that was able to finish fifth on the ladder twice in three years. There are a number of younger players that have shown more than enough too.
What if the truth is that Richmond actually don’t rely enough on their gun players?
Let’s start with Riewoldt, who has been in superb form playing further up the ground over the last year and a half, including winning All-Australian honours last season. He won his first Coleman medal as a 21-year-old, just as Lance Franklin did before him. It’s a tremendous achievement that speaks to a special talent.
Riewoldt has as much influence when the ball is in his hands as any key forward in the game. Highly skilled on either side of his body, a beautiful field kick, steady set shot for goal, with creativity and vision also counted among his strengths.
Yet Hardwick chose to develop a gameplan that attempted to spread the load among other key talls like Tyrone Vickery and Ben Griffiths, two players far less talented, hard-working and consistent, and much more one-dimensional.
What’s the point of having a gun forward if you don’t utilise his talents? Sydney have been facing questions over whether they rely too heavily on Lance Franklin, but so they should ask a lot of him. If he’s not the best player in the game he’s in the top three. Why wouldn’t they use him to devastating effect?
The last three Coleman medal winners, all key forwards, have played on grand final day. It’s not the evil that some commentators will have you believe.
If you compare Riewoldt’s stats as a 21-year-old from 2010 against the more mature 2015-16 version when he has played further up the ground, he only averages two more disposals and one more mark per game, along with one less goal.
He averages 14 touches, 6.4 marks and 2.4 goals per game across 2015-16.
Josh Kennedy, who plays a deeper role for West Coast, gets the same amount of the ball as Riewoldt, but takes more marks and kicks more goals. Lance Franklin, yes, a freak, pushes up like Riewoldt does, but gets a lot more of the ball, and still kicks the goals. The Eagles and Swans have a gun forward, and so use them appropriately.
Are Brett Deledio and Dustin Martin being used to maximum effect?
Brett Deledio is all but the flawless specimen for AFL football. The perfect frame. Penetrating kick, strong hands, good decision-making, acceleration and skill.
Sit back for a second and imagine Deledio, with his skill set and the way he plays, in the Hawthorn machine over the last few years. He’d be a 40-goal-a-season mid-forward who sweeps across half-back from time to time, a multiple All-Australian, probable best and fairest and possible Brownlow winner.
Deledio has been very good for Richmond, but his talents aren’t allowed to shine under a go-slow regime. Picture him in any one of the fast-moving midfields we’re seeing this season, carrying it 40 metres and kicking 60-metre bombs into open forward-lines, or switching play across the field with penetrating 50-metre passes to break the game open for his side.
Instead, Tigers fans have had to witness him chipping the ball around half-back or going cold up forward waiting for the ball to arrive.
No wonder he is so important to the Richmond line-up, as has been well documented. His ability to break the game open sees him rise above the stodgy Tiger game style from time to time. If only he had the luxury of doing so more often.
Dustin Martin was an inside ball-winner in his first year at Richmond, but gradually became a more outside player that spent significant time in the forward-line. In the last six weeks he has taken up a more inside role once more, but the goals have dried up.
In his first season, he recorded contested possession percentages and clearance numbers (ranked 17 in the AFL) that haven’t been replicated since. His second year saw goals (33, which would have won the goal-kicking at five other clubs and was the most by a midfielder in the competition) and goal assists (ranked 16 in the AFL) that still stand as career-best.
So in his first two seasons, Martin established himself as an inside beast with a lethal outside game and unmatched goal sense, but Hardwick hasn’t been able to tap into all of those facets since.
Instead he was sent to half-back for a while and made to work on his defensive side because, you know, no point letting an offensive weapon loose when you have them. Much better to train that potency out of them and have 22 even contributors.
Despite being a three-time best and fairest winner and potentially the owner of the 2012 Brownlow medal, Trent Cotchin has been much maligned in recent years, unfairly so for the most part.
Over 2014-15, he averaged 26 disposals per home-and-away game, but only 25 disposals total in his two finals. That reputation of failing in finals is a tough one to shake, even if he was Richmond’s best in that 2013 final against Carlton.
Cotchin has played his football the hard way, winning his own ball and taking a battering when doing so, but his best football was in 2012 when Richmond first started playing a more attacking style that they carried into 2013. It was a style that was good enough to beat both of that season’s subsequent grand finalists, Hawthorn and Sydney, by a combined 15 goals.
Cotchin won 45 per cent of his touches in the contest and laid career high tackles in 2012, yet still averaged a goal and five inside 50s per game, also career highs. There was a freedom about his own form that paralleled the team, when running in waves and ballistic ball movement was commonplace.
The seeds of on-field kinetic energy that Hardwick planted in 2012 bore fruit in 2013, again until the third quarter of the elimination final, which we keep coming back to. There was every reason to expect the Tigers would refine and enhance that exciting game style in 2014, instead of hitting the brakes and putting the club in reverse.
The best years of Riewoldt, Deledio, Martin and Cotchin have been wasted on a futile plan that hasn’t made the most of their talents, and in actual fact has diluted them. Their combined strength is almost seen as a negative.
Alex Rance has played career best football in the last few seasons, to become widely acknowledged as the best key defender in the game, and by a margin. He does everything at full pace, and would be even more complemented by a game style that went with those instincts rather than against them.
The AFL industry is over-obsessed with high draft picks, because that is where a lot of special talent lies that you can build a club around. After drafting Deledio in 2004, but flopping badly with the rest of that draft and 2005’s, Richmond did this successfully from 2006-2009, and brought in Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance and Martin.
From 2010 the drafts were compromised due to the expansion sides, but even so the Tigers have been unable to land another rolled gold game-changer, and in the meantime six and a half years of Hardwick’s tenure has amounted to nothing.
It’s all well and good to spread the load among a young side on the rise, to give players a taste of responsibility and see what they can handle. But once you’re in a place to contend, which Richmond has been in the last three years, your best players need to take you to the top.
The time for paralysis by analysis at Richmond must come to an end. It’s not too late yet for these players, but it will be with another 30 months of restriction, which is how long Hardwick’s contract has to run. There must be an immediate change.
The coach needs to let freedom reign once more if he is to see his tenure through. Let them loose and back them in. All footballers are not created equal, so don’t treat them that way. Let the best players play the way they were born to do, and watch them bring the others along.
If Hardwick can’t release the brakes, Richmond will keep living their Groundhog Day in 2017, and not only will he feel the cold steel of a guillotine on the back of his neck, he will have single handedly seen to it that five of the best players to ever wear the yellow and black couldn’t fulfill their true potential.
http://www.theroar.com.au/2016/06/07/hardwick-last-legs-release-guns/Hammer. Nail. Head. Halfstep slowly killing us, wasting the best years of our best players and trashing their careers with his pee poor strategies and insipid game plan.
