Damien Hardwick expects "quick bounce" back from Richmond Tigers in 2017Ronny Lerner
The Age
4 August 2016Richmond will not go down the St Kilda path of trading out established key players as coach Damien Hardwick expects a "quick bounce" back to competitiveness for the Tigers in 2017.
The Saints have taken a bold approach to their list management strategy in recent years, with the likes of Brendon Goddard, Nick Dal Santo, Rhys Stanley and Ben McEvoy all let go either as free agents or trades.
Those moves directly or indirectly led to the Saints acquiring Tom Hickey, Josh Bruce, Shane Savage, Luke Dunstan, Hugh Goddard and Billy Longer.
Giving away pick five in last year's draft also netted St Kilda Jake Carlisle and Jade Gresham.
After a few lean years, St Kilda have won half of their games this season and are now hovering on the outskirts of the top eight.
Richmond will miss out on the finals this year for the first time since 2012 and much has been made of what they might be able to bring into the club if they traded out at least one member of their 'big five' – Trent Cotchin, Brett Deledio, Jack Riewoldt, Dustin Martin and Alex Rance – in order to fast-track their improvement.
However, Hardwick intimated that those players were all off limits and was backing his current list, which he has described on more than one occasion this year as the most excitement group of players he has had at his disposal, to lead Richmond's return to the upper reaches of the ladder.
"From a list management point of view, we've got really good players here that are elite players," Hardwick said.
"We've got a lot of young players I feel that are going to come through that we haven't seen the best of.
"Kamdyn McIntosh (ankle) we've lost for the year, Corey Ellis I've had missing for half a year, Connor Menadue has just come back, Ben Lennon will get an opportunity possibly to play this week.
"These sort of players are the guys that are going to take us forward so we've got some really top-end talent. We've also got some emerging players in Nick Vlastuin, Brandon Ellis, these types.
"It'll be a quick bounce from my point of view. We haven't had the year that we would like to have had, there's no doubt about that. Our fans are disappointed. We're disappointed. We've got to get better."
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