Tiger cubs to take on leadership role
9:28:36 AM Fri 3 February, 2006
Tony Greenberg
richmondfc.com.au
Richmond is set to introduce a junior leadership group within its playing ranks.
And, it’s the Club’s current senior playing leadership group, comprising captain Kane Johnson, vice-captain Nathan Brown and deputy vice-captains Joel Bowden, Matthew Richardson and Darren Gaspar, which has devised the plan to fast-track the next generation of leaders at Tigerland.
“Because we’ve got such an old group and such a young group of players, we felt we needed to develop a group in between that could take over from us and give them roles now to build their leadership skills. We just thought that was a really important area for the Club’s future,” Tiger skipper Johnson said.
The senior leadership group will announce the junior leaders during Richmond’s Community Camp at Ballarat next week (February 6-9).
“There will be about half a dozen players involved, but they don’t even know about this yet. It’ll all be revealed in Ballarat,” Johnson said.
“The boys that we’ve chosen are all good kids, mainly around the 23-24 year-old bracket, with one or two perhaps a bit younger.
“As part of their junior leadership role, they’ll do certain things around the Club, but they will also receive help in developing their leadership skills.
“I just think it’s going to work very well . . .”
Johnson added that the senior leadership group had been charged with other key areas of responsibility during the pre-season, and these would also be on the agenda during next week’s Ballarat Community Camp.
“We (the leadership group) didn’t have such a big role to play last year in terms of off-field planning. It was more a case of get out and play and lead the boys on the ground,” Johnson said.
“But over this pre-season, ‘Plough’ has handed over a lot of the responsibility to us.
“We’ve had to come up with where we think we need to go in the future in terms of goals, values, codes of conduct and other applicable areas.
“It’s been an interesting process, which has given us a lot more work to do outside of training, but I’ve really enjoyed it and I think it’s improved us as a group.
“Things such as holding meetings and coming up with processes together also help you with your life after football.
“It’s really in-house . . . the more control we’ve got of it, the more control we’ll have out on the ground, and that can only benefit us.”
