Richmond Tigers lose to Fremantle Dockers with after-the-siren goal from David MundyMichael Gleeson
The Age
15 May 2017FREMANTLE 2.3 5.6 9.11 10.12 (72)
RICHMOND 2.1 5.1 5.5 10.10 (70)
Goals:
Fremantle: D Mundy 2 M Taberner 2 S Kersten 2 B Hill C McCarthy D Pearce N Fyfe.
Richmond: J Riewoldt 3 J Caddy 2 B Ellis D Martin D Rioli J Castagna T Cotchin.
Best:
Fremantle: M Walters, B Hill, C Blakely, Langdon, A Sandilands, L Neale, M Johnson, McCarthy.
Richmond: S Edwards, A Rance, D Martin, S Grigg, Grimes, McIntosh.
Umpires: Jacob Mollison, Brett Rosebury, Curtis Deboy.
Official Crowd: 31,200 at MCG.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
When the siren went, Richmond were ahead. Then they lost the game.
The Fremantle Dockers kicked one after the siren to beat Richmond and move into the eight in a frantic last minute.
The Tigers had only been ahead, when it mattered, for 21 seconds. Twenty-one giddying seconds, when the unlikely comeback was a reality after a Brandon Ellis snap out of a pack. They only had to kill the clock.
Disgusted, Ross Lyon could not bring himself to watch. He left the coaches' box. His side had given up a five-goal lead at the final break.
All Richmond had to do was hang on for less than half a minute. But at that last centre bounce, a path opened up for Lachie Neale, who ran and carried almost beyond his measure and kicked long and speculatively. David Mundy, quiet all day, took the mark. The siren blew. Mundy kicked the goal.
For the second time against Richmond, Mundy was the man to kill the Tigers at the death. In 2015 he also kicked the last goal in the last minute to win the game.
Richmond left the game wondering about a Josh Caddy goal on the three-quarter time siren that was denied by a free kick paid against Jack Riewoldt for a shepherd in the goal square.
But it was other moments in the third quarter they would be better served to dwell on. In that third term Richmond laid eight tackles. Not a Richmond player, Richmond the team. Eight tackles. Eight. For the quarter.
This was not because they had the ball and Fremantle were chasing them. They weren't. Fremantle kicked four goals to the Tigers' four points to open up in that quarter the sort of margin that the flow of the game demanded.
Statistics can be gloriously misleading, but this one wasn't. It told of what was missing from Richmond. It was instructive of a lack of intensity, illuminating Richmond's lack of pace .
Plainly it was a point Damien Hardwick made to his team at the last change when they trailed by five goals, for in the last quarter Richmond's effort bore little resemblance to the effort of the quarter that preceded it.
The turnaround in the match in the last quarter was unforeseeable.
Daniel Rioli gave them a start, Riewoldt kicked a couple, Caddy helped with another. They missed chances they should have kicked – Shaun Grigg's directly in front and Riewoldt's from gettable range, but Freo too had missed chances early.
The difference in the last term came about not because of the switch of Jake Batchelor to full forward, it was the switch in the players' heads that flicked. Suddenly they understood that if they won the ball first and did not turn it over then Fremantle could not out run them as they had all day.
They began to win the clearances and Fremantle could not get the ball forward. It is troubling to think that they only found their daring run and intensity once the game appeared lost but still after the last quarter they will now carry with them a semblance of momentum into next week.
Richmond for the first three quarters had pushed an extra forward up to the ball at stoppages which meant that they tended to win the clearances, but it came at a cost. Fremantle did not follow the Richmond player up to the contest but instead had a player – normally Cameron Sutcliffe – loose behind the ball.
The spare Docker behind the ball was then able to search out Michael Walters and Bradley Hill on the wings to run and carry.
Hill and Walter's run was the difference in the teams. Ellis battled to play tightly enough on Hill.
In the final quarter Hardwick evened up the numbers at the contest and forward, keeping his six forwards ahead of the ball. Richmond looked more threatening once they got the ball inside 50 and at length in the last quarter Fremantle struggled to move the ball beyond the centre.
For most of the match it was Rance who kept the Tigers in the game and after half-time it was Shane Edwards who gave them the run they had been lacking.
Tantalisingly Nat Fyfe and Dustin Martin were nominally pitted against one another, the two free agents head to head. On the day Martin had the greater impact.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-match-report/richmond-tigers-lose-to-fremantle-dockers-with-afterthesiren-goal-from-david-mundy-20170514-gw4jc6.html
