SuperCoach: Enigma of Richo returns
29 August 2006
Herald-Sun
Matthew Pinkney
NINE goals, 19 marks, 21 kicks and nowhere near enough respect.
Matthew Richardson's one-man show at the MCG on Saturday night earned him 247 Champion Data points and lifted him to third place on the all-time points charts.
His score eclipsed the combined total of seven Essendon players, a group that included Dean Rioli, Chris Heffernan, Dean Solomon and Mark Bolton.
And yet for all his pyrotechnics, Richo features in just 3846 SuperCoach teams. This puts him behind players such as West Coast's Michael Embley (6916 selections and zero points), Port's Hugh Minson (6216 selections, zero points) and St Kilda's Fergus Watts (8309 selections, 41 points).
Sure, Richo is a fair bit more expensive than those guys, but before his value spiked on the back of Saturday's performance, he was around the same price as many other similarly performed players.
It's one of the great SuperCoach conundrums. While the stats tell one story, the selectors tell another.
For much of his career, Richardson has been regarded as not only inconsistent, but capable of playing a stinker -- dummy spits, plenty of bench time and inflammatory gestures to opposition fans.
Yet apart from an ordinary streak mid-season, the big Tiger has been a consistent performer -- exemplified by his string of 100 points-plus games in the past five weeks.
Clearly, his modest SuperCoach status is a question of perception rather than fact.
And on perceptions, one of the most common is that a woman's interest in, and knowledge of, footy is fundamentally different to a man's.
Yes, it's a massive bonus to have a wife or girlfriend who excitedly stocks the beer fridge in preparation for the Friday night game on the tube, but don't you really need another bloke there to discuss strategy and tactics?
Well, the fallacy of this has been exposed time and again. While they represent just 10 per cent of players, female SuperCoaches have been consistently in the top players.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,20282032%255E19742,00.html
