Tough training is Tiger skipper's response
By Samantha Lane and Lyall Johnson
The Age
April 2, 2006
RICHMOND'S skipper Kane Johnson thinks an old-fashioned belting on the training track this week would do his team good after its woeful beginning to the season, while coach Terry Wallace said he had put the players on notice that reputations would not be enough to keep them in the side.
The Tigers wasted no time looking for explanations for the 115-point opening-round battering it received from the Western Bulldogs, convening at Punt Road yesterday morning to conduct a full match review two days earlier than planned.
Post-match on Friday night, Wallace said he hadn't decided whether to dissect the game with his team, or to simply bin it, but after favouring the former option, the group promptly revisited the horror.
"They were angry and embarrassed," Tigers football manager Paul Armstrong said yesterday. "The coach made a few comments and so did the players, and you just start to develop your strategies for the following week."
Facing what he described as his biggest challenge as captain — after the first game in just his second season in the position — Johnson said he, vice-captain Nathan Brown and other senior players needed to lead from the front.
"We can't put our tails between our legs, we've got to be confident and have a real crack on the track this week.
"I think we've just got to get on the track and compete one-on-one, like go back to the old style of footy," he said.
"I don't know whether we get too scared of getting injuries and that on the on the track … but I reckon we've got to get back to that sort of thing. Once you can get that back into your game then everything else unfolds."
Johnson said that his side had shown a lack of toughness and capitulated too easily against the lightning-quick Dogs. The Tigers were clearly shell-shocked in the third term when their opponents drilled nine goals to one. "As soon as they got three (goals) in a row we just virtually poo ourselves, I reckon," Johnson said.
"We've just got to be tougher than that and lot of us have got to pull together, from me down. I've got to start it, Browny's got to start it, Richo's got to be there. Because if we don't do it, the young boys won't do it."
Wallace forecast blooding yet more youngsters to accelerate the rebuilding of the club at the expense of more experienced players should those senior regulars fail to "stand up and do the job".
"We have got to keep working and get the right personnel in the right positions," Wallace said on radio 3AW yesterday.
"At the Bulldogs we decided that we had a side we didn't believe could win the premiership at one stage and we started to rebuild. And that rebuilding took six, took about seven years … where it has come through to now.
"If the blokes who are in at the moment can't do it and put in that sort of performance we have just got to play young kids until they come through. Guys who may not be ready at the present time."
Johnson said the result was particularly disappointing after a positive pre-season. "We went into the game quite confident that we were ready," he said. "Obviously when it came to match day we just weren't up to it and we've got to go back to the drawing board, work hard on the track and really compete."
TIGERS' TURNAROUND?
2005Rd 1: lost Geelong 62 pts
Rd 2: d Hawthorn 14 pts
Rd 3: d W Bulldogs 4 pts
Rd 4: d Fremantle 48 pts
2006Rd 1: lost W Bulldogs 115 pts
Rd 2: v St Kilda (TD)
Rd 3: v West Coast (Subiaco)
Rd 4: v Brisbane Lions (Gabba)
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/04/01/1143441379900.html
