TW and others probably wouldn’t have experienced anything like what often happens at RFC after such a game. It’s not really the sort of thing that people get trained in when they get to an AFL club.
The thing for him, and others, is not to get caught up in the emotion of it all.
All they have to do is just stick to their guns and don’t let their judgement be clouded by all the doom and gloom garbage that generally comes with a Richmond loss. It’s Round 1 of 22 and we all know our list needs lots of work, so why the shock horror?
The shock and horror is because we are supposed to be competitive against good teams. Not smashed by them.
People dont get trained in this at other AFL clubs because their supporters havent put up with it for 24 years.
Its not Round 1 with 22 games to go. Its a demonstration of how far the Dogs have come with Eade and how far back we are compared to them. You may recall, that both coaching appointments were made in the same year, and the clubs could not be any further apart
As far as I’m concerned it’s round 1. 21 to go. And as others have said, if you look at the lists of both teams, they could not be any further apart if they wanted to be.
We’ve spent the pre season, and even some of the previous 2 seasons discussing how long it’s going to take for us to become a good team.
We’re probably looking at somewhere around 2009 to 2011, before we could hope to be serious contenders. To get to that point, there will be lots of highs and lows, ups and downs and even non-competitive efforts. It happens to all developing teams. And because of our list, we’re starting from a long way behind most other clubs, including the Bulldogs.
The improvement of most teams comes from their mid range players who are in the 21-25 age bracket. Look at the Bulldogs list and see if that isn’t where their improvement has come from. Where are all the players on our list in that age bracket?
The majority of our players are under 21, so it will take at least another 3 to 5 years before our list gets to where the Bulldogs list is at now.
I’m not seeing anything I haven’t seen before. To me, it’s just Richmond, and it’s going to take TW’s full 5 years to get us to the level we need to be at, and before we can expect to see a 'new' Richmond.
But even knowing our list, people are expecting something from Richmond that probably some of us have rarely ever seen. We can expect competitive efforts, but what happens if we don’t get them? How about we try something we haven’t done before, which is to persist and keep turning over the list until things improve? That’s the way most successful clubs work things.
Teams like Geelong and St. Kilda have been building for 5 years, and maybe more. Through that time, they’ve been pillaried from here to there and back again, because people haven’t rated them, and some still don’t. Yet people want a Richmond list, that’s dysfunctional, at best, to be able to do what those teams do now, which is to be competitive, regardless of the opposition, even though it’s taken those teams years to get to that level.
I’m sorry, but after all the realisations about where the list is at and all the other discussions we’ve had on this board, I just don’t get why people are outraged. Like everyone else, I’m hurt, disappointed, embarrassed and all the rest of it, but my understanding is that we’re a long way behind a lot of other clubs, in many respects. I’m not expecting anything from this season, except that players learn and become better footballers. Hopefully that’s not beyond some of them.
