Crunch or no crunch, Tigers aim to win
4:58:17 PM Wed 26 April, 2006
Jason Phelan
Sportal for afl.com.au
Terry Wallace concedes this Friday's clash with Carlton is a huge match for the Tigers, but he becomes more hesitant when the word crunch is thrown around.
Wallace has a policy of designating one match per season as a "crunch" match that has special significance for the playing group, but he wasn't about to declare his hand when he spoke to the media on Wednesday.
"It's a pretty important game - crunch time means something else for me - it always has. In regards to games, we've always said one crunch game per year," he said from Punt Road.
"I know a lot of people (debate) whether you can do that or whether you can't, but that's always been our feeling.
"It's an important game. When you have a look at it, both sides are on one win, you would think that by the end of Friday night one side's going to be looking at where they're going.
"One-and-four puts you in a pretty tough position at the start of a season, (while) the other one walks away with a little bit of hope and starting to be back around the pack again, so from that aspect it's a very important game for both clubs."
Richmond registered its first win of the season last week in Brisbane, but Wallace was confident that his players had not become panicked by their slow start to the year.
"We hope they'd get quite a bit out of it. I really did believe that we had played three of the outstanding sides in the competition in the first three weeks of the season, so I hope that they weren't getting too worried about where our position was," he said.
"I always reckon it takes about seven or eight weeks before you have an absolute idea of where each club is.
"I think sometimes there are decisions made on clubs that they're going to have a poor year, or decisions made on clubs that they're going to have a great year, too early."
The Tigers coach was hopeful that a large contingent of the Richmond faithful would be in attendance for the club's first hitout at the MCG this year and was unconcerned that the team would not train on the ground before the match.
"Every club's in the same position. Obviously they've done a fantastic job with the ground from what I saw yesterday and they want to give it the opportunity to knit properly," he said.
"(But) we get the opportunity to go over there tomorrow for a bit of a familiarisation walk around the ground just to have a bit of a look at what the facilities are like at the present stage."
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