Depleted Tigers win little relief
By Michael Gleeson
The Age
May 17, 2006
RICHMOND's threadbare line-up will get little relief this week as it bounces from its second 100-plus-point loss of the year straight into playing the premiership favourite, Adelaide.
Tigers coach Terry Wallace said yesterday Kane Johnson, Andrew Kellaway, Ray Hall and Darren Gaspar all would miss again this week, while Nathan Brown was possibly another five weeks from a return to senior football. Only fringe ruckman Trent Knobel is likely to come into the side of babies and undersized backmen.
"I said to the boys after the game 'I can't offer you up something that says here is the team we are playing next weekend with five key blokes out that are down the bottom of the ladder'," Wallace said.
"We are coming off 100-point losses and I am offering you the equal of any team in the competition.
"We had four drop out on the Friday last week and I would doubt if any of those players would play this week. We will go in with a similarly inexperienced line-up this week … the reality is we will be going out there with a similar type side but hopefully a different attitude.
"We have now got six backmen out and our captain and vice-captain out as well. That is an extraordinary situation, which I haven't had in my time at this club. It is testing."
The side's second 100-point-plus loss in seven rounds was shattering to the club, but understandable given the number of players out of the team, club president Gary March said. The first loss, however, cost the Tigers at least 1000 members and sapped the club of spirit and energy at the season's opening.
"The first one hurt more than the second one," March said of the two losses of 115 points in round one to the Bulldogs and 118 points last weekend against Sydney. "The first one was, to use a cliche, most un-Richmond-like. It was very disappointing, it was just terrible. And it set the whole year back. We would be over 30,000 members now (the Tigers currently have 29,000), I have got no doubt, if we had had a strong performance.
"Last week was disappointing but it permeated through the whole club once we knew those players were out and there was almost a defeatist attitude taken into that game.
"Luke McGuane was playing Coburg reserves the first game this year — Coburg reserves! And he found himself on Michael O'Loughlin, who is in red-hot form. I am still severely disappointed in the performance of the team, we need to show more fight and desire but we had 14 kids that didn't even total 300 games between them and they had Paul Williams playing his 300th game."
Hall and Kellaway are still recovering from calf strains, Johnson and Gaspar from hamstring strains and Brown will resume training again next week in his halted return from a broken leg. "If everything goes right, we would hope to see him back in two to three weeks. If he is getting a bit of loading, maybe three, four or five weeks," Wallace said of Brown.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/05/16/1147545326733.html
