Gone fishing for four points23 May 2006 Herald Sun
Terry Wallace
MINUTES after our victory against Adelaide on Saturday, I spoke to the players and warned them the game would spark varying opinions.
We knew Richmond supporters would care only about claiming four points against a team we supposedly had no hope of beating, while those who are concerned about the aesthetics of the game would be calling for blood.
What I didn't anticipate in this conversation was the fuel that was added to the fire by Kevin Sheedy on Sunday.
How Richmond got embroiled in Sheeds' post-match media conference is quite bemusing and, in some ways, insulting.
In my tenure as a coach and media analyst I have been embroiled in my fair share of controversy, so all I do now is have a chuckle and get on with the next task at hand.
But for those hundreds of thousands of basketball fans who take their kids around every weekend, the game, at times, seems an easy pot shot for the "bully boy" mentality of some football people.
It's true that as a kid I grew up loving basketball, playing in junior representative sides.
Ten days ago, I gave up my Saturday night after our 118-point loss to Sydney to speak to the Victorian under-18 squad that was preparing for the national titles.
In my junior sporting days I have no doubt I was discriminated against by footy fathers because of my basketball background.
Eventually I left my local area because these people were not open-minded enough to accept that I actually had enough skill in both games to be worthy of selection.
Yet 35 years later it appears this mentality still exists.
The facts of Saturday's game were that our game plan had nothing to do with basketball.
In that sport you need to move the ball out of the back court within 8sec and you have a shot clock that guarantees the game remains at a rapid attacking pace.
What we did on Saturday was much more like fishing.
We threw out a lure for Adelaide to stop flooding numbers behind the ball.
Our idea was to lure the Crows to playing one on one instead of having their wings and half-forwards push down defensively and then run in a tidal wave back to their goals.
Sheeds should understand that this is called transition and all transitional games around the world – soccer, hockey, basketball – have tempo play involved.
To suggest you can't win the premiership playing tempo football is quite ridiculous. Anyone who knows our game will tell you Sydney is the master of this style of play.
To all Tigers supporters, be assured we are developing for future success and working on a style of game that is attacking and creative.
In our three victories on end leading up to our Round 7 loss to Sydney, we were the No. 1 inside 50 team in the AFL.
The hat-trick culminated in an attacking victory over Essendon in the Dreamtime game at the MCG.
Our club had also set its sights on developing a group of young players. The club has 30 players under 24 years of age, 11 teenagers and 20 under the age of 21.
Although our record stands at 4-4, we have tried more players at senior level than any other club this year.
This controversy reminds me of the furore that broke out from the evening I coached the Bulldogs in Round 21, 2000.
That night we were playing the rampaging Essendon, which was striving to go through the season unbeaten.
The team at the time was devastated by injury so we put a plan in place to play a zone defence to restrict their superstars. This was a basketball tactic and I wonder whether Sheeds is still smarting because he would have been in the record books for all time.
Just like 2000, on the weekend we went into this game massively undermanned.
What has been lost amid all the tactical discussion is that I had a group of players who were tough enough to win first use of the footy, tackled hard and kept the opposition under pressure for four quarters.
I think their performance in this area has been undersold.
The state of the game is important to everyone who is a stakeholder. But fans still want to be able to come through the turnstiles knowing their team will be doing everything in its powers to get a victory in each and every game.
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