Dimma's post-match presser:
https://www.richmondfc.com.au/video/1146325/round-13-hardwick-post-match-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: It was a pretty interesting game, that one, what did you make of it?A: It wasn’t the prettiest game going around. It was a fierce contest and the conditions were dewy, and it was a challenge to get the ball movement we probably both desired. I thought we looked OK, but we couldn’t quite get the reward going inside 50, which is a bit disappointing. Then, when we tried to use the ball with a little bit more composure, we probably turned it over a bit as well. So, it was an ugly win but a good one against what I think is a very good side in Port Adelaide.
Q: It makes you 7-5 and they drop to 5-7. Depending on other results, you are back in the eight, and following the very close loss to Sydney, it is a pretty important win, isn’t it?A: It is, thanks for bringing up the Sydney loss again ... It is. Against a really good side, Port, they are probably like us, a bit inconsistent at the start, but to win those games with the guys vying for the spots in the eight is really important. Credit where credit is due – they played a pretty good brand of footy and took the game up a step for a little while, but I thought we wrestled it back towards the end.
Q: Liam Baker, do you run out of superlatives?A: David Teague made a really good comment. You want one on each line. He is such an important player, and he is out of contract too, so he is not helping us. He is just a wonderful player, a guy that you love to coach because you wind him up and off he goes. I thought his last quarter was pretty special.
Q: When he came to the club, could you ever have envisaged he would become the player he is?A: No because you look at him, like everyone, we look at his size, but we don’t see the enormous heart ... Our recruiters, they knew he deserved to play AFL football. I think what we have seen with the guys who are short in stature, they can play the game. We saw one of our boys tonight, Judson Clarke, a little bit short but really composed with the ball, [Western Bulldog] Caleb Daniel has been doing it a long time, we are very fortunate to have a guy like him in our football club.
Q: Did you get involved in the contract to make sure he stays a Tiger?A: He is a pretty handy player, so we are confident [he’ll re-sign].
Q: Can you talk us through the decision to go from the more methodical style of footy you played back to the turnover-centric game you have played? Did you have to get together as a coaching group and decide what you were doing before wasn’t working?A: It was probably the combination of a number of factors. We have always been a strong turnover-based side. Stoppage, we are not. We would like to get better in that area, and we were reasonable tonight. But we tried some guys forward, like Noah Balta and Liam Baker earlier in the year, but we probably found our possession game was not to the level that it would be. We have started to see in the last six weeks when we put guys in different positions that all of a sudden, that part of our game has returned. It is our Richmond DNA. We probably tried a couple of things to see what we were getting with moving the ball forward, but it wasn’t attractive, and those guys played very well, but we were not playing our style of game as compared to the last 5-6 weeks.
https://www.watoday.com.au/sport/afl/afl-round-13-live-richmond-tigers-v-port-adelaide-power-20220609-p5aso3.html?post=p53sju
