Richmond pressure gauge: Which Tigers are most under the pump in 2025?Charlie Keegan
theRoar.com.au
14 Jan 2025Welcome back to a new year, everyone.
I hope our Christmas revels were not too hedonistic, and we were able to ring in the new year with our family and friends besides us.
Anyways now all that junk is over, onto the stuff that really matters – footy.
This year instead of doing it as one universal list I’ve decided to go through every club’s list putting down the five players that are under the most amount of pressure, starting with the Richmond Tigers and ending with the eventual premiers the Brisbane Lions.
5. Maurice RioliA player with a famous surname is always going to feel the pressure more than their colleagues unfamiliar with the gauntlet that is the Melbourne football bubble. The father-son prospect has floundered at AFL level playing the hardest position where it’s the easiest to go missing.
Despite that he did increase his dream team average (to 48.6 points per match), and tackles (3.2 per match).
However he only managed to play nine games last year and would have been on the chopping block for sure.
He will be feeling the unyielding pressure that comes with being a legacy in the modern AFL landscape, yet despite that I do not believe he will have reached his ceiling yet, and Shai Bolton being traded, and Noah Cumberland being delisted Rioli has a unique opportunity to impress upon the Richmond coaching staff and carve out a niche for him.
I cannot say the same for the remainder of the players on this list.
Pressure rating: 6/10.
4. Tom LynchHe came to the Tigers on a very heavily back ended deal (rumoured to be worth somewhere around the $1.5 million a season mark) and despite playing in two consecutive premierships has been well down on his best the last two seasons only managing four games in 2023 and 2024.
Tom Lynch’s best footy, even at his advanced age, is electric and able to match up on the toughest key defenders in the competition. With Jonty Faull and Harry Armstrong breathing down his neck how long can he prolong the inevitable march of time and allow those young guns to jump ahead of him?
This is why I believe that Tom Lynch is under an enormous amount of pressure in this coming season as he will feel the need to play up to the abilities of his young teammates despite potentially lacking the capacity to do so for them.
Pressure rating: 7/10
3. Tim TarantoHis record as a Giant is unimpeachable including winning the 2019 Kevin Sheedy Medal as the Best and Fairest at the Giants. In fact, his record was so solid as a Giant there were many calls to rate him as the best player in his draft class (despite Hugh McCluggage putting up very solid numbers).
It will always be controversial when a player comes in via trade with the expectation that the club will be contending for the foreseeable future, and then have the club flounder, mired in the bottom few rungs of the ladder. To his credit, Taranto has not let that get him down winning the Jack Dyer Medal in his debut campaign along with obtaining career highs in goals.
However, I have him as the third most under pressure player because he will need to be the proverbial shield for the younger players, and need to be the first player at the bottom of the pack to protect his younger peers from harm.
This has only been exacerbated by the departures of Shai Bolton, Liam Baker, and Dustin Martin to retirement and trades, as he will now need to be the best player in the guts in a game that is rapidly developing. Despite that I fully expect that he will rise to the challenge of being a leader at Richmond and will be able to provide a good example for the Tigers youth.
Pressure rating: 7.5/10
2. Jacob HopperSimilar to Taranto, Hopper came over as a pair to the Tigers at the end of the 2022 trade period. But unlike Taranto, his performance at the Tigers has been significantly more ignominious managing 28 games in two seasons.
However, as the Tigers go through the first solid rebuild in over a decade, it is incumbent upon Hopper that he spends the time getting his body right to operate as a protector and leader for the young Tigers midfielder particularly for Sam Lalor and Josh Smilie, both of whom are bigger bodied midfielders that will be integral to the development of the clbu as they head into season 2025 without much expectation.
I believe that the Tigers are well set with a good mix of young and old, now it’s just a matter of the coaches establishing the game style that can be most complementary to their players, and Hopper is required to be able to ensure that his younger colleagues are given the opportunity to explore their playing styles in the professional environment.
Pressure rating: 8.87/10
1. Noah BaltaDespite signing a seven-year contract with the Tigers during the off-season, Balta has had something of an off-season from hell recently being embroiled in an altercation on the Victorian-New South Wales border. It is for that reason, and the enormous contract in front of him, that Balta goes into this coming season with the most pressure on the Tigers list.
Additionally, I would argue that he is the player who could potentially find himself on the outer most quickly with Josh Gibcus and Luke Trainor being given four weeks next year to prove they can be a viable key defensive pairing while Nick Vlaustin is still there to oversee them and ensure they’re making the right decisions.
I am more critical of the Richmond list management team for extending Balta for the next seven years becoming one of the few players with a contract leading into the 2030s, however I can understand why they wanted to lock the big man away as he can play at both ends, and has shown a reasonable degree of durability in the trenches as a big man.
Pressure rating: 10/10
Well there you have it folks, I will be providing a list like this one for all 18 clubs. Do you agree with it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and I will do my best to respond.
https://www.theroar.com.au/2025/01/14/richmond-pressure-gauge-which-tigers-are-most-under-the-pump-in-2025/
