Tigers lacked polish: YzeBy Luke Sicari
Richmond Media
5 May 2025Richmond coach Adem Yze says his side lacked polish in their Round 8 loss to Hawthorn, lamenting wasted chances in the forward half.
Despite leading the inside 50 count 16-10 at quarter time, the Tigers scored just three behinds in the opening term. It was a trend that continued throughout the clash, with the half-time inside 50 count being 25 apiece, while the ball spent 51% of the game inside Richmond’s forward half.
The Tigers unfortunately failed to turn strong field position into goals, with their six majors being their lowest return of the season.
Speaking after the game, Yze provided his assessment of where things went wrong in the attacking half.
“We spoke about that at halftime, we thought our system and our method was really strong in the first half, but we just couldn't finish our work,” Yze said.
“Spoke to the boys about it before, I can't fault their effort and their intent, but it was just our polish.
“They (Hawthorn) are very good with the ball. Credit to the Hawks, they play a really strong brand of footy. They were tough in the contest at the start of the game, we denied them a lot of flow with their ball movement, but they sort of scored a different way.
“They've got their game at a level that we're aspiring to be and get ours too.
“The scoreboard started to create a bit of anxiety and pressure on the players. I thought we then started taking some more risks to obviously arrest that and we probably gave up a couple extra scores that we shouldn't have.
“To our boys’ credit, they kept fighting.”
Yze added how the differential in scores off turnovers had a major impact on the result.
“We created enough opportunities from turnover. They kicked 10.3 and we kicked 3.7,” Yze said.
“With that, their spirit goes up because their execution is working, and ours isn’t and it can deflate a young group, and I felt like that did deflate us a little bit.”
https://www.richmondfc.com.au/news/1774186/tigers-lacked-polish-yze