By Patrick Smith - The Australian.
Must say it's one of Patrick's better efforts
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Wallace puts Tigers within reach of passion matching convictionLOTS of things make football clubs nervous. Wobbly balance sheets, wobbly knees, wobbly committees. Practiced media can almost smell the panic. Coaches get curt, players get caught, fans are gutted, games are lost.Not many years ago Richmond talked to the media about how it would rise again and become the powerhouse it surely was between 1967 and 1974 when the club won four premierships and claimed another in 1980.
But not one thing the club said was convincing. There was a plan to turn Punt Road Oval into a hub that would drive the suburb of Richmond and bring in rich new revenue streams. The coaching panel thought the recent poor seasons were done with and a new era beckoned. It was said with passion but not conviction.
You left the boardroom warmed by the club's enthusiasm but cool to its vision. Sure enough worse seasons followed, $2million losses were recorded, personnel left. Just as Carlton was last year, the Tigers had become the competition's village idiots.
Richmond met the media again yesterday. First thing you noticed was a sense of security.
Coach Terry Wallace is into his third year, chief executive Steven Wright his fourth. Football operations manager Paul Armstrong was Wallace's right-hand man at the Bulldogs. Director of football Greg Miller has begun his fifth year at the club. No village idiots here.
Sponsorship runs at just under $4m, an increase of 34 per cent from 2004 and membership is tipped to top 30,000. The club expects to make more than $1m profit this season. Three years ago it lost $2.2m. Debt has been cut to $3.5m, a trimming of 33 per cent in the past two years.
The annual interest bill has been reduced by more than $200,000 and a $7m refit of the Punt Road Oval will begin at the end of the season. Most importantly the football budget has been lifted to a new high of $12m.
Wallace, into his third year of a five-year contract, has Richmond's future plotted out to 2016. The club finished ninth last year, winning as many matches as it lost. But it was two games and a slab of percentage short of making the final eight.
"There will be improvement this year but it might not reflect on the ladder," Wallace said yesterday. But for a run of three years from 2008 - a period the coach tags Opportunity Knocks - he believes Richmond has a chance to play off for a flag. Fortunes might falter for a while after that but it will only be brief.
Then it is take-off time up to 2016.
Wallace has plotted the Tigers' resurgence as meticulously as Wright has drawn up his budget. His optimism is based on list management. At the moment Richmond's list is on the turn. It is heavy at one end and heavy at the other. It lacks weight in the middle, the basket that holds players aged 22 to 26.
These are the players who have gained the experience, have miles in their legs and kilos on their bodies to be at their very best.
A perfect example, said Wallace, is the development of Kayne Pettifer who has played his best football in the past two years - at the age of 24 and 25.
This season the Tigers have five players aged 29 alone and 14 in the 22-26 bracket. And they have six teenagers. When Wallace thinks the Tigers might have a chance for a flag in 2009, he will have 22 players in the middle bracket. In 2016, he sees his list at its peak with 28 players in the 22-26 age group.
It is not as simple as working out your players' birthdays. Coaching must be at its very best and the recruiters must be able to pick the very finest talent available every time they get their chance at the draft. And there must be luck.
The club's 2003 best and fairest winner Mark Coughlan will miss another season, this time with a knee injury.
And players must improve. The Tigers have recruited Graham Polak, let go by Fremantle at the end of last year. Polak was the Dockers' first pick in the 2001 draft and fourth selection overall. He is 22 and falls into Wallace's magic bracket.
Given he under-performed at Fremantle, Polak came at a risk. But Wallace said yesterday he was one of the club's best tall players, with soft hands that make him a superior mark. Importantly he has grown stronger and more confident.
Richard Tambling is 20 but he was the Tigers' second pick in the 2004 draft. The Tigers preferred him to Lance Franklin, the brilliant tall who has captivated Hawthorn supporters. But the news is good with Tambling, too. "He will develop into a strong inside mid-fielder. He will have an impact," Wallace said.
"He can go in and get the ball and get out the other side. Not in every game, not yet. But that will come maybe next year."
Then there is Andrew Krakouer who, at 24, is seven short of 100 games after making his debut in 2001. He has not had the fitness to run consistently through the mid-field and Wallace has been forced to plonk him in a forward pocket. That will change this year. Krakouer's fitness level has been raised significantly but so has the club's expectations.
The club has again entrusted the on-field leadership to Kane Johnson. The respect the football department has for him is palpable. And it irks it that some have tried to link Johnson with the illicit drugs controversy.
"He is clean. Absolutely," Miller said with force.
So Wallace and his team have a plan and a vision. So that's the easy bit done.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21459025-12270,00.html
