Richmond pleads with faithful
Chip Le Grand
The Australian
May 08, 2007
RICHMOND club president Gary March believes the abrupt retirement of defender Darren Gaspar, the dropping of experienced midfielder Greg Tivendale and the benching of captain Kane Johnson and Shane Tuck for the start of Sunday's match against Geelong had no bearing on the humiliating 157-point thrashing which followed.
But as March defended the team selections and the approach of senior coach Terry Wallace, he conceded that the club faced a long, difficult task to regain the faith of supporters, who had been given hope by the Tigers' encouraging performances against last year's grand finalists Sydney and West Coast this season.
"For all of us, that is the most devastating thing about the weekend," March said yesterday. "We gave our supporters so much hope about the future and where we are heading and we wiped it out in two hours.
"Now we have got a long way to get them back on board. It won't just take one week, it will take a number of weeks for us to get our supporters back on track."
Richmond's post-mortem of its worst defeat began yesterday morning, with the players summonsed to explain their individual failings to Wallace and his match committee, and March speaking on behalf of a club that has reached a low water mark under the current coach and administration.
March said the board supported Wallace in last week's handling of Gaspar's playing future, the team selections leading up to last Sunday's massacre and the contentious decision to put an inexperienced group of midfielders in the centre square for the opening bounce while Johnson and Tuck, the club's two most hardened onballers, warmed the bench.
His sole criticism was that Wallace may have been influenced by calls from the media and supporters to start the 21-year-old trio of Brett Deledio, Andrew Raines and Nathan Foley on the ball against his better judgment.
"For the last six to 12 months, I reckon every second Richmond supporter I have spoken to, maybe even some board members, has been very anxious to see people like Brett Deledio and Andrew Raines play in the midfield at the expense of Kane Johnson and Tuck and those kind of players," March said.
"Terry has resisted that because he felt they were not ready physically and mentally to take on that role. On Sunday, he threw the opportunity open to those guys. Unfortunately, they didn't grasp it. Now people are questioning why he did it."
March rejected the suggestion that Richmond had abandoned the pursuit of premiership points for a sole focus on player development and insisted more experienced players like Tivendale and Andrew Krakouer would be recalled to the senior team once they regained form and confidence.
With Richmond already missing Nathan Brown and Ray Hall through injury and not certain to have Troy Simmonds, Richard Tambling or Jay Schulz available to play against Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium this Saturday, March said the Tigers had been forced to play more young players this season than they would have liked.
"We are just lacking the blend of experience and youth that allows us to develop our list. What we have had to do is throw a lot more kids in than we wanted to.
"That is not how we wanted to develop our list. This notion that Richmond has thrown in the season and they are only going to play kids is not true. If those guys were available for selection, they would be picked."
March said the football department had projected either this year or last season to be the low point of the club's five-year development and that it expected to challenge for a finals spot as early as next season.
He said the club had won more games than it expected to last year and that the playing list had been further weakened, in the short term, by the retirements of Mark Chaffey, Andrew Kellaway and Greg Stafford.
Asked whether the team's development would be hampered by further losses of the magnitude suffered against Geelong, March cited the example of St Kilda under Grant Thomas, which won just six games between 2001 and 2002 before playing in a preliminary final two years later.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21689497-2722,00.html
