THE YELLOW AND BLACK BRICK ROAD
MX
Monday, May 7, 2007
Terry Wallace and the Terrible Tigers need to find a wonderful Wizard fast, as Russell Gould reports
It's 50 games since Plough signed a five-year deal to coach Richmond football team, who, just in case you've been living on another planet, crashed to Geelong in the most spectacular fashion by 157 points.
Since Round 1 last year Richmond has recorded its biggest losses to four different clubs.
Western Bulldogs (115pts, Round 1), Sydney (118pts, Round 7), St Kilda (103pts, Round 17) and Geelong.
West Coast beat the Tigers by 92 points last year, a mere four points shy of the worst loss to the Eagles.
Since Round 1 last year there have been only six 100-point losses in the AFL; four belong to the Tigers.
Their 0-6 start is their worst to a season since 1963.
There's another, scarier element to the performance of the Tigers yesterday and it's the dreaded "T'-word.
No one wants to say it, and no one at Richmond will say it, but at face value it could be argued the Tigers tanked yesterday's game.
You can't lose by 157 points in the modem era unless you have ambitions other than simply winning the game.
This isn't an attack on the Tigers players who went out there with the best intentions, wanting to do their absolute best and in doing so win.
But when Wallace sat down with his match committee and picked the team he chose to take on Geelong he couldn't have been thinking they could win.
As ordinary as the Cats were the week before they still went in with a forward line that consisted of Cam Mooney, Nathan Ablett, Brad Ottens and Tom Hawkins.
So it made no sense that on Friday Richmond's most experienced defender, a one-time All-Australian in Darren Gaspar, was forced into retirement because he wasn't going to get picked.
That left the defending jobs to Luke McGuane, Kelvin Moore and Joel Bowden. You'd trust only one of them with your life, Bowden; and even then only at a pinch.
Delve further in to Tiger team selection and you’ll find Greg Tivendale (sixth in the best arid fairest last year), Dean Polo (ninth) and Andrew Krakouer were all playing in the VFL.
Instead Wallace and Co. went with Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls, who finished with a minus-three player ranking after playing 86 per cent of the game.
Danny Meyer also came in and had seven disposals in 91 per cent of the game, while Daniel Jackson got the ball only five times despite being on the ground for 82 per cent of the match.
Tigers president Gary March did this morning concede "we may have to go a bit backwards to go forward", but that's after the fact.
Wallace did play 13 kids with less than 50 games experience, but he can't blame his youth policy for losing. The Cats had six in that boat themselves and three kicked 10 goals between them.
Hawthorn had 11 with less than 50 games and won. Collingwood played kids too and beat Adelaide in Adelaide. Everyone plays kids.
Wallace can't use injury excuse either. He was only Nathan Brown and Mark Coughlan away from having everyone he wanted available for selection.
There's every chance of a complete over-reaction to Richmond's loss yesterday, but the day after the night before there's more
questions than anyone at Punt Road could possibly have answers for.
