Tigers need further culling to flourish
Patrick Smith
The Australian
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
AT the end of 2004, three Victorian clubs were in critical condition. The Bulldogs had won just five games, Hawthorn four and Richmond four. All three clubs changed coaches. They had to for the clubs filled the last three places on the ladder.
The Bulldogs snapped up Rodney Eade, Richmond signed Terry Wallace to a five-year deal and Hawthorn dithered before selecting the inexperienced Alastair Clarkson. This is how it stands now: Hawthorn is in fifth position on the ladder with four wins and two losses, the Bulldogs are in 12th place but with only one win less than Hawthorn and Richmond is last, winless after six rounds.
Worse for Richmond, the club lost by 26 goals - its worst defeat in history - to Geelong, whose coach Mark Thompson has been on death row for a season and more.
It is informative to trace the clubs since they appointed their new coaches. Eade has gone through 18 players and won 28 games. Hawthorn has packed off 22 players and won 18 games while Richmond has turned over 24 players and won 21 games.
Richmond has had three picks in the top 10 in drafts from 2004 on, Hawthorn six and the Bulldogs two. Without doubt, Eade inherited the best list. The 2004 best and fairest voting saw Scott West win it from Luke Darcy, Brad Johnson, Chris Grant and Robert Murphy.
At Hawthorn, Peter Everitt topped the voting from Trent Croad, Joel Smith, Richie Vandenberg, Tim Clarke and Sam Mitchell. Wallace's best six were Joel Bowden, Kane Johnson, Nathan Brown, Matthew Richardson, Chris Hyde and Andrew Krakouer.
Of the three coaches, it is Wallace who finds himself under the greatest pressure. Talk-back callers wanted his head yesterday morning. Some suggested that the game had passed him by, a view formed in bubbling emotion rather than rational thought. Wallace is as clever as any of the coaches going about.
As well as Wallace's demise, the recruiting officers - Richmond picked Richard Tambling ahead of Lance Franklin in the 2004 draft - were to be shot on sight while president Gary March called for calm in the manner of a police chief on the eve of a revolution.
What is confusing is Richmond's previous form. It had not won a game but it was competitive in all of them. There was no indication that such a humiliation was one game away.
Losses like that on Sunday do not come from teams being down 2 per cent in one area, 4 per cent in another. The trigger for these defeats is usually something quite profound. On game night, Wallace lamented the lack of emotion and fight in his players. It was non-existent and one error drew another silly error. Confidence was the first casualty and it was evident that no-one on the ground had the personality to regroup the team.
What happened to Richmond is a phenomenon not uncommon in football. Teams that get into dominant positions in a run of games but do not win them sometimes fall apart. It is as though they cannot once more contemplate the work that must be done to get close, only to lose again.
Before the season, Wallace outlined how he saw the club could and would improve so that by 2011 it would be at the peak of its powers. Along the way, he saw very good opportunities to play finals football and perhaps pinch a flag.
It was brave to brief the media so candidly but the reporters did him no favours. His forecast was mostly misreported and then misconstrued by other commentators who were not present. It was seen as a way of taking pressure off the 2007 list.
Well, there is no ducking the pressure now. The club faces its next two matches in Adelaide, then Essendon, Brisbane and Fremantle at Subiaco Oval. Ruckman Troy Simmonds is at least two weeks away, Nathan Brown will continue to be monitored, Jay Schulz has but a slim chance of playing next week, as does Tambling. Wallace must, and no doubt will, hold his nerve.
In his first two years, Wallace won 10 games in 2005 and then 11 last year. The club finished 12th and then ninth. Those are not bad results with a list that is hardly talented. Put the Richmond players in the draft and it is hard to believe that more than six would be picked up by clubs that had an eye to the future.
After four rounds, Richmond identified that it was getting mediocre results with mediocre players, ones that the club has stayed loyal to but ones that have been unable to achieve the extraordinary.
Krakouer was dropped. Then Darren Gaspar was warned he would not be picked automatically if younger players were doing as well as him. He retired. Greg Tivendale was dropped. Johnson started on the bench, as did Shane Tuck. And Richmond got beaten up.
But it must be the way of the future for Richmond. Of the three coaches who took control in 2005, Wallace got the inferior list. He has cut heavily into it and must do so again at the end of the year.
Now is the time to change the feel of the team, the mixture. Keep Brett Deledio and Andrew Raines in the middle. Stick with Cleve Hughes, Kelvin Moore, Luke McGuane and Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls. He is getting better service from rookies and late picks than he is from the cherished early picks in the draft.
This side got beaten by more than 100 points three times last year and once by more than 90. The core group might just pick and choose when it opts to play. Wallace must weed them out. It is the only way this group can blossom.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21689498-12270,00.html 
