Young cubs stone CrowsBy Max Phillips
Sun 28 Aug, 2011RICHMOND coach Damien Hardwick has praised his young leadership group for igniting Richmond's come-from-behind 22-point victory over Adelaide at AAMI Stadium on Sunday.
The Tigers trailed by 24 points at the 14-minute mark of the opening term and kicked 1.6 in a wasteful second quarter to be 16 points adrift at the major break.
But Richmond booted 10 of the last 14 goals to overcome the Crows and record the Tigers' third consecutive win.
Hardwick said he challenged his senior players at half-time to spark the fightback.
"I thought our first quarter especially was very poor," Hardwick said.
"I thought we were fumbly [and] we couldn't keep our feet.
"[But] credit where credit's due, we put it on our leadership group at half-time and they delivered. They started to get the game up and going.
"Ty Vickery started to lift and certain players probably dragged us over the line."
Vickery kicked an equal career-best four goals with seven marks and two score-assists to lead the Tigers home. Trent Cotchin (27 disposals, 17 after half-time) and Dustin Martin (19 disposals, nine tackles and two goals) were also instrumental in guiding Richmond to just its second win on the road this season.
The win was also just the Tigers' third from its past 16 encounters against the Crows.
Despite their slow start, Hardwick said the belief of the group never wavered.
"The belief's always been in there, the thing we've just got to get better at is ironing out the inconsistencies," he said.
"That's the one thing that I can say about this playing group, is they've always got the ability to compete in games.
"We made a few adjustments at half-time [and] just re-assessed what was going wrong."
Hardwick revealed that Richmond's focus during the week was to strangle the fast-paced and free-flowing style of the resurgent Crows, but admitted his team got it wrong in the early stages of the contest.
"We went into the game with a certain plan and that plan we didn't actually stick to at stages, so we just rectified that, made a few positional changes and got ourselves back on track," Hardwick said.
"In the first half I thought we tried to play on too quickly once we capitalised on the turnover.
"But in the second half I think we managed to slow that down. Once we just managed to compose ourselves ... I thought the goals came a little bit easier."
While the win was satisfying, Hardwick said it was more rewarding to witness the continued development of his young Tigers.
"Every win is always invaluable, there's no doubt about that," he said.
"The win-loss column is the easy thing to look at, [but] the development of players is probably the one area that we've been really happy with this year.
"Robbie Nahas has become a really solid player, Ty Vickery has been outstanding and Trent Cotchin, to go from a good player to a very, very good player has become really important to our footy club."
"They make mistakes, but they get better by those mistakes. That's the really important thing. We've just got to keep persevering with and developing those players to get better.
"That's the thing that will keep us in good stead going forward."
Richmond will close its 2011 season at Etihad Stadium next Sunday afternoon against North Melbourne.
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