Tigers caught short in the draft
Robert Walls | July 17, 2007 | The Age
RICHMOND fans left the MCG on Sunday shaking their heads. Not because their team has only one win for the season, nor because the Hawks had smashed them by 53 points. No, what would have hurt is that the Tigers didn't have one or both of the game's two leading goalkickers wearing their colours.
And they could have. Almost three years ago, the Tigers opted for Brett Deledio with their first pick. The Hawks had next selection and chose Jarryd Roughead. At pick three, the Bulldogs chose Ryan Griffen. Then it was the Tigers' turn again. "Richard Tambling" was the name they called out. The Hawks followed with Lance Franklin. OUCH!
Good big men win big games. Jonathan Brown, Warren Tredrea and Barry Hall all brought home recent premierships. Last year, Eagles Ashley Hansen and Quinten Lynch did their job, kicking five of their team's 12 goals. That the Tigers overlooked Roughead and Franklin will haunt them for the next decade. The Hawk pair are 20-year-olds who lead their team's goalkicking with another tall, Tim Boyle. The trio have kicked 94 goals between them.
The Tigers have only one tall, Matthew Richardson, who has had any impact on the scoreboard with 37 goals. "Richo" will front up again next year at 33 years of age. Why, oh why, did the Tigers opt for the short options when little blokes are a dime a dozen? On Sunday, Richmond took only eight marks inside its forward 50. The Hawks took 18.
Deledio will be a very good player, but in two full seasons he hasn't featured in his team's top 10 in the club championship. Nor has he learnt how to gut-run to shake a tag. Tambling has been a disappointment. He doesn't run hard enough, often enough and is yet to show a real appetite for the contest. On Sunday, he touched the ball only five times and was benched because of his lack of intensity. Efforts like that deflate the Tiger faithful.
And the diehards have to look twice to check that the "Little League" isn't playing. Never before have so many ants worn the Tiger strip. Richmond took the ball into its forward 50 on 45 occasions, as opposed to Hawthorn's 66. If you kick the ball backwards as much as the Tigers do, those figures will eventuate.
Richmond coach Terry Wallace, now into the third year of a five-year contract, finds himself under the pump. When he took over a wooden-spoon team the only way was up, and he did that with 10 wins followed by 11 in the first two seasons. In year three, there has been a massive dip and the spoon beckons again.
Bad decisions, ordinary recruiting and bad luck have cost Wallace. Should he have cut popular decade-long defenders Andrew Kellaway and Darren Gaspar? Probably not. Should he have recruited 28-year-old Kent Kingsley? Definitely not. Should strong, aggressive David Rodan, who has now played every game in 2007 with Port Adelaide, have been allowed to leave the club? I thought the decision was right, but Port coach Mark Williams obviously saw something in Rodan that most of us didn't.
Should young, developing forwards in Jack Riewoldt and Cleve Hughes be played more regularly? Absolutely. And is it time for Graham Polak to be relieved of his role as spare man in the back line, and be forced to prove that he can go head-to-head with the Halls, Browns and Pavliches of the football world and actually beat them? This, in turn, could free up the most undersized key defender in the business, Joel Bowden, to fully use his creativity and not be stressed by playing week-in, week-out on taller, stronger, younger forwards.
And would Wallace regret holding a press conference earlier in the year when he told all assembled not to expect too much from the Tigers until 2011? You bet he would. Everyone needs hope, even if it is false.
The bad luck has come through serious injury to three of his best players. Nathan Brown, Troy Simmonds and Mark Coughlan between them have played 11 out of a possible 45 games this season. That hurts. So Wallace finds himself coaching for his long-term future. He has 51 games to secure his career and to put the Tigers on the right track. It won't be easy.
TIGER RECRUITING(And Robert Walls' rating on players' performances thus far)
2004 NATIONAL DRAFTPick Games (played/possible) Rating
1. Brett Deledio 57/59 7/10
4. Richard Tambling 47/59 4/10
12. Danny Meyer 17/59 2/10
16. Adam Pattison 29/59 5/10
20. Dean Polo 25/59 5/10
2005 NATIONAL DRAFT8. Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls 7/37 2/10
24. Cleve Hughes 8/37 4/10
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