It will take time, says Wallace
11:13 PM Sat 28 July, 2007
richmondfc.com.au
TERRY Wallace has stressed that Richmond’s period of gloom is necessary for the club to move forward following the Tigers’ second-half fadeout against Sydney.
“You have to accept what the scoreboard says,” Wallace said after the 66-point loss.
“I thought we played 70 minutes of pretty sort of admirable footy.
“You come away (and) it’s an 11-goal loss. Where do you sit there? Do you take more out of the last 50 minutes, or do you take more out of the 70 minutes that you did right?”
Coming off three consecutive hidings, and facing three weeks that features clashes with Geelong, Collingwood and West Coast, Wallace once again committed to Richmond’s plan of blooding kids instead of utilising more experienced players.
“We’ve got some very young boys running around in the side,” an upbeat Wallace said.
“It was the stronger bodies come into play, (and) the last 50 minutes was disappointing.”
“We had 12 guys (who had played) under 50 games. We had nine guys who had never played on the SCG prior.
“I know our supporters lose faith in where we’re going and what we’re trying to do. But when you throw that many young boys in there, it’s just going to take time.
“We had one or two choices. We throw in guys who are 26 and 27 but not really taking us anywhere, or we give these young guys a chance.”
And while Richmond faces the possibility of recording just a single victory for the entire 2007 campaign, Wallace sees the final five weeks as an opportunity to identify the players that are good enough to build the next September-capable outfit.
“Most of our goals are around trying to remain competitive. And now we’ve had three weeks in a row where we haven’t been.
We’ve got to make decisions on who’s staying and who’s not staying - who we sort of see as being key players in the future line-up of the club.
“I’m six weeks past the half-way mark of a project that we took on where both myself and the club committed to doing the hard yards, starting all over again and getting some young players into the squad.
“We’ve got plenty of work still to do.”
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