Focus on Dees as coach ready to ring the changes
Jake Niall | April 14, 2009
RICHMOND captain Chris Newman last night blamed a lack of confidence rather than innate skill deficiencies for the team's disappointing start to the season.
Newman said that coach Terry Wallace had told the players, however, that those who continued to make skill errors would not play seniors — an edict that could see a number of players dropped for next week's critical game against another winless team, Melbourne, with maligned early draft pick Richard Tambling and Jake King among those under pressure.
While Newman acknowledged that Richmond's skills "weren't good enough" against the Bulldogs yesterday, he said the Tigers had the talent to execute skills.
"I think we've got the players there. For some reason or another, we just don't have the confidence and at times we don't back in our skills," said the captain.
"You know, if you come down to training, you see our skill level at training, it's spot on. We just need to relate that to game day."
Newman said the club had to keep turning over players until it found those who performed. "Skills weren't good enough. We know that. As Terry said sort of after the game, if you can't hit targets and you continue to miss targets, you just won't play, so we've just got to keep churning them, churn the players through and, you know, see where we're at."
Newman said the players had gone "into their shells" rather than attack the game when the opposition got a run on.
"I think that we've certainly lacked consistency throughout the quarters. I think that if a team sort of got a run on we'd kind of go back into our shells and go back on and play on our man whereas we should just be playing footy and doing the things that got us into the game in the first place."
Newman said Richmond supporters, who aired their frustration with ironic cheers yesterday, had "every right to be disappointed.
"We're not sort of shying away from that … any team's that zip and three at the start of the year, you know that they're going to be asking questions, and, you know, internally we know that it's only round three. We've got the confidence that we can turn this around and all we need to focus on now is Melbourne … nothing ahead of time, just Melbourne."
Newman said the Tigers could not think about the consequences of losing to Melbourne. "We just need to focus on Melbourne and Melbourne's strengths, focus on what we do well and we just need to go after them. We know that Melbourne is going come at us with everything and I just think we need to be ready and on our game to get the result.
"We need to do it over four quarters and we haven't done that yet. So this week's a really big challenge for the boys and, you know, we just need to take risks, come out of ourselves for four quarters and just play football basically."
Newman said the Richmond players knew that yesterday's effort "wasn't good enough" after a promising opening.
"We came out in the first quarter and sort of let it all hang out, attack them, took the game on, took risks. But you know a one-quarter effort isn't good enough and we couldn't do that for the four-quarter period. That's the most disappointing thing."
Newman said competing still took precedence over skills, but a balance was needed. "I think that comes first, competing first, and winning the footy, and then you need the polish … we need that balance in winning the hard ball and then being able to hit targets."
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfnews/coach-ready-to-ring-the-changes/2009/04/13/1239474815586.html
