Jade Rawlings slams Tigers' losing frame of mindBruce Matthews | August 10, 2009
CARETAKER coach Jade Rawlings declared after yesterday's 55-point loss that Richmond was burdened by a long-standing losing culture.
A brutally honest Rawlings lashed his players for being selfish and unwilling to help teammates in a challenge.
"People have been talking about cultural issues at Richmond for a long time, however long they think it has been going on," he said.
"But, unfortunately, our players go back to habits which are bad reflections on them because, when it gets tough, they can't fight through it, to do something to try and help a mate.
"If it's not working out for them individually, they can still have an involvement, still bring something to the table and have an impact on the team."
Rawlings' solution to eradicate the Tigers' inferior culture was "a lot of hard work" after he watched his team succumb to Sydney at the MCG.
"You can't boil the ocean, unfortunately, but there's a lot of change needed to be made and I think over the last seven weeks we've been able to tap into that change," he said.
"But today was a big step backwards, so we'll go back to the drawing board and keep going back to things that we've been preaching that we want to see them improving. But it takes a while.
"It's how you review, to be able to look teammates in the eye and assess how they performed, and how they performed against the plans we had in place and what we stand for as a footy club."
Rawlings was appalled by Richmond's response to Ben Cousins' 250th game, which he said contrasted sharply with the Swans' pledge to honour Michael O'Loughlin's 300th.
"I couldn't have been more disappointed with the group. To have a challenge put to them and to be able to show very little, if any resistance to it," he said.
"Their (Swans) discipline just totally wiped us off the park.
"It's all mental. Players who get challenged the way they did today at certain stages and go back to old habits where they just can't fight through it.
"And when one or two can't fight through it, that leads to four or five. Next thing it infiltrates through the team and we didn't have enough people prepared to challenge the course of the game and try and do sometime to change it.
"I thought the signs were pretty alarming early, and the second quarter we just allowed some very simple goals that shouldn't be allowed in AFL footy. We'll sum it up at selection this week, look at people who need to go back (to the VFL).
"Go and rediscover their form or go and work on an area of their game that we've identified is poor.
"Who comes in? We'll make those calls at selection, but it's more about today, how people offered their spot in the side back to us because of how they performed."
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