Tigers need dragging into the modern eraRohan Connolly | August 17, 2009
A WEEK or so from now, Richmond will have a new coach, its 13th since the club last won a premiership just on three decades ago.
Either Damien Hardwick, Alan Richardson, Ken Hinkley or Jade Rawlings will doubtless have plenty of theories about how to improve the Tigers' playing list. You just hope they have a PhD in social engineering as well. Because they'll definitely need it.
Richmond has managed some pretty low ebbs during the past spectacularly unsuccessful 30-odd years, but its pathetic performance against Collingwood on Saturday was right down there with the worst.
Significantly, it was an afternoon that underlined in bold the very cultural problems to which caretaker coach Rawlings had alluded the previous weekend. Problems that are going to take a lot more solving than simply cleaning out and restocking the playing group.
Rawlings had spoken about the Tigers being unable to "fight through" adversity. Clearly, a few players took that interpretation far too literally, most notably Jake King and Tom Hislop, neither of whom, along with nearly all their teammates, had fired a shot when the result was still in dispute.
It was what happened after King allegedly whacked Alan Didak behind play in the second quarter, the difference already 49 points and the result shot to bits, that was truly instructive.
The outbreak of machismo, flaring of nostrils, wrestling and shoving that ensued was entertaining theatre, and as a means of retrieving some wounded pride, completely useless. But when King came from the field, his jumper ripped to shreds, the Richmond faithful stood and cheered as wildly as they would have any matchwinner.
You would like to think goals, marks and kicks meant as much to the Tiger hordes, but sometimes you wonder. So how would they have seen Hislop's effort near the end of the game, the gap now an embarrassing 100-odd points?
With Collingwood's Heath Shaw on the ground hurt after a solid knock, Hislop doubled back to get in the Magpie's face. Heroic. Not. A short while later, there was another cheap shot with a forearm to Shane O'Bree. Tough? No. Pretty p---weak, actually.
Magpie skipper Nick Maxwell will doubtless cop some stick for his comments yesterday about Richmond players not being prepared "to put their head over the ball when it counted", but he was spot-on.
So what was the sum total of Richmond's efforts on a day when surely it should have been steeling itself to give the retiring Joel Bowden an adequate send-off? A near 100-point flogging, and a few cheap shots when it was all over. So much for caring about your teammates.
Any Richmond person who thinks that alleged tough stuff was at least showing some spirit is kidding themselves. Showing some spirit would have been to chase, tackle, man up at some stage, and bust a gut running before the contest had been turned into a glorified training drill.
That's what real courage and heart and effort is about in football of the 21st century. That's what the top teams do. But plenty of the Tiger army, fans, favourite old sons, associated hangers-on, and sadly, apparently some players, still don't seem to get it.
They're the ones still revelling in the glory days of the late 1960s and early '70s, still reliving Neil Balme's pole-axing of Geoff Southby in the 1973 grand final, and that hoary old "eat 'em alive" line.
This current Richmond administration is doing what it can to turn that massive weight of cultural baggage around.
The process of finding its new coach has remained steadfast under at times severe testing, like that scarcely believable push for Kevin Sheedy to take over the helm about a decade too late.
This serious distraction again spoke volumes about the power of sentiment and frequent rule of myth and mystique over reality at Punt Road for far too long.
Now Brendon Gale is aboard as chief executive, at least one old Tiger who can actually help drag the club kicking and screaming into the modern era rather than muddy the waters. So obviously can the new man in the same coaching hot seat that has at times driven more than a dozen other occupants to distraction.
He will have his ideas about players need to stay or go. But whichever of these last four candidates for the coaching gig lands it can do only so much.
Rawlings clearly knows that after just three years at Tigerland. And after a Saturday when too many Tigers on either side of the fence seemed to want to take yet another trip back to the '70s.
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