Well this is going to be a popular thread lol
. Waits for Stripes to be asked for an 'all of the above' option in his poll
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Main fault is Terry and Miller didn't cut into the list hard enough at the beginning. The comment about wanting to give the older guys some success initially as a loyalty reward when he started was sign of things to come and his biggest mistake. Losing Browny and Cogs was just horrible luck
and screwed up that idea. By finishing 9th and 10th in no-man's land we missed out on the juicier picks on offer under the old PP rule that Hawthorn, Carlton and Collingwood received.
His first (2004) draft we had the right idea with 6 picks in the top 36 (although we didn't make the most of our early choices) but the 2005 draft was a disaster. Just 3 kids (all flops) when we were meant to be rebuilding followed by just 3 in 2007 and 2 in 2008 was a disgrace. Just 8 kids in 3 National drafts because we traded away good picks for VFL standard players instead of offloading players for picks even when offered a decent deal. Not all Plough's fault either I might add. The Club as a whole from the Board down are responsible for the direction the Club took and the slowness in turnover of our list. What was done in 5 years should have been done in 3. It is possible to cull 3/4ers of your list in 3 years. It's what we have to do now
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The financial pressures on the Club wouldn't have helped generate a pure long-term focus from the Board down. After losing $3m in 2003-4 there would've been pressure to put out a competitive side from the start in 2005 to help with balancing the books. Although people now bag Plough for being nothing but a salesman it was one of the reasons why he was hired in the first place. The Club was a basketcase both on and off-field. It wasn't someone to sell it to the masses to attract support and generate dollars.
Plough also misread the direction footy was heading and recruited too many small and light players with poor defensive sides to their game. The lack of draft choices restricted our ability to get the balance right with our list between smalls, midsized-players and talls. We only started to correct our lack of decent talls in Terry's last draft. The fact is the more things change the more the fundamentals of footy don't. Bigger bodies with natural smarts and good skills win out in the end in winning the footy. The game has speed up dramatically and you can't be slow by foot but it's more quickness of movement of the footy (which requires smarts and skills) that you need to break down modern defensive structures rather than just pure leg speed.
At training the focus seemed to be more on implementing the run-and-carry gameplan at all costs independent of and irrespective of the strengths and especially weaknesses of the playing group. A lack of hands on teaching and instruction both individually and collectively (agree with that big time Stripes). Errors at training were never pulled up - those same errors the players would display during actual games. Specialised development of our younger players was non-existent in the first 2-3 years as we know due to lack of resources as well as lack of hands on teaching. The weirdest mistake was over last preseason he changed things up despite our strong finish to 2008. Why change things that were clearly working! ???
This is not just about Terry but all Richmond coaches of recent years. I think they come to the club mistakenly assuming Richmond players all know the basics of footy (especially basic strategy). The new coach whoever he turns out to be needs to strip everything back to the basics and start again if he really wants to instill change. Clean out the older players excluding say Cuz, Richo and Newy so the coach is the voice to the young guys rather than passing down a poor culture from older players. Basically get on the park and hands on instruct players where they need to be, run to and kick to play by play. If I was the new coach I would write-off 2010 (without saying anything) and use the first 16 months as one long training, teaching and developmental period. A 4 months preseason isn't long enough to fix what is wrong with this current group as it goes too quickly. Prepare for 2011-2 and beyond as the new coach will have a 3-year contract. It'll also give the new coach two draft periods to cut deep and clean out at least half the list.
