07.11.04
How low can you go? An age old question for Tiger fans but in 2004, Richmond went as low
as as any AFL side could go. It was so many thing that I don't think there is enough words in the dictionary or a
Thesaurus to describe season 2004. The picture to the right could just about sum up season 2004 for me.
Is it a headache or is it just a case of "I can't watch anymore"?
It's taken me weeks (OK more than 2 months) to come up with my list of the lowest of the low and here they are:
1. Round 20 - the venue AAMI Stadium, the opponent Adelaide. The mission to try and win to avoid the wooden spoon. For
3 quarters it looked like the mission might be accomplished. Oops ... I forgot a game of footy consists of 4 quarters. The 4th quarter
of this game was for me at least the most insipid and pathetic effort of the season (and that's saying something). To lose
is one thing to lose without kicking a goal in the last quarter was disgraceful, especially considering how we had played
the previous 3 quarters. To make it worse to watch Richo being taken from the ground
half way through the final quarter just made you think what were we trying to achieve?
2. Question: How do you make the blood of the most ardent Tiger fan boil? Easy play you reigning Jack Dyer Medalist
when he is clearly not fit and carrying an injury, then rest him for most of the season and then have him play
the final 2 games for no apparent reason but for the risk of the said player re-injuring himself. Next question: What's another word
for stupid?
3. Rounds 21 & 22: Now I am not complaining about having 5 picks in the top 20 of the National Draft. But that doesn't
mean I like being labelled "Wooden Spooners" - I accept it but it doesn't mean I like it. Round 21 was the day the Tigers could have shown something ...
anything ... but no, by quarter time you just knew the wooden spoon was within our grasp. After round 22's effort it had found a worthy home.
Enough said!
4. Losing 14 games in a row. It wasn't so much losing them but how we went about losing them. When you constantly play the
game in some sort of damage control mode which includes trying so hard not to get thumped when you finally get into a postition to win a game you simply don't know
how (remember Collingwood in Round 18?). That was the Tigers second half to the season the only problem was the more they tried to not get thumped the more they got thumped.
5. How do you spell goal? I know it has already been flagged by our new coach but foget about our inablilty to kick 15 goals a game. Did
you know that in 2004 Richmond only managed 14 goals in a game 4 times. Now that is woeful!
6. I call it Pine Time. That annoying little condition that inflicted so many of our youngsters when they
got the call up to play senior footy. When the season is a bleak as 2004 was the only thing that kept a lot of us going week after
week was being able to watch the young players. There was a problem with that - they spent more time on the pine than I did.
Once the season was shot could anyone tell me the point to Pine Time?
7. Where do I sign? Petition anyone? If you thought the On Field was the pits well the Off Field was the same
as we witnessed (and continue to witness) the shenanigans of the Tiger's "Boardroom Battles". It seems so long ago now but I can barely remember when it
all started but by my reckoning it has been going for over 6 months. We had the "petition" and lectures from its author about what
our Club needed (remember Mr Parhoff's lecture about Terry Wallace not being the right choice to coach the Tigers). We still
have an "alternative" ticket that continues to tell us what's wrong with the RFC but cannot or will not give us their plans for the future.
Like the rest of our season this has been frustrating, annoying and disappointing but hey, at least the newspapers have made loads
of money from it. That's got to be a postive doesn't it?
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