Failure saps fight out of Tiger army
Rohan Connolly | July 22, 2007
Grant Thomas no longer writes for The Sunday AgeRICHMOND supporters used to have a fearsome reputation as not only the most passionate but most volatile fans in football. It was well-earned.
When the glories of the 1960s and '70s finally gave way to continued mediocrity, it's fair to say the Tiger army didn't take it too well.
I can still hear the fury of the lynch mob that descended upon the rooms after a 141-point flogging at the hands of North Melbourne early in 1990. They didn't just want answers. They wanted blood. Preferably both.
The Tigers were coming off a wooden spoon, armed with one of the weakest line-ups in their history, but that hadn't quelled their supporters' demand for results, nor a refusal to accept humiliating thrashings of that size.
But year upon year of more disappointment since then seems to have taken a toll on not only an entire club, but also its fan base.
Richmond is set to return a season statistically even more barren than the four wins recorded in its last wooden spoon year of 2004. Worse than anything Carlton has served up in the past five years.
Just one victory from a side that chalked up 11 of them last season has been an amazing downturn. But while Richmond supporters aren't exactly turning cartwheels, there doesn't seem nearly the same degree of angst as of yore.
No storming of the barricades. No dumping manure outside the Punt Road offices. More a sad resignation to what has become the Tiger fan's lot. Life at the bottom of the ladder.
It's a mindset you can't help but wonder has become a permanent part of the club they follow. For the same terminal flaws seemed to have dogged Richmond for a long, long time.
Questionable recruiting. On-field leaders too satisfied with too little. Kids whose development seems to occur at a snail's pace. And skill levels embarrassingly poor.
It's true the Tigers haven't given up much to recruit the experienced Mark Graham, Trent Knobel and Kent Kingsley over recent years. But the damage symbolically has been to give the impression of a club having a bob each-way rather than making a concerted commitment to building a team for the longer-term.
The highly rated kids, meanwhile, haven't exactly jumped out of the box. First-round draft picks Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls and Danny Meyer have had next to no impact.
Oakley-Nicholls is yet to complete a decent pre-season through injury and may have some excuse. Meyer needs to show something in a hurry. So does Richard Tambling, whose poor effort last week against Hawthorn was particularly ill-timed.
All of them need better examples coming from the top. Skipper Kane Johnson is a shadow these days of the damaging on-baller he was in Adelaide. Joel Bowden bleeds yellow-and-black, but his propensity for the odd clanger can have a cancerous effect on impressionable young teammates. And skills haven't exactly been a forte of Richmond's senior core over recent years. Darren Gaspar and Andrew Kellaway were great clubmen and dogged defenders, but not great users of the footy.
Some of the better players still in the mix now have plenty of similar issues. Shane Tuck is one. Even Mark Coughlan, still a great hope for the future despite his shocking injury run, would want to tidy up his disposal upon return.
It's an on-going conundrum. The silkier players for the Tigers are the younger types who, Nathan Foley aside, still can't win enough of their own football. The more prolific ball-getters often seem to be the biggest culprits when it comes to errors.
The brittleness of Richmond's list has been seriously exposed this season through the absences of ruckman Troy Simmonds, Coughlan and Nathan Brown.
To some extent, it bears out the point coach Terry Wallace made pre-season about the dearth of players in that early to mid-20s age bracket. It's precisely that group that has helped engineer Geelong's stunning turnaround this season.
For Richmond, that's going to take even more time. With two years left on his contract, Wallace has that. But if the nightmare that 2007 has proved is going to be reversed at all, there can be scarcely any more margin for error.
Not at the drafting table, certainly. Not on the training track, where the development of much-heralded youngsters needs to be expedited. And nor in the explanations delivered to a long-suffering fan base.
Things are not about to get any easier with away matches against Sydney, Geelong and West Coast, plus a clash against Collingwood to come in the next four weeks. The Tiger army has been more than patient. Perhaps there's a better understanding of the intricacies required now in lifting a club from the doldrums.
You can't just go out now and get an Ian Stewart or John Pitura, like the late Graeme Richmond would have. Disgruntled fans charging into the rooms wanting Wallace's head aren't going to achieve much either.
But the longer Richmond's malaise lingers, the less likely is a whole club to rediscover the sort of confident swagger it once had. And, dangerously, the more likely that club, and its supporters, will accept a culture in which failure becomes the norm.
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