Promising pre-season ends with embarrassment
Nathan Brown | March 29, 2009
EVERY now and again, I look at my face in the mirror and don't like what I see. There are any number of minor misdemeanours in my life that I can hide from, but on Thursday night, after we lost to Carlton, there was no place to hide — and nor should there be.
I'll put my hand up as a senior player to say, "I let down the Richmond Football Club", and, as a playing group, we let down the Richmond Football Club.
After a summer that has delivered a lot of hype and confidence, we failed on the big stage. In front of 87,000 people and probably a million more watching on television, we embarrassed ourselves.
The easy (and safe) thing to do would be to bury your head in the sand, not talk to anyone, pull the blinds, turn off the phone and lock yourself away, but that's not going to get us anywhere and problems need to be addressed.
As players, we get pats on the back, well wishes and praise heaped on us every day, so on the way home from the game, I made a choice to listen to talkback radio to hear and feel what the Richmond fans and the football world were thinking. It wasn't pretty. These are passionate people who pay their membership and come and watch us play every week and I, as a senior player, have let them down.
You sit there after the game and wonder how it all went wrong. You look at pictures on the clubroom walls of Royce Hart, Kevin Bartlett and Roger Dean and can't help but think they'd be embarrassed too, that you've let them down also.
I had eight of my family down for the game and you feel embarrassed in front of them, that you have let them down.
I'll tell you one thing though — my dog was still pumped to see me when I got home.
After such a loss, pressure comes on the coaching staff, in particular Terry Wallace. But the coaches can't go out on the ground and do it for us. They can set the game up, give you the best possible build-up to perform at your optimum level, but at the end of the day the players need to take full responsibility.
I woke up on Friday morning and I felt sick in the stomach and then remembered the nightmare that was the night before and the fact that my first article was due in The Sunday Age this week. We had game review on Friday morning and it was brutal — things you didn't want to see or hear but things that had to be said and done.
You don't just forget a performance like that and call it an aberration and look to next week; we need to use it as motivation.
I know it was my worst game in a yellow and black jumper. I turned the ball over a number of times, and not doing that is the strength area of my game. And I went right out of the game after half-time when the team needed leaders.
There are 21 games to go and I'm still as confident with the direction and ability of the team as I was two weeks ago when we beat the Brisbane Lions on the Gold Coast.
The positive thing to look at is that was not the Richmond Football Club that has trained hard all summer, the Richmond Football Club that was ranked second in hard-ball gets in 2008 and prides itself on its hardness around the contest, and the Richmond Football Club that won more clearance battles than it lost last year.
Carlton's first five goals came directly from our mistakes and a flow-on effect started, which had us all making schoolboy errors all night. Carlton ended up kicking 15 goals from our turnovers, which is inexcusable, but it's also fixable.
We need to control the controllable, crack in hard to win first use, which our midfield prides itself on, and use the ball when it's in our possession. All in all, a horrible night to be a part of for all Richmond people.
The younger guys in the team will look to the senior players for direction and will feed off the mood and attitude that we display. We have to stand tall, take what's coming to us — and it's coming thick, fast and it's deserved — and keep moving forward.
There is no bigger challenge in football than playing the Cats at Kardinia Park. With guns on every line, Geelong is a wonderful team that executes a game plan with precision.
You need to be able to ride the highs when the good times roll and make the most of them, but football is not all roses and chocolates and there are times when you are going to be tested as a playing group and right now we have a huge test to see how we respond.
We need to stand collectively, look this challenge in the eye and meet it head-on.
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