For Saints and Tigers it's Riewoldt or bust Michael Gleeson
The Age
May 13, 2014 We need to talk about Riewoldt. Either one, take your pick. It doesn't matter which cousin you choose, the issue is roughly the same.
On Monday night St Kilda's Nick played very well. He had 17 touches, took seven marks, brought the ball inside 50 four times, which was more than any teammate, he kicked four goals and he set up two more. He was very good. But for St Kilda to win the game, Riewoldt needed to be twice as good. He needed to play a game like Josh Kennedy at the weekend and kick 11.
Players doing as Kennedy did and kicking 10 or more in a game happens about once a year - and not six times in a year as occurred in 1996 - so the idea of constructing a game on the big forward kicking the team score have been thrown further than a Tony Lockett crutch.
"It was almost Rooey or nothing in front of the footy tonight, which is a bit of a worry for us. We just need a few more in front of the footy to give the big fella a hand at times," Saints coach Alan Richardson said after the game.
"The kicker is attracted by movement and split, and if we don't have others who can get off their bloke, then they're probably going to keep looking for Nick. That's the message for the rest of our forwards - to make sure they're continually working hard to present and be an option, and earn the trust of their teammates that if they're in a contest they're going to present well."
Nick has never kicked 10 in a game. Jack has: in round 12, 2010, against West Coast at the MCG. But Richmond has long understood that Jack can't be the man to be their forward line.
Both clubs have significant and similar problems. Their Riewoldts are both good players - Nick decidedly better than Jack, but both very capable forwards. For a time the game swung away from Nick when the ground was condensed and teams folded back into forward lines, but now the full-court press offers him the chance to run down and up the ground and exploit his chest-bursting asset. This game does not play to Jack's. Jack has performed best as a player tied with a bungee rope to the goal square, even if he is not the ideal size for the one-out forward.
The two clubs' problems present not so much with their key forwards but that they are their only effective key forwards.
Richmond has tried Ty Vickery, Aaron Edwards, Ben Griffiths as key target foils to no avail this year. It recruited Chris Knights for mid-size choice, but a knee injury has denied him impact. Dustin Martin rotates forward but that is a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scenario with the midfield.
Damien Hardwick has been chided for suggesting the position of full-forward no longer exists. In a true sense, he is right. There are sides with multiple tall forwards - call them centre half-forwards or high forwards, call them full-forwards or deep forwards, they all push up hard up the ground and fold back again. To the disgust of many an aged forward they do not often start in the goal square and lead at the ball.
Consider this for simple illustration of the trend in how teams construct an attack and score. When Hawthorn won the flag last year, Lance Franklin kicked 60 goals, which was behind Jarryd Roughead's 72 goals and accounted for 14 per cent of the goals the Hawks kicked. In 2008 when the Hawks won their previous flag, Franklin kicked 113 goals, which was 28 per cent of the team's goals. Hawthorn knew it needed to change and used Buddy up the ground. It could have left him deeper, let him kick 100 goals and win the Coleman but it probably wouldn't have won the flag.
Consider also that this year the Hawks have had 10 or more individual goal kickers in all but two games - the loss to Geelong in round five and to Sydney last week - and in each of those games they still had eight separate goal kickers.
The Saints and the Tigers need to find someone other than a Riewoldt to kick their goals. They each know that, but finding those goal kickers is another issue.
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http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/for-saints-and-tigers-its-riewoldt-or-bust-20140513-zrbnf.html#ixzz31h7Dxskg
