New Lynchpin emerges but Rance injury sours Richmond winGreg Baum
The Age
22 March 2019Most of the questions asked about new-look Richmond and Carlton before the opening night of season 2019 were answered satisfactorily before the status quo prevailed. Sam Walsh, tick. Mitch McGovern, tick. Tom Lynch, tick. New rules, less cluttered contest, tick.
But the game threw up one question that meant Thursday night would be the first of sleepless many for premiership favourite Richmond. Late in the third quarter, Alex Rance landed awkwardly and retired from the contest with what everyone suspected was a tear of the ACL. Coach Damian Hardwick said he did not see the incident and could not bring himself to watch a replay. Here was the first ripple of a boat-rocking wave.
Could the Tigers manage without their talismanic full-back, this night and, gulp, for the season? The answer was on the night was yes. They bunched up, played a lesser-frills game and held off the up-and-about Blues. The answer about the season is, ahem.
Rance himself, propped up on crutches at the end of the match, put a brave face on his characteristically bright face. Hardwick was moved to remark on it. But behind him, some teammates were in tears. A pall hung. "Your heart sinks," said Hardwick. "You've been through a lot with this guy. You've been on a journey together, and now it's taken away."
But one man's sprung knee is another's springboard, cruel as that sounds. Hardwick cited West Coast last year as an example of a team that suffered injuries to cornerstone players and won the premiership anyway.
Rance's 200th game became a veritable saga. He would have played it in last year's grand final, except that Richmond were stopped abruptly in the preliminary final. Now this. At match's end, Rance and Jack Riewoldt, who played his 250th game in the season-opener, exchanged a long hug. They are heart-on-sleeve types anyway, but this looked more like broken hearts propped up on bent knees.
The only structural question the Tigers had expected to address on the night was the Riewoldt-Lynch pairing on their forward line. Two first quarter goals for Lynch seemed to answer it unequivocally. Both faded, but since they are new to each other, and Lynch new to the club, and lacking match minutes, this might have been expected. Hardwick characterised their joint effort and Richmond's overall with the same word: clunky.
He excused his Tigers because this was round one, which is always tricky, against a buoyant and slightly mysterious opposition, on an unaccountably slippery ground. Lynch got his hands to many mark attempts; soon he will be taking them. Richmond's forwards missed a lot of goals, but soon they will kick them. The Tigers will be their old selves, minus Rance, plus Lynch. Do your own sums. You can be sure the rest of the comp already is.
Carlton won't be its old self. For coach Brendan Bolton, this is the upside. Thirteen players different from last season made them effectively a new presence in the competition. Crushed early, they fought back in the second and third quarters before fading again in the last. Sam Walsh looked born to league football, Mitch McGovern an inheritance windfall for Carlton. Patrick Cripps, Paddy Dow and Harry McKay underscored their reputations, and slightly-built Zac Fisher stopped Dustin Martin dead in his tracks. Don't try that at home.
As the phoney war at last gave way to the real, Martin drove the ball forward, Riewoldt leapt ambitiously and Lynch took the mark and goaled.Round one is answering preliminary questions about what has changed and what hasn’t. This was a three-parter. Yes, Riewoldt and Lynch could work together in a new-style Richmond forward line. In the warm-up, Riewoldt had pointed this way and that, as if giving Lynch a crash course in the MCG’s topography. Evidently, he learns fast.
Yes, Martin remains a force of nature. Yes, the Tigers had put their preliminary final horror behind them and yes, the Tigers quickly fell into their familiar formation and sped to a seven-goal lead. They appeared to have all the answers then. The arena, buffed up for the footy season, looked so good it was a wonder it wasn’t trolled. This was Richmond’s stage.
But the Blues answered some questions of their own. At first, they could not escape Richmond’s patented press. But eventually, a semblance of system and even polish emerged. On a wing, Walsh took to the MCG as a cow to cud. Richmond gave him a series of rude welcomes. Each time, he brushed himself off and went again. He will have finished the night sore, but not especially sorry.
McGovern paid a bodily price for an early, brave mark standing under a high ball. He persevered gingerly, until a free kick against Rance, definitively hard-won, brought him a goal. Alex Fasolo, also new to Carlton, showed he still had an eye for a goal, and a nose, too.
Meantime, Cripps busied himself at the fall of the ball, Dow, like grass, was everywhere, McKay bulldozed his way into the game. Something old, something new, a couple borrowed, all making for new-look Blues.
Suddenly, it was Carlton putting searching questions to Richmond. Martin’s influenced waned, Lynch and Riewoldt became marginal, reviving the question about whether they were too much of a good thing. The margin narrowed to 13 points. Corrected for the laming of Rance, it was just about break-even.
In the end, experience told, but the Tigers needed all of their head-start. Their sealer came from the boot of former Gold Coast and St Kilda misfit Maverick Weller. That question and that answer weren't even on the supplementary list.
But that is what round one does, poses new questions even as it answers old. A revised list will be available in due course.
There were broader questions, of an aesthetic, statutory, philosophical nature. The six-six-six rule, as envisaged, made for faster getaways and fewer ball-ups. The hands-in-the-back re-interpretation made for more robust marking contests. The restriction on runners made for a stagier spectacle. What impact it had on refinement of the game, the coaches will say. But this we already know, that good footballers adapt. A new 50-metre ruling was expected play havoc, but only one was paid on the night. Steve Hocking had all the answers, but they were his questions.
This began like a grading game in junior sport, to sort out which teams should play in which divisions. At first, the Blues looked out of Richmond’s league. By night’s end, gratifyingly, they were, if not peers, at least in the able to look their opponents in the eye.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/new-lynchpin-emerges-but-rance-injury-sours-richmond-win-20190321-p516dh.html
