When a midfield player struggles to win possessions consistently in the VFL it’s gonna be very tough in the AFL level. One reasonable game in the VFL in 5 isn’t good enough for a midfielder especially one who has been in the system for 3 years.
IMO, he hadn’t earned an AFL game. I personally would’ve liked to see him string a few good games in the VFL before giving him a game but what do I know
But let’s just play the kids and gift them games and teach them nothing like we used to do for 37 years. 
What’s the alternative ? Play edwards ? We’ve got to look forward. Give them a trial and if it’s no good then we know.
Don’t play players in the senior team that don’t deserve the jumper.
Our older players may be getting on but they’ve paid their dues and bled for the club and given us three premiership cups.
Gift games to youngsters that haven’t proven their value by busting their arse in the 2’s and your teaching them it’s ok to be ordinary but your going to be promoted anyway.
That sort of rubbish breeds bad culture and we all know what bad culture got us.
We should never accept mediocrity and demand excellence from our newbies. It’s shouldn’t be easy to wear the great Richmond jumper.
Our recruiters and list managers have dropped the ball and by the looks of our vfl team our development has also suffered.
keep saying it but continually picking blokes who underperform is also gifting games.Its okay keep playing badly we won't drop you your a favorite.
Much harder for the kids to shine in the two's there is a wide acknowledment that there are few mature players and the structure is poor.
rubbish! What a load of crap.
If the kids work hard they can succeed. We need to stop being soft with these kids and demand more consistency. If not we’ll be back a middling team thinking 9th is a successful season.
So picking underperforming horrible skilled players week after week is not gifting games. What a load of crap and well done way to ignore it because it doesnt fit with your narrative.
Its a fact the two,s have very few mature players it mostly a side of 22 and unders. Its also a fact there is little structure.
Despite that some of the kids have performed well and should be getting games instead of us putting up with passengers week after week or putting up with blokes whose skills are clearly not up to it.Whats that saying the epitimy of madness is to do the same thing over and over.
You are correct when you say our VFL had very few mature players yes I agree but the structure is still based on the “Richmond way” despite the lack of execution for 4 quarter considering the age demographic.
Some kids are performing well and deserve a spot ie. Mansell, Gibcus but others I feel need to get consistency in performance to keep high standards and foster good culture ie. RCD, Sonsie, Clarke, Browne etc.
Of those seemingly underperforming “passengers” in the Senior team, well I agree but only with those players who haven’t done the hard yards and have premiership medals ie. Ross, Aarts, Tarrant and any other newbie (exactly the players who have been dropped at times this year)
The reason is to not make it easy for these players who will hopefully replace the elder statesmen in due coarse but if the club makes it too easy for them to earn a senior recall then it’s doing nothing but fostering mediocrity like we experienced for many years prior to our current success.
The underperforming elder statesman ie. Edwards, Castagna (as much as I don’t like him), Baker etc. have all done the hard yards and deserve some leniency (which inevitably won’t last forever).
Unfortunately Riewoldt, Lynch and Balta is all we have as forward options because we don’t have anyone coming through to replace them.
I would however persist with Miller ahead of Tarrant considering the latter has no history with us either and Miller has done reasonably well at both levels and deserves games unlike Tarrant.
As you have rightly pointed out ad nauseam, that our team management has been poor and something must be done to rectify the age and experience demographic.
I agree with your points but I don’t agree that the promotion of youngsters should be done to the detriment of good culture. Bad culture is a disease that is very very hard to rectify
And everything should be done to keep fostering a good culture that has been established especially in relation to our recent success and the careers of our greats coming to the end.
