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The Richmond Tigers have too many passengers
Jack
Roar Pro
5th May, 2015
9
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Jack
Roar Pro
5th May, 2015
9

Richmond have a good team, a team that should be pushing for finals thanks to their good core group of players.

Any team with Jack Riewoldt, Alex Rance, Dustin Martin, Trent Cotchin and Brett Deledio should be one of the best sides in the competition. Ivan Maric, Shane Edwards, Brandon Ellis, Anthony Miles and Bachar Houli are also good support.

So why did it take Richmond nine consecutive wins in 2014 to make the finals, and why are they going at just a 40 per cent win rate so far this season?

Their first 11 or so players are not the problem. Their next 11 are.

Richmond currently have too many passengers in their side. Players that do not want to take responsibility and take the game on themselves. These players do not want to take risks.

Too many Richmond players lose the ability to kick the football when Martin is in the general vicinity of them, it happens around a dozen times a game, sometimes even more, where Richmond players are in a perfect position to kick and be attacking, but instead opt to hand the ball to Martin, and in other cases Houli.

While it is not a bad idea to get the ball into the hands of your most dangerous players, it is a bad idea to do so when you’re in a good position yourself. You allow the opposition to get back and flood the defensive 50.

Martin, McIntosh, Miles, Maric, Jake Batchelor, Riewoldt, Sam Lloyd and Steven Morris were Richmond’s only players with more kicks than handballs against Geelong. In comparison to Richmond’s eight, Geelong had 12 players, more than half of their side, kick more often than they handballed.

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Geelong players were not afraid to take responsibility. They took it. They won. Too many Tigers doubted themselves and would rather give the responsibility to others, namely Martin and Houli.

Richmond’s latter 11 players of their best 22 are simply not good enough to contend deep into September. If they want to become a more balanced team, they need not rely on a small group of players to get the job done. Each and every player wearing the yellow and black should want to kick the ball forward, to be the one who assists the score, to be the one that puts the ball in a dangerous position.

Right now too many would rather handball backwards 10 metres to a standstill Martin or Houli and expect them to do it for them. This is one glaring issue that the Tigers have, and is something rather out of the ordinary for a team to be concerned about. Teams who rely on too few are too easily found out by the opposition. Richmond’s first 11 players in comparison to their second 11 has a difference simply far too great.

This can be simply rectified. The passengers in the Richmond side must step up and be willing to be the one that drives the ball forward, or even then, to be the one to make the mistake.

Richmond currently sit in 11th place, and yet have the sixth best percentage in the league. The Tigers are not far off the pace, and games against North Melbourne, Collingwood, Port Adelaide, Essendon and Fremantle over the next five weeks will be telling to where Richmond are at.

The Tigers can easily win three to four of those games if they play as a team of 22 players, rather than just 11.

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