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Yesterday on SEN, Richmond’s football manager Dan Richardson gave an interview that may prove to be one of the most damning ever recorded.
Richardson said that the Tigers had several years ago decided to focus on acquiring mature players with the aim of fast-tracking their return to finals, while knowing that their decision to shift focus away from developing youth would ultimately prevent them from becoming one of the league’s top teams.
Richardson said that Richmond’s current woes were the result of this list management strategy. The team has appeared in three consecutive finals series, a state of affairs that Richardson described as “a terrific achievement” despite their failure to win any of their finals matches, but has now started 2016 with a 1-5 record that looks unlikely to improve soon.
“We’re paying a price in the sense that we knew that that mature-age talent would get us to a point but not take us to the next level, which was always going to be the hardest part,” said Richardson.
“While it’s been disappointing somewhat to not win a final, it’s been a good achievement to play finals for three years in a row for the first time for 20 years for the club.”
Why would Richmond take up this strategy, knowing it wouldn’t bring anything more than mid-table mediocrity? Why would any club?
“We couldn’t take eight years to rebuild. We needed to become competitive a bit quicker than that. But at that time all the best talent basically for the next four to five years was going to be going north (to Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney),” Richardson said.
“We’re seeing the likes of GWS reap the rewards of that now. Our strategy wasn’t just to go to the draft like a lot of clubs did because we knew that would probably take six to eight years and we’ve seen that with the likes of Melbourne.
“We didn’t think Richmond fans would accept an eight-year rebuild.”
In February this year before the season began, I talked a little about the state of Richmond’s list and suggested that their focus on acquiring and playing mature-aged players might be hurting their chances of becoming a premiership threat down the track.
That’s a trap plenty of clubs have fallen into unawares in the past. But to learn that Richmond did not fall into the trap but rather jumped in by choice is unpalatable.
Richmond fans have a right to feel aggrieved and insulted here. They deserve better. They deserve to know that everyone in their organisation is focused one sole task – bringing the club its next premiership.
I can only imagine what Tigers fans who have spent years pouring money into the club through memberships or the ‘Fighting Tiger Fund’ – established supposedly as “a critical platform to support sustainable success” – are feeling right now, knowing they were funding a football department determined only to take the team to the middle of table.
How must the playing group feel when they hear a message like that, not from some media pundit but their own football boss? How can they possibly be expected to play with any level of confidence or belief when the club has none in them? Who could blame them if they asked to go elsewhere come the end of the season?
The problems with the Tigers’ list right now are plain to see. While they do have a small handful of elite players – Alex Rance, Brett Deledio, Dustin Martin and Jack Riewoldt – that small handful does not make up for the failings of the rest of the list.
I will put my hand up and say that I had the Tigers in my top eight at the start of the year, but only because I thought their defensive game plan, executed so well in 2015, would grind out enough home-and-away wins to get them there.
However the changes in the game this season have seen teams who rely on defensive gameplans die off, with Richmond and Fremantle being the best examples of this. No longer can teams cover for a lack of talent by playing negative footy, and that is a development that looks to have closed the door on the Tigers as far as finals is concerned.
Even more concerning is the fact that Richmond seems to be a club divided at the moment, with a number of high profile individuals putting out wildly differing points of view about the list and the Tigers’ position in the competition.
While Richardson says that the Tigers have been left without the talent to take ‘the next step’, CEO Brendon Gale responded last night by saying Richmond’s list “has proven that we are more than capable and I still believe in the capability of our list.”
Damien Hardwick says Richmond are “just not good enough at the moment”, and agreed with a suggestion at his post-game presser on the weekend that his players are “probably” playing dumb football. Brett Deledio on the other hand last week said he believes the Tigers’ list can win a premiership. Talk about mixed messages.
What is the next step for the Tigers? Perhaps it’s time to bring in some sort of independent audit, through the AFL or a third party, to examine why so many key individuals cannot get on the same page. Keep the parts of the club that are working, and shuffle on those that aren’t – whether that means the players, the coach, the football department or the board.
One thing is for certain, there can be no more quick fixes, no more papering over the cracks. Whatever Richmond’s next step is, they have to commit wholly to the goal of long term success.
If they don’t then they will continue to offer their supporters nothing more than a ticket on the escalator to nowhere, a ride that inevitably ends in a messy, unpleasant fall.
