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Richmond skipper Chris Newman admits the retooled Tigers will need time to adjust to coach Damien Hardwick’s new gameplan. Newman goes into his second AFL season as Tigers skipper hoping for a less rocky start than last year.
Richmond were smashed by 83 points in the corresponding round one match, sparking a tumultuous year in which coach Terry Wallace was shown the door and the team plummeted to a 15th place finish.
The Tigers get their first serious test of playing under ex-Port Adelaide and Hawthorn assistant Hardwick in the season-opener against Carlton at the MCG on Thursday night.
Hardwick has promised a style based on winning the hard ball and a structure based on defence – warning it may not always look pretty.
Newman said the Tigers, who have struggled badly in the pre-season and have been widely tipped to finish in the bottom four, were still working on absorbing the gameplan.
“It takes time. You’re probably not going to perfect it over the course of a pre-season but as long as we’re continually learning from our mistakes and improving, that’s the aim,” Newman said.
“We haven’t set any limitations on what we can achieve this year.
“We really believe in the gameplan and the structures we’ve put in place, so we’re just really keen to get out there and trial it against quality opposition.”
Hardwick admitted the Tigers would need to be patient.
“We know it’s the start of a long process. It’s a young group, if you swap and change you lose confidence,” Hardwick said.
“We’ve got to instil in them the belief that this gameplan is a gameplan that will take us to where we need to go.
“There’s going to be stages where we play really good football, and there’s going to be stages where we have bad quarters.
“We’ve got to have smaller goals than the actual result itself. It’s the process of us getting to an 11th flag. We’ll make mistakes but it’s all about learning from those mistakes and going from there.”
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