Footy Fix: How McQualter's masterstroke and a soon-to-be-suspended ruck resurrected Richmond's season

When all is said and done, Richmond are probably less likely to make finals after the events of Thursday night than before.

Their co-captain and the match-turner in the second half, Toby Nankervis, will be sidelined for at least three and possibly more weeks for the crudest of high bumps. They’re just about out of key forwards, with Jacob Bauer joining their long casualty list just minutes into his first game and Jack Riewoldt one more quiet game away from being officially over the cliff.

But for all of that, you won’t be able to discount the Tigers until the very moment they are mathematically incapable of featuring in September. This is a team that just does not know when it is beaten – a never-say-die 13-point win over Sydney after trailing at the end of every quarter just the latest in six and a half years’ worth of examples.

If their win over Geelong a few months ago was a flashback to the Richmond skill and style that brought it three premierships in four years, this was the Tigers’ spirit and heart of old. They recovered from a nightmarish opening term, regrouped and changed tacks in the way they did so many times in their heyday, and came away with a win.

The head says that the injuries and the suspensions will tell, that a team still two premiership points out of the eight and facing four of the top six in the final month is going to fall short in the end.

But good luck telling Richmond that.

Jack Graham celebrates a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

This was a win borne as so many Tigers victories have been in seasons past: ferocious, unrelenting attack on ball and man.

By match end they had amassed a staggering 16 more clearances – 12 of those extras coming from the centre as Tim Taranto, Shai Bolton and Jacob Hopper simply overpowered their Swans counterparts – and had won contested possessions by 19 after being 18 points behind and down for the count at half time.

Central to their dominance was Nankervis, the big ruckman bouncing back from an awful first half during which he had zero impact on proceedings, earned himself a hefty stint on the sidelines after running past the footy and ironing out Jake Lloyd, and just for good measure sprayed a simple set shot late in the half that was instantly whisked up the other end for a Swans goal.

By half time, he was yet to lay a tackle: he’d put on three in the first ten minutes of the third term alone, and five for the second half – five of 41 laid by the men in yellow and black.

Up until the main break, the Tigers had lost the tackle count 22-26 despite also having had 41 fewer disposals: often the corollary between lack of touches and lack of tackles is overrated, but here the eye backed up the stats and told you that the pressure being laid wasn’t up to snuff.

Remarkably, 77 per cent of the Swans’ defensive half possession chains were ending in inside 50s, cutting through the Tigers’ feeble attempts to stop them with ease, driving it long and forcing repeat turnovers as Richmond tried desperately to escape. By quarter time, they’d had ten defensive 50 turnovers, and when Tom Papley’s around, that’s a dangerous number of blunders to be making.

The final 15 minutes of the first term told the tale – the Tigers’ pressure rating dropped to 144, comfortably below the mid-180s range most teams are expected to occupy. 79 uncontested possessions to 79 and a whopping 29 uncontested marks for the quarter alone indicated Sydney were being allowed to play exactly how they want to, the way most good teams this year have shut down at every turn.

But with Nankervis leading the way, the script flipped in the second half. It wasn’t just the ruckman; Bolton and Taranto likewise lifted after sluggish starts, Trent Cotchin provided some crucial grunt around stoppages after being exposed by the Swans’ speedier midfield crew in the first half, and Jack Ross, after being subbed in early thanks to Bauer’s injury, played in a mood that suggested he was none too happy with the snub in the first place.

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Nankervis himself is never going to be a great tap ruckman, and it’s a long-term frustration for Tigers fans that while he gets his hands on the ball plenty, it’s seldom directed with accuracy. His eight hitouts to advantage from 33 taps, having comprehensively bossed Tom Hickey after half time, is about as good as it’s going to get from him.

But his main role is his follow-up: swinging his weight around and creating pathways for his midfielders like he’s Grond at the gates of Gondor, or reaching above the pack for a towering contested mark behind the ball, or just wresting the ball away from a stoppage and kicking it himself.

It was dirty play to poleaxe Lloyd about half a year late in the second term, and he’ll pay the price for it: but Richmond supporters and people will say, not wrongly, that it’s with that aggression that he plays his most impactful footy, and overstepping the mark on occasions is the trade-off for that.

The pressure told: after 45 uncontested marks in the first half, Sydney had just 22 in the second as the screws were tightened and the rain came down. At the coalface, too, the Tigers more than doubled their pre-clearance contested possession tally (19) in the third term alone than what they’d amassed in the entire first half (18).

This is how Richmond want to play. It can sometimes be flashy, it’s frequently compelling, but on this occasion it was more gradual. But inevitable still, like the sun’s rise.

From about the five minute mark of the third quarter – what is it about the Tigers and the first five minutes of quarters? – it was clear from more than just the two Tiger goals which team had wrested control of proceedings.

From there, it just became a matter of capitalising on inside 50 dominance – after being 9-17 down at quarter time, the Tigers would have 48 to 32 in the final three terms. But with Riewoldt shut down by Lewis Melican, no secondary tall and the Swans beginning to rack up intercepts and repel with ease, it was entirely possible, as the rain came down, that the Tigers had left their run too late.

Enter Andrew McQualter’s masterstroke: throwing Nick Vlastuin forward.

It’s a move that seems bewildering at first: aside from his debut season, Vlastuin’s one career bona fide stint as a forward was a three-goal haul against St Kilda in 2018, when Riewoldt was concussed in the opening minutes and Tom Lynch still at Gold Coast. And given his enormous value as an intercept marker behind the ball, there was more than a hint of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

But while he’d manage just one mark inside 50 – a terrific one-handed snare in time on of the third quarter for a crucial goal – his main benefit was in bringing the ball to ground. Whenever the ball was in his vicinity, Vlastuin without fail ensured the smalls at ground level had something to crumb, and usually it meant good news for Richmond.

Best afield, though, was clearly Bolton – and his final quarter perfectly summed up why.

Shai Bolton is as close as the game has come to Cyril Rioli since he hung up his boots in 2018. He’s nowhere near as deadly in front of goal, and his pressure work without the ball is still inconsistent at times; but when the ball is in dispute, or in his hands, things happen.

At a crucial flashpoint of the final quarter, it was Bolton who converged on a loose ball in the corridor with Harry Cunningham, arrived a split-second earlier, and rather than attempt to take possession, tapped to the advantage of Jack Graham while shunting the Swan off the ball.

With the turnover secured and the square vacant, Graham goes for the kill. It bounces home. Scores level.

The next goal wouldn’t come until the final minute: with the Tigers now desperately clinging to a one-point lead, Bolton does something that is either mad or brilliant. Or quite possibly both.

With 64 seconds on the clock and a ball-up deep inside 50, the Tiger does exactly what I berated Nic Martin for doing last week in Essendon’s loss to Port Adelaide; rather than locking the ball up and forcing a repeat stoppage to run down the clock some more, he does the classically Richmond thing of getting the ball clear by hook or by crook.

And not just by any method: he soccers the ball, out of mid-air, into the central corridor.

But that’s the other thing about Richmond: they make their own luck.

Perhaps because he can’t believe the Tigers have tried it, Errol Gulden, who has made space in the far back pocket to give his team a switching chance if they can force a behind, is suddenly in the wrong spot. His direct opponent, Graham, has a direct path to goal if he can gather the tumbling ball cleanly.

Of course he can.

We’ll never know if that play was pre-planned by the Tigers – for what reason I could only guess – or whether it was Bolton taking a chance and having it pay off spectacularly.

But it doesn’t matter either way. This is the Tigers in a nutshell, just as they were for the final three quarters to eventually, at the last, squeak past Sydney and restore life to their season.

They have heart. They have fury. They have passion. And they have dare to spare.