Demise of the Tigers.

After watching the latest series of issues unfold at Carlton, I got wondering what happened at Richmond after 1982. How did the club turn into such a rabble for so long? Where there any specific incidents? I think it would be fairly common knowledge what happened to the 90's Hawks, or the recent situation at the Blues for example, but I have never heard anyone explain the Tigers.
 

Koze

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After watching the latest series of issues unfold at Carlton, I got wondering what happened at Richmond after 1982. How did the club turn into such a rabble for so long? Where there any specific incidents? I think it would be fairly common knowledge what happened to the 90's Hawks, or the recent situation at the Blues for example, but I have never heard anyone explain the Tigers.
Just a 30 year rebuild. Good things take time.
 
After watching the latest series of issues unfold at Carlton, I got wondering what happened at Richmond after 1982. How did the club turn into such a rabble for so long? Where there any specific incidents? I think it would be fairly common knowledge what happened to the 90's Hawks, or the recent situation at the Blues for example, but I have never heard anyone explain the Tigers.

I think there was an off field war with Collingwood, poaching each other's players and also sacked everyone all the time. Fox footy had a feature on it last year think it was called the lost years or something.

Edit: ^ beat me to it
 

BF Tiger

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It started when Hafey left really. Sure we jagged another flag and made the 82 GF, but when Tommy went the club started changing coaches like underwear.

Then I think we got a player or two in (Rioli) on good coin and others wanted the same (Raines, Cloke). That started to send us broke because we thought we'd raid Collingwood for their "stars", but they weren't really stars and it set us on the road to "Save Our Skins".

If any of this is wrong I'm happy to be corrected. Just my memories as a kid/teenager.
 
Jun 23, 2008
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If you have a spare hour you might find this informative


Watched it when it aired. It really wasn't that informative TBH, unless you've really got no knowledge of recent (last 30 years or so) football history at all. Was disappointed that it really didn't provide any "new" information or insight.
 
It started when Hafey left really. Sure we jagged another flag and made the 82 GF, but when Tommy went the club started changing coaches like underwear.

Then I think we got a player or two in (Rioli) on good coin and others wanted the same (Raines, Cloke). That started to send us broke because we thought we'd raid Collingwood for their "stars", but they weren't really stars and it set us on the road to "Save Our Skins".

If any of this is wrong I'm happy to be corrected. Just my memories as a kid/teenager.

Why was there a coaching carousel though? And what happened to Jeff Giechen in the end actually. He had them up and about and was not long thereafter sacked. (As far a I remember). He coached the WAFL team I support to their drought breaking GF, i thought he was a good coach.
 
Last edited:
May 8, 2007
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We basically basically went professional like all clubs. Unfortunately we were about 5 years behind every other club - and it took us about 15 years to catch up. We thought we could get the next Royce Hart or Kevin Bartlett for the price of 6 new shirts because 'We are Richmond, we're the best, and everyone will want to play for us. We don't have to pay players'.

We had the false dawn with Northey in 95 which we f***ed up because various egos on the board, coteries and committees got over-excited and thought they ALL knew best - despite the evidence of the previous 15 years. We really should have been playing finals from 95 all through to 2001 - nowhere near good enough to win a flag, though. But it would have set us up as a better, more stable organisation going forward.
 
Feb 23, 2009
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We finally got our admin and off field in order and the rest has come from there. We aren't winning flags yet, but we are a consistant finals team now, great support, membership and sponsorship, so everything should be in place to have a sustained period of finals and hopefully a flag in the not too distant future, even if it's not with the current group, we hopefully have things in place to ensure we aren't a basketcase for decades at a time.
 

Final Siren

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Aug 18, 2009
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In the simplest possible terms: it was a knee-jerk culture. We continually looked for quick fixes and short-cuts to success. And everyone was guilty of that, from the board down to the supporters. In fact, it took a lot of courage from the mid-2000s administration to put a stop to it, because even then the supporter base craved a Messiah so badly that they voted Greg Miller onto the board.

Anyone who wanted to take the club one step backwards before going two steps forward had their head lopped off immediately following the one step back.

No investment in recruiting.

No investment in facilities.

Trading away draft picks for experienced players.

Constant draft failures due to lack of investment in recruitment.

Screwing other clubs out of gate takings deals in order to plug financial holes.

Decrepit ex-legends popping up in the media at the first sniff of trouble to demand sackings and a new club direction.

Success-starved fans gobbling up the words of those decrepit ex-legends.

Always personality, never process.

Fun times.
 
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We laugh at carlton at the born to rule mentality but it took richmond a while to get their s**t together

Look at list management and recruitment. Untill about 5 years ago it was a joke. It was ran by one guy who secured about 10 years of work by discovering wayne carey.
 
Ol Mr Wilson did to Richmond what his daughter does to "football journalism".

I wonder what the next generation's target will be.
s**t, don't her children support Essendon?
 
We laugh at carlton at the born to rule mentality but it took richmond a while to get their s**t together

Look at list management and recruitment. Untill about 5 years ago it was a joke. It was ran by one guy who secured about 10 years of work by discovering wayne carey.

by 'discovering', do you mean 'tripping over'?
 
Why was there a coaching carousel though? And what happened to Jeff Giechen in the end actually. He had them up and about and was not long thereafter sacked. (As far a I remember). He coached the WAFL team I support to their drought breaking GF, i thought he was a good coach.

Not really a carousel...They come back around on those...

A lot of it came down to arrogance. After ~15 years at or near the top, we felt we *belonged* there, and if we weren't there, then obviously someone was to blame and had to be replaced (AKA sacked), and often that person was the coach (the board wasn't exactly stable either).

As others have mentioned, we also went into a player buying war with Collingwood, which brought them to their knees and almost killed us (probably no other 2 clubs at the time would have survived), but at the end of it, we were broke, could pay stuff all for players, coaches and training equipment but at the same time still though we should be playing finals every year (in small part because most outside the club itself didn't realise just how bad it was).

That we kept sacking coaches eventually meant we couldn't hire any decent coaches as nobody who had any choices would touch us (bomber Thomson refusing to even have an interview with us was a bit of a wake up call on this) and eventually we had to have Spud Frawley for 5 years (and made damned sure we kept him on for the full contract length) before a credible coach like Wallace would take us on. Sure, that didn't work out so well, but in theory it was a step forward, and even then, we HAD TO let him see out his contract - OK, so he left early anyway, but that was his call.

The 'fix' has basically been top down....The board stabilised (and became realistic in its expectations), then the admin, then the coaching position, and although 'public' attention to these is more in reverse, that is probably the order of importance as well...I doubt you can have a stable coach if the board feels they need to show they're in control and 'take action' whenever things look a little grim. For example, in the middle of last year...People here and in the media were thinking of the 'old' Richmond (and some other clubs) and talking about Hardwick being sacked....It was never going to happen, because Richmond *NOW* is probably so paranoid about returning to the bad old days that we probably wouldn't sack a coach whatever the circumstances!
 
Aug 27, 2009
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After watching the latest series of issues unfold at Carlton, I got wondering what happened at Richmond after 1982. How did the club turn into such a rabble for so long? Where there any specific incidents? I think it would be fairly common knowledge what happened to the 90's Hawks, or the recent situation at the Blues for example, but I have never heard anyone explain the Tigers.
Speak to Graham Richmond and ask him why he had to get into a trade off with Collingwood that almost destroyed both clubs financially, unfortunately Richmond got the worst of the trades involved setting us back for the next 30 years.
 

Final Siren

Mr Squiggle
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Why was there a coaching carousel though? And what happened to Jeff Giechen in the end actually. He had them up and about and was not long thereafter sacked. (As far a I remember). He coached the WAFL team I support to their drought breaking GF, i thought he was a good coach.
The Giech took over after Round 17, 1997, when Robert Walls was sacked following a 137-point loss to Adelaide. We were 6-11 at the time. Under the Giech we won 4 of the remaining 5 games, missing the finals by half a win and percentage.

I heard (take with grain of salt) that this completely derailed our coach selection process, because the fans demanded this bloke stay in charge.

He coached us to 9th in '98 and 12th in '99 before being sacked for Danny Frawley.
 

Ricmel

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Richmond's successful era roughly coincides with the time of Graeme Richmond at the club.

He came to the club as an official in 1966 and Richmond won 5 premierships in 15 years from 1967 to 1982 and Graeme Richmond left in 1986. But he also left a legacy that sometimes comes with success - the other VFL clubs, particularly Pies, Blues and Bombers hated Richmond and the way Richmond went about recruiting in this period.

You should also remember that prior to this period, Richmond was not a very successful club. In fact if you look at the early inner city clubs - Pies, Blues, Demons, Bombers and Tigers - by 1965, Richmond were by far he least successful when measured by premierships.

I think after Graeme Richmond left, clubs played hard ball with Richmond and after 15 years of high achieving, the club didn't have the foundations to handle failure and the brutal culture that Graeme Richmond introduced manifested itself in the club being very harsh on both players and coaches. The club became a target, lost money and made many poor recruitment decisions.

Seem to finally be coming out of the middle of the pack but should be put in context, Richmond have really only had two successful periods in their history - 1920 -1935 and then again 1967 to 1982.
 
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