Status in Question Richmond board infighting (Damian Barrett story so take it how you will)

[wahawk]

Lol - is that a piss-take?

Sadly no

 

[Hawker55]

I had dinner at the Malvern Hotel that night. Should have been paying more attention to what was going on around me.

 

[Farang83150]

Riewoldt: Hardwicks had 1 bad year....LOL,

 

[Kickin Goals]

Here is what its like to be a Richmond supporter for 34 years....

For years we were crap, playing footy no one wanted to watch with players no one had heard of under a line of a million different coaches...

Then we have a period of solid players, not outstanding, and with their deficiencies, but solid none the less, that appear to love playing for the coach, playing for each other (as well as a couple of selfish players, but every club has those), who start to slowly build towards possibly a period of sustained competitiveness (read finals even it that meant not being genuine flag threats). Coach who creates this asks for more time, board sh!ts itself, says no, coach goes, we hover just under the finals bracket (enter Ninthmond tradition) never getting the best out of said players, never bringing in top end talent from elsewhere, basically never having the courage to have the killer instinct and go for it...

Fast forward a handful of years and a coach or two later, we are in the same position... we have a period of solid players, not outstanding, and with their deficiencies, but solid none the less, that appear to love playing for the coach, playing for each other (as well as a couple of selfish players) who again make the finals (another losing prelim), and yet again, the club fail to make any courageous decisions, list stagnates, again sit just outside the finals...

Then the clubs hand is forced, normal backlash means another coach is gone, so we are 'starting fresh again' but this time a good player of ours wants out, forcing us to finally make some big calls and hello, 5 picks inside the top 20. Now I am first to agree the draft is a complete lottery these days let alone the mickey mouse show we were operating in the recruiting dept back then, and I'm not going to get into a Tambambambaling vs Franklin argument either, but 5 in the top 20 and only 1 is still playing AFL let alone at our club.... What made that worse was that the power at the time clearly thought that one draft was enough for the build. Again no balls to follow through on any courageous decision to actually create a future for this football club. The result was us in 2010 clearly being the worst team in the comp.

Now I can also say I (perhaps until now) have been relatively (and other have to understand that at that point benchmark was pretty low, so relative speaks volumes) happy with the solidarity and stability at the club over the past 6 years or so... But again when forced into a position/direction our club as a whole has lacked the courage and conviction to take a bold and courageous path to sustained success. To a point, I had no problems with the clubs so called "moneyball" approach in Dimma's early years, they hit the draft at the top end and supported that with mature players to allow those kids to develop. But heres where the problem arises... After seeing growth in the team and their results, the emphasis of those improvements was credited to the older type top up recruits, and while that had some merit, it is VERY CLEAR none of those players were actually our match winners, including Maric and Houli who are clearly the best performed two out of our traded in players, and important to the team make up, but not the difference. But instead of continuing to try and develop young talent to come through the system and gradually replace those stop-gap type players, we try and build success by adding more of them.

Now first things first, I can live with bringing in a player via trade etc (so even Hampson with his limitations) to fill an immediate need, why did the club feel the need to add mutiple washed up players EVERY year. We brought in blokes like Thomas, Edwards, Petterd, That red head from Brisbane, even this year we have Townsend and Moore. The one real hit we have had from that strategy is Miles, but he was young and on a list like GWS where talent was certainly not in short supply. No the retort is we need blokes like the above mentioned to cover gaps in the list when there are injuries... and to some of their credit they played a role when they came in, but under all of that, how did our list improve??? How many times was our list that depleted that we couldn't afford to give a kid an opportunity instead of a bloke who had already reached his limitations.

At the top end of the draft (until Rioli) we only took very vanilla type players, who granted are solid players, but were are our superstars. And then to make things worse, look at our follow up picks... Sam Llyod, Kane Lambert, Nathan Broad, Adam Macron... All blokes we thought we could shortvut a couple of years of development out, and slot in because they were that little bit older...

All it has resulted in is again us being middle of the range... finished 8th 3 years in a row (nearly as bad as finishing 9th) and now what looks like a 12-14th placed finish.

Every single scenario here points to one thing that Richmond is guilty of is, that's looking after themselves first, then the club second. Do what we think is good for us now, irrelevant to what the club will look like in 5 or 6 years time.

To Dimma's credit, I thought he had bucked that trend early on. And I understand a new coach was bound to make some errors in his time. But the last 18 months Dimma has continued down a path the appears was solely based on his immediate survival as a coach.

At no stage were kids given the opportunities at the top level, if they were they were usually the sub etc while blokes like Grigg run around every week, have 1 decent game in 5, collect meaningless stats that "justify" their selection at the expense of kids and their development.

All this equates to is the start of another cycle at our club, another handful of years of "finding our way", only this time not only do I have to put up with it, I have kids now who seemed destined to be disappointed by their club as they grow up...

Someone at Richmond, put your hand down your pants, give the lollybag a squeeze and hopefully you find they are still there, then actually have the courage to do something.

Sad thing is, even though they only have two flags between them, I envy the Saints and Bullies to a point, that at least their club has been prepared to take risks over the last 20 years on multiple occassions to give their club a chance at winning a flag. The bullies have had multiple Prelim showings coming close on multiple occasions and the saints have been to the big dance a couple of times... What a tigers supporter would give to be given that opportunity by their club....!

Poor bastard! If I could give you a hug I would.

 

[wahawk]

Poor bastard! If I could give you a hug I would.

xoxo

 

[hawkermitch]

You mean like you voted to do with Melbourne?

Hmm.. It must have been a dream then,lol.
Camberwell Town Hall, Don Scott taking off a hawk of a demons jumper - we Hawks voted NO, the dees voted YES

Feel sorry for the Tigers a bit, tried so much - it may turn out to the good of the Tigers sooner than many think.

 

[TiggerMan22]

Riewoldt: Hardwicks had 1 bad year....LOL,

Well he's not wrong

 

[t_bond_legend]

It's this attitude that has stuffed the Tigers. Similar to "We are Carlton, **** the rest"

Richmond is a club that gets lost in its own self importance at the expense of looking for ways to improve.

Yeah, as opposed to the attitude of the mighty Bulldogs with their monumental efforts of making two grand finals in their entire existence.

 

[guruisatiger]

Essendon had no problem paying over a mill to sack Knights and Richmond have just as much money as Essendon. I find it laughable when the Tigers say they can't afford to pay out Hardwick.

Where has anyone's said they can't afford to pay out Hardwick? Where is the link or qoutes that stipulate this ? ????

 

[ManOfClay]

Yeah, as opposed to the attitude of the mighty Bulldogs with their monumental efforts of making two grand finals in their entire existence.

Juvenile response