Phil Connors Tribute Match

Let's say that revenge is Mt. Rushmore.

That wasn't Mt. Rushmore. It wasn't Washington. It wasn't Jefferson. It wasn't Roosevelt. And it sure wasn't Lincoln. It was someone like Harding or Coolidge, someone lucky to have a street in Charlotte named after them let alone have their face etched into the side of a mountain.

The Carlton grudge isn't over, it's not even close to being over.

They humiliated us last year and close to doing it again tonight. We limped, fell or staggered (not sure which and open for suggestions) over the line and I could make an argument this was because Jarrad Waite is a bell end.

It wasn't flash but it's worth noting that there is no chance that 2012 Richmond would have got there, Carlton would have sailed past and won by five goals. And once Carlton levelled, 2013 Richmond would have puckered up for the taking. I looked at the clock at the 15 minute mark of the third quarter and wondered if we could hold. Do other supporters look at the clock when they are four goals up and wonder if they can hold on for 45 minutes? Surely not.

Even though we took the scenic route, there were still positives. Astbury played his best game for the club, granted the bar wasn't sky high, but he absolutely had the better of Waite who has generally enjoyed having the better of us. Ellis smashed Gibbs, Griffiths stood up when needed, Grigg showed plenty of ticker and Petterd justified the faith shown in him by the selectors.

Most of all though, Vickery bounced back from a truly amazing character assassination from fans and media alike and was a major factor in the win. And this is a brilliant photo where he is stoked, people are going batshit in the background and Daisy Thomas is doing his hair.

We started off like a house on fire because we do that against Carlton apparently and everything clicked in the first half. They were truly abysmal in the first half, it was Murphy or bust and when they did win the ball they were keen on handing it straight back to us. By memory the lead got out to six goals, not nearly enough when you are a Richmond fan, but really it should have been around the ten goal mark, which probably still wouldn't have been enough for Richmond fans.

All credit to Hardwick because they got it done, but that's not a 22 that I hope to see too often this year.

You are in strife when you miss a bloke like Matty White but, here we are, missing Matty White. We miss a bloke who was rubbish for eight years, lucky to not be delisted twice, who played a handful of OK games and scampered to another club before anyone could blink. We need White's speed, preferably on someone who can kick.

Our next two opponents are the Dogs and Collingwood so we are fortunate that we don't have to find pace in too much of a hurry (honk), but we need to find it from somewhere. I'm not about to start naming names because it's only round two (and we won), but there were lots of one paced blokes in Richmond jumpers tonight and a couple of them are playing on past glories semi OK performances. I know Banfield, McDonough and Gordon have some toe and the time to cycle guys through the lineup based on their footspeed is approaching.

Our first half was Oasis, our second half was Beady Eye and I've got no bloody idea what it all means. How can a team possibly go from running all over the opposition to letting Chris Yarran run straight past us time and time again?

Is it mental? Is it leadership? Are we just not much chop?

I feel like I should have enjoyed this win more than I did because a) it was Carlton and b) it was Carlton, but I'm just not feeling it. Why do we have so many blokes who seemingly pull up stumps when it gets hot?

Because I'm not naming names, I won't name the guy who played like a number one draft pick in the first half and was barely seen in the second.

It keeps happening and not just against Carlton, we've coughed up leads for a few years. We let teams off the hook and they charge back at us, hard. We aren't as bad as North, nobody is as bad as North, but we aren't far behind. Twitter tells me Hardwick gave it a six out of ten which seems about right but in terms of 'why does this keep f%*$ing happening?' it was very, very dissapointing.

We should stitch up the Dogs, Collingwood looked like trash last week and then we travel to Brisbane and I can't look up the last time we lost to them because the Internet doesn't go back that far. Four and one is very gettable, perhaps even without clicking into top gear.

Votes

5: David Astbury
4: Ricky Petterd
3: Ty Vickery
2: Brandon Ellis
1: Ben Griffiths

Leaderboards

The Benny
5: Trent Cotchin, David Asbury
4: Shaun Hampson, Ricky Petterd
3: Steven Morris, Ty Vickery
2: Brett Deledio, Brandon Ellis
1: Matt Thomas, Ben Griffiths

Blair Hartley Appreciation Award
4: Shaun Hampson, Ricky Petterd
1: Matt Thomas

Joel Bowden’s Golden Left Boot
N/A

Greg Tivendale Rookie Medal

1: Matt Thomas

Championship belt

Incumbent	Winner	Streak	Wins
NA	Cotchin	1	1
Astbury	Cotchin	1	1

So this is new and like everything else on here, pilfered from somewhere else. Streak wins will count for double.

Opening Night Blues

Nemesis: the escapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall.

Thank (deity of your choice) that we snuck a win against the Gold Coast last year because based on what we just saw; it could be a very long time between drinks.

Losing happens, Richmond supporters know that better that most. We also know that first round losses get weighted more despite the fact there is no difference between a round one loss and a round 17. Generally when we crap the bed in round one we only need to get through an extra Friday, Saturday and Sunday but this time around it’s an extra week before possible redemption. Joy.

But, there were more than a few things to be concerned about last night. Despite all the talk about working on the defensive side of our game, we let a bunch of would be university students put two four goals bursts on us in a 22 goal game, thanks for coming. Our forward line looked as if they’d just met for a social match, rather than just completed a four-month pre-season. And a good proportion of our midfield had that ‘it’s getting hard now, I’ll let Cotchin handle things’ look about them in the first half of the last quarter.

We are supposed to be a couple of years ahead of Gold Coast yet, at times, it looked as if they were Blood Sugar Sex Magik and we were Stadium Arcadium. Don’t even try to go the ‘they’ve been handed so many first round picks’ approach, we’ve burned more than our fair share of first round picks over the journey and you can’t dump a team in a non-footy market and have them perform like Frawley era Richmond for the first decade.

In the first quarter we looked miles off it, other than Vlastuin showing why we are all madly in love with him, they wanted it more, got to it quicker and used it smarter. Astbury, who got better as the night went on, put in a couple of contests that were reminiscent of round one Jayden Post before we never saw nor heard of him again.

We managed to steady the contest without really taking control. A couple of chases by big blokes, tackles by Matt Thomas and a bit of tempo footy rather than bombing it to the top of the square meant Jaegar O’Meara couldn’t be sublime whenever he felt like it. But despite more or less controlling the game throughout the second and third quarters, we only kicked three goals to their two.

Their last quarter burst showed that we still have a very, very long way to go. Gaz got going and because he’s a winner and we aren’t, it was all over. Tom Lynch will be a fine player one day but he shouldn’t be doing what he did to Rance and when, given their rotations, we needed someone fresh to run circles around them, Foley showed why we didn’t play him against Carlton in the finals.

After a month of hearing from the club just how dominant Ty Vickery was going to be, he put in a game that Jack Watts would have been ashamed of.

Interestingly, after a rather controlled summer where we’d managed to keep a lid on expectations (thanks North), Hardwick made the extraordinary mistake of publicly putting a measure on Ty’s season. Granted, he should kick 40 goals but you don’t say that. Can you imagine Chris Scott or Alistair Clarkson coming out this week and making such a statement about Hawkins or Gunston just before their round one game?

Vickery’s game stood out the most but he had plenty of mates, Jack, Rance, Chaplin, Ellis and Griffiths all had games that I’m guessing like to hand back.

Leadership groups are all the rage but right now out on field leadership group is a sole proprietor by the name of Cotchin. We need to find blokes within our list who can give him a hand when things aren’t going our way. And I know we are supposed to think that Brett Deledio is the hardest marked man in football but his petulant hoofing the ball away was the reason nobody outside of Punt Road thinks twice about him when compiling ‘best of’ lists, despite how many interviews and podcasts we do in his defence. Lids’ time is now, he should be in the top ten of those lists, and 2014 is very much ‘put up or shut up’.

There were a few good things to come out of it: Hampson’s tap ruck work was the best I’ve seen at Richmond since was the best since I’ve seen at Richmond, McDonough is going to be a very good player, Matt Thomas will do plenty of heavy lifting during the next couple of years and Cotchin was back to the 2012 model.

They’ve got a week and half to find out what the best way to convert inside 50’s into goals is and Hardwick has a decent track record of successfully making tweaks between games.

We have too good a list now to be writing off performances like that as a ‘bad night’ and Hardwick’s post-match comments suggest he wont publicly be making excuses for losses this year.

Votes

5: Trent Cotchin
4: Shaun Hampson
3: Steven Morris
2: Brett Deledio
1: Matt Thomas

Leaderboards

The Benny
5: Trent Cotchin
4: Shaun Hampson
3: Steven Morris
2: Brett Deledio
1: Matt Thomas

Blair Hartley Appreciation Award
4: Shaun Hampson
1: Matt Thomas

Joel Bowden’s Golden Left Boot
N/A

Greg Tivendale Rookie Medal 1: Matt Thomas     

This year's awards

The prestigious random awards on offer this year are:

• The Benny (overall medal)
• The Blair Hartley Appreciation Award (best of the foreign legion)
• Anthony Banik Best First Year Player (yet to play an AFL match)
• Joel Bowden’s Golden Left Boot (left footer)
• Greg Tivendale Rookie Medal (on the rookie list at the start of the season)

Sadly, nobody qualifies across all five categories. Those eligible for the criteria awards are:

Blair Hartley Appreciation Award

Banfield

A Edwards

Gordon

Grigg

Hampson

Houli

Knights

Maric

Miles

Petterd

Stephenson

Thomas

Anthony Banik Best First Year Player

Darrou

Lennon

Lloyd

McBean

McIntosh

Williams

Joel Bowden's Golden Left Boot

Arnot

Batchelor

Chaplin

Grigg

Houli

Knights

McDonough

O'Hanlon

Greg Tivendale Rookie Medal

Banfield

Darrou

Miles

Stephenson

Thomas

Let me know if I’ve missed anyone, especially left footers.

Welcome back to anyone who has migrated across to the new set up and welcome aboard to any newbies.

I’ll get a couple of extra posts up before Saturday night and then it’s onto a 54321 each game, rushed posts, typos, obscure pop culture references and rants about Luke McGuane yet to be decided player.

Depth Charts (R1)

Tis the season for best line-up suggestions that are, mostly, useless. How often does a team have their best 22 on the field?

Depth is more important in the AFL that ever and for the first time since the early 80's, Richmond has developed talent outside the ‘best 22’.

Without a healthy mix of talent across:

·      Ruck

·      Midfield

·      Defence

·      Forward

teams are going nowhere in a hurry.

Splitting the 44 players on Richmond’s list you get:

Rucks

Hampson

Maric

Stephenson (Rookie)

Defenders

Astbury

Batchelor

Chaplin

Darrou

Dea

Grimes

Houli

Morris

Newman

Petterd

Rance

Midfield

Arnot

Conca

Cotchin

Deledio

S Edwards

Ellis

Foley

Grigg

Helbig

Jackson

Knights

Lennon

Martin

McDonough

McIntosh

Miles (Rookie)

O’Hanlon

Thomas (Rookie)

Vlastuin

Williams (Rookie)

Forwards

Banfield (Rookie)

A Edwards

Elton

Gordon

Griffiths

King

Lloyd

McBean

Riewoldt

Vickery

Now it’s possible to do what the Internet loves most, ranking.

Richmond’s depth chart gives an idea of what the team might look like heading into the start of the season and, much importantly, who comes in when someone goes out.

The green and red is based on playing a squad of:

·      Two rucks

·      Six defenders

·      10 midfielders

·      Four forwards

Ranked
Cotchin	Riewoldt	Rance	Maric
Martin	Vickery	Houli	Hampson
Deledio	Lloyd	Chaplin	Stephenson ®
Conca	Griffiths	Morris
Ellis	King	Grimes
Jackson	A Edwards	Petterd
S Edwards	Elton	Newman
Vlastuin	McBean	Astbury
Knights	Gordon	Batchelor
Grigg	Banfield ®	Dea
Foley		Darrou ®
Lennon
McDonough
Thomas ®
Miles ®
Arnot
Helbig
O'Hanlon
McIntosh
Williams ®

It will be interesting to see how this list holds up throughout the year, but I am hopeful of seeing:

·      Conca threaten Deledio in the top three

·      Vlastuin climb

·      Lennon force his way into the starting squad

·      Knights string some games together and be one of our best

·      Either Elton or McBean becoming a fall back option because we are screwed every which way if Jack gets injured

·      Astbury to climb

·      Hampson to replace Maric as our best ruck given it looks as Ivan is falling apart.

Key concerns are that:

·      We are in strife if we lose Hampson alongside Maric

·      We are all in on Jack and Ty, the cupboard is bare after that up forward.

It isn’t quite the depth of Hawthorn or Fremantle but the list cloggers that Hardwick inherited are nearly all gone.