#freelids

Like the start to Richmond’s season, this post is late and probably not worth the wait anyway. On a related note, Sunday afternoon games suck.

Richmond 2014 channeled Richmond 2013 and it was a beautiful thing. It’s hard to remember being so chipper after a loss, but I’d prefer them to go down swinging than staggering across the line in ordinary wins like round two.

Geelong have taken great joy in dumping all over us from an almighty height recently and while, obviously, that wasn’t the end of their winning streak that predates the written word, we sent a message that they can’t rag-doll us anymore.

The most pleasing thing was that it started with our often missing ‘second tier’ of midfielders. Conca, not usually a big numbers man, had 28 at 71% including this absolutely amazing piece of work, Jackson 34 at 71%, Dusty, who some dickhead blogger wanted dropped, 28 at 82% and Ellis 27 and you’ll note that I’m not mentioning his efficiency. If those four find the ball like that again, we’ll beat any team not called Geelong or Hawthorn comfortably.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that we were a lesser team without Rance and Lids, but just how worse off we were was certainly a shock to me and, I’m guessing, Hardwick. I already thought Rance was a star but my opinion of Lids and how important he is to our chances of saving this turgid dump of year, rose dramatically through his absence.

When you add a couple of blokes like that, who you leave out is just as important. Because Rance was playing, a horribly out of form Grimes wasn’t. And because Lids was playing, we were able to push Titch Edwards back as substitute where, in an ideal world, he would have been weeks ago. These two playing also mean that Ellis isn’t getting sat on, Chaplin can switch back to the third forward and we aren’t looking to a mature age draft pick like Gordon to generate run off the wing.

Our first half was a car crash but good on them for sticking to the script and after we stopped butchering the ball, things turned around. After six weeks of playing the wrong brand of footy and sucking, I am happy to have worn one half of attempting the right brand, sucking and finding the switch in the second half.

But all this praise is dependent on us backing up against Melbourne in a couple of weeks.

Tackles is perennially a much over-hyped statistic but it’s still nice to see numbers up when you aren’t playing great, especially in the wet. There hasn’t been too many times we’ve been able to say this recently, 20 of our blokes registered at least one on Sunday. I don’t want to name names because I’m being all kumbaya this week, but let’s just say one of them is a repeat offender.

Even though we are at 2-5, I’m stupidly bullish about them getting back to an even ledger. The next two are non-negotiable which (should) get us to 4-5 before it gets a bit trickier against Essendon and North.

Richmond, Essendon and North playing off against each other in some kind of magic ‘tri-whoknowshowtheyllallplay' tournament. If, and given we are talking about Richmond if’s are risky, after all of that we can navigate our way back to 6-6, the 11-12 win mark for a very shady 8th position is back on the table.

But if we get through that with anything less than three wins, it’s time for ‘thanks for coming’ games for Newman, King and Foley and tapping into the depth of the list to see what’s down there.

All of this is much more achievable with Deledio playing rather than not after he lost but won at the tribunal for being mobbed by a stack of Geelong players who had obviously got bored coasting around on the coat tails of Bartel, Selwood and Johnson and wanted a bit of fun of their own. 

Onto our old cellar dwelling partners the Dees and their shiny new coach with magnificent hair I suppose.

Votes

5: Reece Conca

4: Daniel Jackson

3: Shaun Hampson

2: Dustin Martin

1: David Astbury

Leaderboards

The Benny

14: David Astbury

13: Trent Cotchin

11: Jack Riewoldt

10: Shaun Hampson

9: Ricky Petterd

8: Reece Conca

7: Brandon Ellis

6: Daniel Jackson

5: Steven Morris

4: Matt Thomas and Sam Lloyd

3: Ty Vickery and Dustin Martin

2: Brett Deledio, Shaun Grigg and Nick Vlastuin

1: Ben Griffiths and Orren Stephenson

Blair Hartley Appreciation Award

10: Shaun Hampson

9: Ricky Petterd

4: Matt Thomas

2: Shaun Grigg

Anthony Banik Best First Year Player

4: Sam Lloyd

Joel Bowden’s Golden Left Boot

2: Shaun Grigg

Greg Tivendale Rookie Medal

4: Matt Thomas

1: Orren Stephenson

Championship belt

Incumbent	Winner	Streak	Wins
NA	Cotchin	1	1
Cotchin	Astbury	1	1
Astbury	Riewoldt	1	1
Riewoldt	Astbury	1	2
Astbury	Petterd	1	1
Petterd	Ellis	1	1
Ellis	Conca	1	1