We didn’t let Tommy Hafey down today.
We’ve let him down nearly every single
year since 1983. We let him down when we launched the player war with
Collingwood. We let him down when we put KB in charge. We let him down when we
sacked Northey. We let him down when we let Maxfield go. We let him down when
we hired Gieschen on the back of soft late season wins. We let him down by not
putting resources into recruitment when the draft became the most important
thing in the game. We let him down when Frawley was the only candidate willing
to coach us. We let him down when we traded ourselves out of the 2001 draft. We
let him down when we gave Wallace five years. We let him down when Ottens left.
We let him down when we drafted Oakley-Nichol on the back of his interview. We
let him down when we went 0-2 against Gold Coast. We let him down in the
elimination final last year. We let him down whenever someone gives one of our
teenagers a cheap shot and we don’t fly the flag.
We let him down when Richmond wasn’t something
to be proud of anymore, when Richmond became comfortable with being an easy
beat, when Richmond players stopped standing up to be counted when things got
tough.
Richmond let Tommy Hafey down long before
today.
After we lose a legend of the club like
Hafey, it rams home that we stopped producing legends in the early 80’s. My
generation won’t be able to speak about legends of the clubs when we were
young. Knights, Campbell and Richardson were great players but were never able
to frank legendary status because of their surroundings. Who from this 22 will
be a legend? Perhaps Cotchin or Jack but it’s likely they’ll stay because they
are loyal, when really they should get out this summer before Richmond swallows
up their careers as well. Dusty knows it; he put the feelers out last year.
Next time someone other than Essendon will show interest, he’ll be out the door
and I won’t blame him for a moment.
I watch a clip like this,
with names like Barrett, Bartlett, Balme, Sheedy and Hart winning premierships.
What memories do I have? When Turner went the knuckle against Essendon in 95
and when we beat Carlton in 2001 because Kouta did his knee? It’s pathetic.
I don’t really know what Hafey did at Richmond,
I only know of what Hafey did at Richmond. So to blame a team including blokes
as young as McDonough, Vlastuin and Lennon for letting down Tommy Hafey is
farcical, Richmond stopped respecting Tommy Hafey long before any of those
three walked through the door.
The easy thing right now is to blame
Hardwick rather than the players. But after six years, they’re his players
executing his game plan. After six years and one final, maybe the easiest thing
is the only thing we’ve got left to blame. 9.20 is awful kicking and it’s
unfair to blame that on Hardwick but it just shouldn’t come down to goal
kicking against Melbourne. All power to them, it’s ace what they’ve done under
Roos – but we should be able to kick all day long on our opposite and beat them,
we may as well have done that today anyway.
Our game plan is nowhere, our best players
carry too much burden and our youngest are asked to do too much and I’ve got a
feeling that 2014 will get plenty worse before it gets any better. Anyone know
what the draft is like this year?
Chaplin has moved from calming influence
in 2013 to liability in 2014. Foley is running on fumes. Lloyd only kicks goals
in junk time. Griffiths played 100% of game time for one effective possession.
Vickery has gone backwards at an incredible rate. Morris is a back pocket
plumber in a game that left that role behind a long time ago. All of these
blokes were ordinary but Hardwick saw fit to pull Hampson, who wasn’t playing
that badly, at half time.
We made some exceptionally ordinary
players of theirs look like stars today. I can hack Tyson, Jones and Vince
looking good because they’re all stars but Pederson, Watts and Gawn? Spare me.
It’s just about boarding the joint up time when you let Pederson and Watts take
19 marks between them.
This is all compounded by the fact that
we’ve lost Astbury, one of the players we can afford to lose the least. I don’t
think that means we can afford to spare Chaplin some time in the VFL, bring in
Petterd and Darrou if we need to. Petterd makes mistakes but at least we know
he’ll always go 100%.
The shitty thing for Melbourne out of all
of this is that we are the story when it should be them. They were great, they
care and they’ve finally got a coach and footy department who can support the talent
available to them. But we’ve lost the one club we had left to be smug about so
I guess I’ll be reading a lot more for the rest of the year.
There were a few good things. Dusty played
his best game at the club, not by numbers but by effort, he kept going all day
in a losing effort. Lennon is going to be a star and I think it’s reasonable to
ask why we haven’t seen him until now. Titch seems to have finally found his
groove. And, goal kicking aside, Grigg keeps doing more than his fair share of
heavy lifting, especially when the other team has the better of things.
By all reports we’ll have oodles of cap
space for 2015 and at my count the potential delistings are up to a dozen.
Whichever way we go, we need to add two or three plug and play midfielders.
Players that can run all day and, importantly, will run just as hard back as
they will forward.
We’ve spent two years building a list for
contested footy, while the rest of the competition (Carlton doesn’t count) have
been getting ready for run and gun footy. We need to find run, and we
need to find it for round one 2015.
A better bloke than you, I and anyone
involved currently at Richmond once said: “Nothing
more tigerish than a tiger, a wounded tiger”, I only wish that were true
because breaking point for a lot of people with this club isn’t far away.
To read about better times, because
reading about them is the only fucking access I’ll have have to good times
apparently, check out:
Also, make sure you read Demonblog's offering this week to remember what those first wins in a rebuild feel like. It might not be long until we are back in that territory.
Votes
5: Dustin Martin
4: Daniel Jackson
3: Shane Edwards
2: Shaun Grigg
1: Ben Lennon
Leaderboards
The Benny
14:
David Astbury
13:
Trent Cotchin
11:
Jack Riewoldt
10:
Shaun Hampson and Daniel Jackson
9:
Ricky Petterd
8:
Reece Conca and Dustin Martin
7:
Brandon Ellis
5:
Steven Morris
4: Matt
Thomas, Sam Lloyd and Shaun Grigg
3: Ty
Vickery and Shane Edwards
2:
Brett Deledio and Nick Vlastuin
1: Ben
Griffiths, Orren Stephenson and Ben Lennon
Blair
Hartley Appreciation Award
10:
Shaun Hampson
9:
Ricky Petterd
4: Matt
Thomas and Shaun Grigg
Anthony Banik Best First Year Player
4: Sam
Lloyd
1: Ben
Lennon
Joel
Bowden’s Golden Left Boot
4:
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
|
|
Martin
|
Conca
|
1
|
1
|
Scorchio
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