Adem Yze exclusive: Richmond coach on Tigers’ draft haul, departing stars and the new era

Adem Yze concedes Richmond is in for more pain next year. But as he tells JON RALPH, there’s plenty of reason for optimism about the start of the new era at Punt Road too.

NCA. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 21th November 2024. AFL Draft at Marvel Stadium. First round draft selections gather at Marvel Stadium the morning after the draft. 6 new tiger cubs. L-R. Jonty Faull, Josh Smillie, Taj Hotton, Sam Lalor, Harry Armstrong and Luke Trainor. Picture: Michael Klein

As Adem Yze hugged Josh Smillie on Wednesday he could have been mistaken for believing the No. 7 pick was his next key forward if his knowledge of the draft wasn’t so personal.

Yze had long kept an eye on this 2024 draft crop given son Noah came through with many of the players taken this week.

As Richmond’s injury crisis consigned them to the wooden spoon and the Tigers’ homesick stars increasingly wanted out, it was apparent this draft would be so much more for second-year coach Yze.

It would be the dawn of the new Richmond era.

In all Richmond secured eight players – two elite mids (Sam Lalor, Smillie), a quicksilver mid-forward (pick 12 Taj Hotton), four key talls (forwards Jonty Faull, Harry Armstrong and Thomas Sims, key back Luke Trainor) and a 183cm medium forward (pick 58 Jasper Alger).

Yze knows the sheer youth of this Richmond side means he will have to pivot from his desire to compete when he arrived exactly 14 months ago to full rebuild mode.

Richmond’s first-round draft haul (L-R) Harry Armstrong, Luke Trainor, Josh Smillie, Sam Lalor, Taj Hotton and Jonty Faull. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

But as the 187cm, 287-game veteran looked up to Smillie on Wednesday night he knew list boss Blair Hartley had collected an elite group of kids who also boast the character to match.

“ (Smillie) is a star. This time last year he was touted as pick one and he probably wasn’t happy with the back half of his year which saw him slide down but we got a guy who is hard to find,” Yze told the Herald Sun in an exclusive interview.

“He’s 194cm and a massive unit. He’s a beautiful kid and his skills are very good for a big man. He’s so driven and keen to get the best out of him.

“My young fella is in his draft year and so he’s 18 and he’s played against a lot of these kids and I watched a lot of them from a young age.

“I saw Josh the other night and he looked like a key-position boy. I was trying to hug him and Sammy Lalor (188cm) and it looked like we had drafted all key-position boys. That’s just what they are. Big midfielders who can run all day. It’s exciting and he’s pumped.”

If Hartley and deceased list boss Chris Toce have their fingerprints on this year’s draft, Yze has ridden shotgun the entire way.

Richmond had always believed vice-captain Liam Baker would likely head home, in essence signing a two-year deal back in 2022 with a message that this would be his last contract.

Then Dan Rioli met Gold Coast, Shai Bolton’s homesickness intensified with the impending arrival of his second child, Dustin Martin retired and Jack Graham began fielding free agency offers.

Dustin Martin waves goodbye to the Richmond faithful.

“It started to gain momentum. A couple of them we didn’t have a say in with Jack and Liam and we wanted to do the right thing by them, especially with Liam wanting to get home,” Yze said.

“The other two were contracted and irrelevant of how good the draft was, we had to get a win out of it. It was something we had to plan. When you lose players of that quality, we needed quality draft picks. Once we went through that process, we knew what our draft hand could be based on the quality in this draft.

“We got the picks we needed and we felt like it was fair. Shai is a great kid and Daniel is a best-and-fairest winner but they are going on to different challenges.”

Dylan Grimes presents Harry Armstrong with his jumper.

No. 1 pick Sam Lalor gets his jumper from Trent Cotchin. Picture: Michael Klein

In a season of challenges Yze should be proud of the way he held his head high with departing premiership players.

“It’s a tough one when you are talking about premiership players and superstars of our club,” he said.

“Shai and Liam needed to get home. I was really open with ‘Bakes’ early on because you could see the pressure mounting on him and you could see it weighing on him.

“In the end it was more about helping them have the best season they could have and playing with freedom and then letting those things unfold later in the year.”

Ex-Saints recruiting boss Toce had believed powerful GWV Rebels mid-forward Sam Lalor was the draft’s best player when he pitched his services early in the year before his March appointment.

And with Yze present when the list team arrived on Lalor’s doorstep in Bacchus Marsh early this week to inform a player with Dustin Martin-esque traits, nothing had changed.

“Sammy is a star. He’s been a captain and much-loved member of every team he’s been in whether it’s his cricket program or his footy team. He’s a leader of men,” said Yze.

“And that’s the strength of the recruiting team. The amount of work they have put in watching games but also digging into the type of people they are, it’s why this footy club has been really strong in the past 10 years. It’s the character of the players and it stood out with all of them.

“All the kids who have come to the club in this draft are outstanding men who also have AFL talent. When Blair and the guys do their background stuff around these players character is right up there when it comes to rating players.”

Trainor has already started pestering Yze about which senior players drive standards and who organises Sunday recovery sessions.

Our recruiting team went to Sam Lalor's house to let him know he would be selected with our number one pick on #AFLDraft night 💛 pic.twitter.com/yAzihWMyfb

— Richmond FC 🐯 (@Richmond_FC) November 20, 2024

This group will maximise their football talents even if in any draft not all of those eight players will turn into AFL regulars.

Yze is thrilled with the blend of talls and smalls but says it was no preordained plan to take three mids then a quartet of key talls.

“It’s ironic how it worked out. It wasn’t a plan to take the first four picks with a certain type of player. It just worked out where we ranked them. Jonty Faull is a quality tall forward who we rated really highly. We didn’t need to get him at 14 to get in front of someone else. He deserved that position and then we were rapt to get Armstrong later on (at pick 23).

“To be able to fulfil our needs, the balance of our draft hand ended up well so the recruiting team have done an amazing job to be able to do that in one draft hand.”

Yze faces a big challenge in 2025 with a young team. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

But he is excited by what players such as Josh Smillie will bring to Punt Rd. Picture: Paul Kane/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

And yet as the draft excitement cools and Richmond’s established stars return to training this week the list of just seven 2020 premiership players on the list will present some cold hard realities.

With four 2024 ACL victims still to return, Martin retired and three of this year’s players from the top five in the best-and-fairest gone, there could be some bleak afternoons at the MCG from a scoreboard perspective.

Especially given Hotton will be taken along slowly after this May’s ACL tear, Lalor is coming off a serious hamstring issue and four of the draftees are key talls.

“We have got to set some goals as a club and as a team and we obviously want to win but we have to start to look at what success looks like. There might be a bit of pain. We hope there isn’t and last year there were a heap of reasons for the results we had with injury and the like. Now we have a lot of young kids in we can fast track our growth,” he said.

“You will have games as a young team where everything clicks and you can have amazing results. Then there are games where as a young team their form can fluctuate.

“So we will manage that but we will play an exciting brand and hopefully play a brand of footy our supporters can be proud of every week.

“So there is the win-loss column. But we have got to be really proud of the way we play rather than the results.”

Fox Footy’s David King often says the rebuilding coach is lucky to survive that journey and yet Yze says the club isn’t starting at ground zero.

There is an established senior core — Toby Nankervis, Nick Vlastuin, Jayden Short, Tom Lynch, Noah Balta, Tim Taranto, Jacob Hopper — and the hope is some of the 20-50 gamers can join Tom Brown and Josh Gibcus as likely 200-games.

“We have eight quality kids coming into the program but it’s already a list that has given some exposure to some of our younger boys next this year. So when you add those groups together it’s pretty exciting when you consider the talent we have with our older players. We will be OK.”

Originally published as Adem Yze exclusive: Richmond coach on Tigers’ draft haul, departing stars and the new era