Richmond has to cut Ty Vickery, writes Mark Robinson

VOTE NOW: TYRONE Vickery’s days at Richmond surely are numbered with the Tigers unable to play finals and in rebuild, writes MARK ROBINSON.

Will Ty Vickery be at the Tigers next year? Picture: Getty Images

TYRONE Vickery’s days at Richmond surely are numbered.

The Tigers can’t play finals, the Tigers are in a rebuild, so the football department must make hard decisions.

The decision on Vickery is an easy one: He can’t be at the Tigers next year.

That’s not to say his career is over. He is a free agent and he can go to a club willing to give him a spot on the list.

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Fremantle might cut his dollars in half, but he would get an opportunity with Matthew Pavlich retiring and Zac Clarke probably out of luck and chances. Melbourne maybe. Carlton maybe. Anyone else?

It’s slim pickings.

He can’t stay at Richmond.

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While coach Damien Hardwick is wearing his honesty hat — finals are gone, he said — he has to be brutally honest with Vickery.

It’s been eight years for Ty. He’s a good, decent bloke, but it hasn’t worked out.

From the start, it seems he’s been a round peg trying to fit into a square hole.

When he was drafted, he was described in the AFL Guide as a player with “huge raps as a ruckman and potential power forward”.

Ty Vickery is not the answer to the Tigers’ woes and must be allowed to leave as a free agent at the end of the season. Picture: Colleen Petch

He was drafted No.8 in 2008, the first of the key forwards/talls in the draft.

The Tigers needed a second key forward and it’s why they plumped for the kid from Sandringham. They needed key position players, which is why they opted for Jayden Post at No.26.

And it’s why they left midfielders David Zaharakis (23), Dayne Beams (29), Dan Hannebery (30), Steven Motlop (39) and Rory Sloane (44).

It was an average draft for the talls.

He can be an easy target, Vickery, but his output this year has made him an easy target in a team which has become an easy target.

He’s averaging just eight disposals which puts him in the bottom 10 per cent of key forwards. It is his worst return since 2012.

He’s kicked 22 goals from 14 games, but is above average in marks inside-50m, with an average of 2.2 a game. He can mark OK, but other than that, he can’t find the ball.

This is not a character assassination; this is a football decision. If the Tigers opt to go forward with Vickery, and with Ben Griffiths, they will have opted to go forward with mediocrity in positions — the key forward posts — which can’t be allowed to be mediocre.

The Tigers won’t play finals, so Hardwick can be more brutal with his assessments and, anyhow, it’s not as if he hasn’t given Vickery every opportunity.

They must be brave, the Tigers. They must shop hard in free agency and at the trade market.

They must convince players the football club is a place of destination. They missed Hannebery and Adam Treloar, but they can’t miss Dion Prestia if the he wants out of the Gold Coast.

There’s nothing stopping the Tigers unloading Vickery and Griffiths and starting again in those two positions.

The alternative is to keep them both and hope they increase their impact on games.

That hope is waning.

Why not take a punt and go after, say, Geelong’s Nathan Vardy? The Tigers need another ruckman so why not Jarrad Witts? Why don’t they make Michael Hurley a godfather offer he can’t refuse? Don’t take no for an answer. Offer $800,000. If that doesn’t work, make it $850,000.

If Geelong can nab Dangerfield, Lachie Henderson, Zac Smith, Scott Selwood and Rhys Stanley within 24 months, then the Tigers have no excuses.

There’s a stack of mid-range players at Richmond — Taylor Hunt, Andrew Moore, Jacob Townsend, Chris Yarran, Reece Conca, Liam McBean, Jake Batchelor, Todd Elton — who seem to be neither coming nor going.

Not for the first time this season, the acid test is on everyone at Richmond.

Originally published as Richmond has to cut Ty Vickery, writes Mark Robinson