Adem Yze can just about feel the sledgehammer in his hand as it strikes the plasterboard of an internal wall.

When he took the job at Richmond, he’d looked at the “house” at Punt Road and thought he was signing up for a bathroom makeover. Maybe the kitchen, too, at some stage.

But as he enters his second season standing in the frame of the house undergoing what he describes as a near full refurbishment, he is adamant that the foundations are strong.

The job is bigger than he had anticipated taking on, but the facelift will be well worth the pain of a live-in renovation.

“No doubt it is (a greater task),” he said.

Shai Bolton and Daniel Rioli departed at the end of last season in trades to Fremantle and Gold Coast respectively, while Liam Baker and Jack Graham were free agents who moved to West Coast.

The draft picks were plentiful and brimming with talent, but it’s escalated things. Yze knows that.

“(The first two) were contracted players and you end up making that decision and we needed that to be win-win and they’re quality players, and if we are going to go down that path, we wanted to get compensated for it,” Yze said.

“That was a decision, whereas waiting to get Liam and Jack to let us know what they were doing because they had the power to do so, I think our hand was forced a little bit in fast-tracking our rebuild. I constantly feel like you’re regenerating your list anyway.

“Rebuilding sounds like you’re ripping the foundations of the place when you’re rebuilding a house, rather than renovating a room.

“You’re constantly doing that. Our foundations are really stable at our footy club, so right now we’ve just ripped more walls out in the renovation, really.

“Rather than just doing the kitchen, we’re doing the whole house. And that’s OK – but the foundations with the handful of older players that we’ve still got that are going to be really important.

“It was a strategic decision knowing that the talent pool … you don’t see that often that it goes that deep, and the option once we worked out what we could get for Shai and Daniel was that we could fast track, hopefully, this rebuild.”

AGE OF REASON

Those present in the premierships – think Tom Lynch, Dion Prestia, Nick Vlastuin, Toby Nankervis, Nathan Broad and co – will be pivotal.

Yze cites former mentor Alastair Clarkson’s strategy at North Melbourne, bringing in the likes of Jack Darling, and another ex-Hawthorn colleague Chris Fagan in what he has achieved at Brisbane with Luke Hodge and Grant Birchall on their path to eventual glory as blueprints.

Only he doesn’t believe the Tigers need to go hunting.

“They’re teams that have gone searching for that experience, and we’ve got it in-house,” he said with conviction.

“We don’t need to go and search for someone else and bring premiership experience into our footy club. We’ve got it. It might mean they’re not playing as much, but their value is just so important for this group, and I want them to know that.”

Lynch has almost assumed the role of “godfather”.

“Our forwardline group other than him is 1-4 year players,” Yze said.

“They’re all in the front row of meetings and Lynchy is like the godfather sitting above. But if he wasn’t there, we’d be so raw and so young. You can’t buy that.

“We’ve got five or six of them who are at that stage of their career that we’ve got to really eke out that knowledge and soak that up for the next couple of years.”

FORWARD TO FUTURE

Yze says it would be “selfish” for him to focus on the now.

It might mean a readjustment to expectations for this year, as the likes of Thursday night debutants Sam Lalor, Luke Trainor and Harry Armstrong garner experience at the top level, but the second-year coach maintains he’s happy to wear that for the good of the long term.

“For a young coach, the selfish thing is to keep as much talent as we can on the field right now so we could get seven wins instead of six,” he said.

“But that’s not what I’m about. My job is to fast-track the development of our list for our next premiership. Not for another season or another year on my contract. I’ll always do that – I’ll always look to the future rather than my own personal benefit.

“I’m super excited, because in the end, our goals might change for the next year or two on where we think we can get to, but nothing changes with the foundations of your coaching around coaching and development and growth.”

Right now, he says, there’s a young list on the improve.

“And that’s the art of coaching – seeing improvement in Seth Campbell and Rhyan Mansell and Tom Brown last year,” Yze explained.

“That’s a win. It’s not a win on the scoreboard, but they’re getting better. So the more that we can fast track that, those wins will follow.”

COACHING THE COACHES

Richmond has quietly restructured its coaching department in direct response to its list profile.

Yze revealed that assistant coach Ben Rutten has shifted into a director of coaching type role, while former stoppage coach and ex-North Melbourne skipper Jack Ziebell has been moved into a development role to help foster the plethora of first-to-fourth year players.

It means the Tigers are effectively going without an assistant coach in the AFL in favour of development.

“We slightly adjusted our coaching staff based on our list profile,” Yze said.

“Ben Rutten’s now gone into sort of a director of coaching role, to fast track the development of our coaches and oversee us and make sure we’re coaching the right way and our education process because it is a younger list.

“With Jack Ziebell, we just saw more benefit with a young list and there’s like 24 1-4 year players, so for him the benefit for him as a development coach after losing Kane Lambert, it just made sense.

“So we’re kind of going in with one less coach in the AFL program but we’ve bolstered up our development program because that’s going to be more important for the next 12 to 18 months. You’re constantly adjusting things like that depending on the profile of your list.”

THE BALTA BLOW

The coach would much rather have defender Noah Balta’s magnet on the whiteboard as a potent Carlton forwardline awaits.

Yze’s first major off-field incident to navigate since taking over as coach, Balta awaits sentencing in relation to a December 30 Murray River assault charge at the end of this month.

He remembers the call. The feeling.

And how the club had to take a stand in imposing a four-match suspension on the premiership player – particularly in light of the club’s current list profile.

“You do feel like they’re your children,” Yze said.

“But it’s more around what we accept. We’re not an older list where Dusty (Martin) and Trent Cotchin and Jack Riewoldt would understand that that’s just stupidity, and let’s help him through it.

“Right now, we’ve got 20-something players under 30 games that need support and need guidance and guys like Luke Trainor need to know what our standard is when we wear our colours away from our footy club.

“That’s never going to change. Those standards have to be really strong.”

Balta was “so remorseful”.

“But his response has been terrific,” Yze explained.

“He’s a terrific guy and a great teammate and he’s going to hate missing footy, but he’s gone head down, bum up and worked really hard the last month. He’s such an important player, but he’s learned from it and that’s all we need him to do.”

THE PLAN

Yze has a second pre-season under his belt, but things are feeling like they’re his at Punt Road.

Every minute has had to count with a shorter pre-season and more to cram in, meaning he and fellow coaches “have got to make sure that we’re really efficient”.

Changes take longer to bed down, meaning system adjustments he implemented even last year are coming to the fore.

“That’s where I feel like we are now. There’s a bit more clarity on how we’re defending, and we want to move the ball,” he said.

“Our stoppage structure is really compliant, so still some teething issues with it but I feel like we’re in a better spot around all phases of the game right now. We’d hope that we see a spike and some consistency in that.”

There’s been games of golf as he learned more about his young players – “a way to connect” – and things are “fresh” as they embark on another new era. Together.

“Not that it feels like it’s my first year, but because I’m learning about new players and so many of them are new and we’ve gone from a mature-age (list) to a really young, inexperienced list now, we can sort of grow together,” he said.

“Every time I go out there, I feel like it’s my first game because I’m constantly learning and something else will pop up.

“I think half of our list have played under 30 games – we can grow together. I sense their excitement and it rubs off on me because I’m still excited too.”