AFL 2021: Reasons behind Richmond's decline and loss of premiership DNA

Richmond can’t win the flag, but it must diagnose its issues and fix them quickly to avoid missing the finals. Jon Ralph outlines the reasons behind the Tigers’ decline.

Gold Coast Suns vs Richmond at Marvel Stadium, Melbourne. 01/07/2021. A disappointed Richmond team walk of Marvel Stadium after losing to the Gold Coast Suns . Pic: Michael Klein

Damien Hardwick promised the kind of line-in-the-sand game that would re-establish the Tigers’ DNA.

The dross his players served up on against the Suns was instead reminiscent of the football in 2016 that nearly got him sacked.

The great indictment on Hardwick’s premiership side is that lowly Gold Coast looked more like Richmond on Thursday night than the once mighty men from Punt Road.

Not for the first time this year a team using Richmond’s own game plan - rabid pressure, forward handball, slick ball movement - out-Tigered the Tigers.

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Richmond was outdone by its own game plan. Picture: Michael Klein

Want to know how badly the Tigers are going?

The club’s forward half turnovers (11) against Gold Coast were the lowest in a game since 2016, the overall pressure the second-lowest since 2016, their own defensive turnovers (39) the second-lowest since 2016.

Richmond wilted against Melbourne’s high-pressure game and outlasted Essendon’s direct replica but on Thursday had their premiership ambitions laid bare as a pipe dream in a season of ever-diminishing returns.

As Hardwick said of Gold Coast: “Gold Coast was outstanding. They looked a side that looked similar to us in fairness. They replicate a brand that looked like us and played accordingly.”

The Tigers can’t win the flag. That is now clear.

But with seven home-and-away games remaining, Hardwick must diagnose the issues and fix them quickly so they don’t join the Western Bulldogs as a recent side to win the flag then miss finals altogether.

And while some say the dynasty is at an end for a Richmond side with only six plus-30s (Dustin Martin hit that milestone last week), the club’s mission is as much building for 2022 as extracting a finals win for 2021.

Richmond’s pressure was seriously lacking against the Suns. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

The symptoms are easy to diagnose.

Richmond is 7-8 because of issues that include the Tigers getting belted in close and in post-stoppage clearance. They lost centre-square clearances 12-4 and clearances 36-30 against the Suns.

Captain Trent Cotchin is valiantly playing his pressure game but a midfield without injured pair Dion Prestia and Kane Lambert doesn’t have the depth to compete.

Jack Graham ran around for a season-low eight touches while a banged up Shane Edwards had only 15.

The constant injury toll is crippling. The Tigers had their best five midfielders out against Greater Western Sydney in round 9. Remarkably they beat the Giants by four points.

Now it is the key talls - Toby Nankervis, Noah Balta and Nathan Broad - who are sidelined. Tom Lynch and David Astbury are only just back.

As Richmond high performance boss Peter Burge said on Thursday, it’s not even the total number of injuries, it is that they have mostly been to the club’s star players.

Off a short pre-season the Tigers had the likes of Houli and Prestia battling to make Round 1 and have had to take personnel risks given the win-loss record to keep level with the ledger.

As Burge said, seven six-day breaks have not helped, with three or four finals in each of the last four years catching up as a cumulative effect.

Nankervis should return next week off his PCL, but Prestia’s third or fourth hamstring tweak this year means the club needs to establish the root cause and potentially bring him back through the VFL to manage game time.

Dion Prestia may need to be managed through the VFL after another hamstring tweak. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

The club’s much-vaunted depth might be puddle rather than well-deep.

Riley Collier Dawkins’ cameos have been exceptional but he had eight possessions across a full game, while Jack Ross (15 possessions) was quiet and Patrick Naish (12 touches) faded after two lovely early touches.

Clearly, the Richmond premiership DNA is gone.

Hardwick bemoaned a 6-14 free kick count inside attacking 50 against Gold Coast which robbed the Tigers of the chance to pressure and gain re-entries.

But the small forwards are in terrible form anyway.

They created just 11 forward half turnovers, the worst number of the four-year dynasty.

For all Shai Bolton’s brilliance he has 15 goals in 12 games.

Jason Castagna has kicked 14 goals from 15 games and has five tackles in his past four games.

Jake Aarts has one goal in the past five games and Daniel Rioli has been dropped and re-cast as a half back.

Fox Footy expert David King wondered post-match if it’s time for the two parties to consider a trade.

The wildly talented Maurice Rioli Jr remains a low-possession player at VFL level but has to be worth a debut soon after shedding 5kg of body fat and rapidly improving his endurance to add to lightning pace.

The team’s ball use is also un-Richmond-like.

Houli butchered two turnovers early against the Suns, while at one stage Richmond had 20 clangers to six before that number equalised by game’s end.

They turned it over 39 times in their defensive half, with Houli forcing three total clanger kicks, Bolton three and Naish three as well.

Richmond, which was 15 minutes from an 8-5 record before letting slip the Eagles game then losing to St Kilda and Gold Coast, surely will not turn this around.

Not with a seemingly cushy run home which actually includes clashes with resurgent Collingwood, Fremantle (away), GWS (away) and Hawthorn as well as the Brisbane Lions and Geelong.