Richmond enters restart with no injuries hungry to win third flag in four years

Season 2020 will be anything but ordinary, but Damien Hardwick isn’t worried about an uneven playing field, saying it presents an opportunity for Richmond to go down in history.

Richmond have no injuries a month out from Round 1. Picture: Michael Klein

Richmond premiership coach Damien Hardwick has declared this season will mark “one of the greatest premierships ever won” as the Tigers finally returned to Punt Rd.

Hardwick said his team was completely injury-free, bar a sore Bachar Houli who will ease his way back into proceedings.

The reigning premiers have been split into groups of eight with star midfielder Dustin Martin part of the first group to hit the track as football eyes a June 11 return.

“For us, it’s an opportunity. It’s great. I know a lot of people have probably jumped up in arms a little bit with regards to, ‘It’s going to be an unfair playing field, it’s going to be a little bit different’.

“But this will be one of the greatest premierships ever won in AFL. The circumstances that we’re in presents an enormous opportunity for our footy club and our players are very much looking forward to it, as are our coaching staff and our fans.

“We can’t wait for it to start and we’re very excited about what it may look like and the challenges that it presents.”

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Richmond have no injuries a month out from Round 1. Picture: Michael Klein

Martin joined premiership skipper Trent Cotchin, Dion Prestia and Josh Caddy in the sun-bathed training session on Monday morning.

Hardwick said there had been little method in splitting the groups, saying that team synergy outweighed the risks of an entire group becoming infected.

“We’ve just backed in our system,” he said.

“At the end of the day, you worry about what we can control. Our backs are all together, our mids are all together. We’ve got an understanding of what that looks like, but the connection of how we play is vitally important.

“For us, it was about let’s get the connection of our team up and going straight away. We’ve got great faith in our players with regard to the hygiene ... social distancing. They’ve been very well educated with that, so we’re very confident they’ll be OK.

“Our biggest No.1 priority is getting our side playing together as quickly as we can in this three-week period.”

Hardwick might be excited about getting training back up and running, but don’t expect to see a celebratory TikTok to mark the occasion after his brief effort during the hiatus.

“No more TikToks,” he laughed.

“I could have killed my daughter for that. All four seconds of it.

“Wasn’t the first time I’ve lasted four seconds.”

The Tigers will start Round 2 the $4.50 premiership favourites with TAB ahead of Collingwood ($6) and West Coast ($6.50), which faces an arduous campaign that starts in a Gold Coast bunker.

Richmond senior club advisor Neil Balme said clubs would simply have to adapt to mini-preseason, strict health measures and a skeleton staff of only 25.

He is not part of that group given Blair Hartley and Tim Livingstone have been promoted to take over the running of Richmond’s footy department, but Balme said Richmond would be ready.

“We assume we are (injury-free) but how would you know until tomorrow,” he quipped on Sunday.

“We are in pretty good shape. The players have been pretty good and the doctors have helped them and talked to them through this period and we would be surprised if anyone has any injuries we don’t know about. The physios have been available the whole time and the doctors have been super-engaged with it all.

“We are just trying to put ourselves in a position where we are in a good space and don’t waste the opportunity we have this year, which I am sure we won’t.

Tom Lynch returns weights to the Tigers clubrooms at Punt Road Oval.

“We will work through what the season looks like. Down at the club today there were a lot of signs everywhere about “No access”: and “Keep out” and there can only be 12 people in this room and six in this. But it’s what we have to do and we will respond well to it because it’s what we have to do to play footy.”

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Balme was excited about resuming a fierce rivalry with Collingwood on June 11.

Collingwood upset the Tigers in the 2019 preliminary final and then in Round 2 last year as Jack Riewoldt broke his wrist in a 44-point loss.

But the Tigers bounced back in Round 19 last year with a 32-point win as they kicked nine consecutive goals through Tom Lynch and Dustin Martin’s star performances before a second flag in three seasons.

“That would be fantastic,” Balme said of an all-but-confirmed clash against Collingwood to re-start the season.

“We always love playing them, both teams love playing each other so it will be great to see how we go.”

Originally published as Richmond enters restart with no injuries hungry to win third flag in four years