Richmond will be the new GWS in 2024

Richmond will be the new GWS in 2024

GuyWhoLikesSport

GWS in 2023 was the story of the season on the way to losing an incredible preliminary final to the eventual premier Collingwood.

They won 10 out of their last 11 to make sneak their way to the finals and when they were there, they wrought havoc.

The orange team easily dispensed with St Kilda and then Port Adelaide through their hard-running, attractive brand of footy before losing to Collingwood by a point.

Just the specifics of GWS-ness makes them hard to replicate and anyone who tries to do it will probably be doing a Joker to the original King of Comedy – a pale imitation. But it’s still a worthwhile exercise to see if there’s a bolter somewhere.

The GWS-ness of it all is thus. They’re everyone’s second team. Nobody hates them anymore, at least as far as I can tell.

They have lost enough heartbreakers to have the scars that make a club likable.

They’re just at the level of success where they’re a fun part of the AFL’s tapestry, but they’re not successful enough for Australia’s hatred of success to have fully kicked in.

They also have Toby.

ESPN did an (excellent) Mt Rushmore of every club this season and Toby Greene was easily the first picked for GWS. Rightly so.

 

I can’t think of a single athlete who has undergone this much of an image transformation since Aaron Hernandez. He is such a freaky, threatening and talismanic presence that nobody else can match.

GWS in 2024 was also interesting because they were so abominable in 2023 after a run of relative success that included a grand loss demolition in 2019.

They had a heady brew of older stars like Greene, Kelly, Coniglio, etc. but were also able to unearth some gems like Toby Bedford while getting breakout years from  Tom Green.

So, what are we looking for to find whoever the 2024 version of GWS is?

I think there are three things:

  1. A down year the year prior after relatively recent successes.
  2. Established stars on the list supplemented by some kids that we potentially don’t know yet.
  3. An attractive game style that makes them watchable.

You get bonus points for having a new coach.

Who fits the bill?

 

I think the answer, resoundingly, is Richmond. And the similarities go beyond Adam Kingsley being a former Richmond disciple.

Obviously, with the 2017, 2019, and 2020 premierships, Richmond has the recent success element of the GWS formula down.

The Tigers also have a Greene-like talisman in Dustin Martin, who had an astonishing year in 2023, kicking 25 goals and being the best offensive 1v1 player in the league among players who had more than one 1v1 situation a game.

All of this while the most prolific fiction writer since L. Ron Hubbard, Sam McClure, was making up yet more fan fiction about his lack of commitment to the Tigers and his impending move to the Gold Coast (McClure graduated at the top of his class at the Never Wrong, Just Early. School of Journalism).

Beyond just ‘Dusty’, Richmond has a smattering of experienced stars who seem to be just exiting their prime, but are still useful players. They’re like the 2023/24 Tampa Bay Bucs, where they are widely written off but if you look at the list there are still a lot of talented players.

The most important of them is the returning Tom Lynch. Since Lynch joined Richmond in 2019, the Tigers are 53-3-29 with him in the lineup. When he kicks 3 or more, Richmond is 30-3-8.

When Lynch plays and plays well, Richmond wins.

The nerds will say correlation does not equal causation. But I’d tell the nerds to get stuffed and watch the games. Richmond is better with Lynch.

After a foot injury, Lynch has started running again and his arms still look terrific in the rain, so we’re off to a good start.

 

Beyond Lynch, there’s still Vlastuin, Prestia, Baker, Taranto, Short, Rioli, Balta, Hopper, Nankervis, etc. There are still good, experienced players on the list just like GWS had.

But it’s not only them. Some younger players should be able to fill in the margins and spike the enthusiasm of the older heads.

Players like Juddy Clarke, Tyler Sonsie, Tylar Young and even Maurice Rioli may be able to give Richmond that GWS-style spark. The biggest question among the youth of the club is Josh Gibcus. If he’s back fit after shooting goat blood into his hamstring (or whatever they did), and plays as well as he did in his first year, Richmond’s backline (or forward line) should be shored up enough to be a legitimately formidable team.

The question, really, is game style.

Where everyone is trying to get a Richmond type of game going, Richmond went the other way and hired a Melbourne coach. I have no idea whether Adem Yze will be a good coach who tries to keep the Tigers playing a similar style, or whether he will bring Melbourne’s specific form of dysfunction to Richmond. A smaller man would make a Ben Cousins pending time in the offseason at Richmond/Clayton Oliver joke here, but I am not that man.

What I do know about Yze is that he was roundly hailed by journos as a ‘great hire’ which, to me, typically means he was an open source and not much more. What worries me, though, are his plans for the future.

Noah Balta is not a forward. Someone should scream that in his ear.

Maybe play it on a loop like it’s the Richmond theme song at an Adelaide camp.

Playing him forward is like having Sydney Sweeney play an ugly girl. It doesn’t make sense.

He doesn’t understand what to do.

Notwithstanding that, the most likely to pull a GWS in 2024, in my view, is pretty clearly Richmond.