AFL football at the top end of the ladder is zero-sum, you either win or lose and that’s all that matters.
At the bottom end, given equalisation measures like the draft and the AFL’s equitable approach to fixturing, the situation is less clear cut.
Even despite that, in general it’s pretty rare for a game where one team won and one team lost to be such a clear win/win as the Richmond v North Melbourne game was.
It was like Janice killing Richie in The Sopranos.
In one fell swoop Tony was relieved of having to make a very unpleasant decision and lost two of the biggest pains in his ass, Richie and Janice, even though it was unpleasant to watch.
I’ll start with North Melbourne who did, of course, actually won one of the uglier games of the season.
North struggled mightily early in the game to move the ball out of defence and were pretty deplorable around the ball as well, at least in the first half.
But you can seriously see their high-end talent – Sheezel, Davies-Uniacke, Xerri, Powell, Scott, Larkey and Comben were all among their best while Duursma took a screamer.
idgaf zane duursma has mark of the year. havent seen a north player get that high since aaron edwards in the 2007 semi final vs hawks pic.twitter.com/5QQPGDEh0j
— vrsaljak🇭🇷 (@vrsaljak) August 4, 2024
They have legitimate high-end talent at this point. They shouldn’t be in a position where they’re still trying to accrue picks at the expense of winning. They have the players, will have a high pick anyway, and now it’s a matter of changing the DNA.
We’ve seen with the Philadelphia 76ers after the Sam Hinkie era that losing DNA is hard to shit.
Quick aside, the funniest part of Sam Hinkie being a “genius” was the fawning Sports Illustrated profile they wrote about him which included this gem of a comment:
“In Philly he was clean-cheeked, with a perfect left-side part, a Mad Men character come to life. He owned 25 blue blazers, all size 40 regular. The goal: reduce decision fatigue, the psychological phenomenon in which the more choices we make in any given day, the worse we are at making them.”
It feels like it isn’t that complicated to just lose a lot of games and hope you pick the right players, which Hinkie of course didn’t after selecting national disgrace Ben Simmons pick in the 2016 NBA draft.
Anyway, to avoid being the second-round sixers in the AFL, North needs to win these games.
And they did, on the back of a barnstorming third quarter and a hyper efficient attack going inside 50, where they took a shot on just under half of their entries.
The Tigers got close in the final term with a Liam Baker goal that made it 84-76 with about 8 minutes to go, but North ultimately steadied the ship and won.
This wasn’t a write home win, but it was an important one for their development.
For the first time this year, they went into a game with the untempered expectation of a victory and won even after an early stumble.
The real winner, though, is Richmond.
As a Tiger fan, I’ve been like Jerry Seinfeld at the Dream Cafe with the way that I’ve been lying to myself this season.
But against North, finally, my reasons for optimism don’t have to be lying self-talk.
There are two key things for Richmond that have to be considered to call this loss a win.
The first is game style.
The Tigers have looked uncertain all season playing Adem Yze’s system.
I think that Yze wants to move the ball like Brisbane, Fremantle, or Hawthorn do.
They play a deliberate, incisive kick mark game from the back half where you go slow, stretch defences, then put the speed on when they do open up.
When it does go inside 50, they prioritise an aggressive forward half, territory game.
That’s fine, but Richmond don’t have the horses or the risk appetite for it to do anything other than boring sideways chips in the back half and then inevitable kicks down the wing to nobody where the Tigers don’t get a ground ball (last in the AFL).
It’s therefore been a pale facsimile of those sides for Richmond.
Critically, it’s also much more rigid than Damien Hardwick’s more freewheeling system.
Some players, Jayden Short springs to mind, have looked stuck without the freedom.
It’s been like Seth Rogen trying to fit into a David Fincher movie.
Against North, there was finally some flow and dynamism from the back half.
Instead of boring footy by default, the Tigers took aggressive kicks from both kick ins and turnovers in the back half and had genuine flow for the first time all season.
They also looked into the corridor at points, which was astonishing.
Richmond didn’t score from the back half, but the eye test showed a team with a higher risk appetite and a little bit more run.
The other key game style piece of the game was that Richmond won the territory battle.
The Tigers won the inside 50 count by 16, only the fifth time this season they have won the inside 50s.
They also had their second-best day of the season at scoring from the forward half and had 18 shots from the forward half, their highest total for the year.
I joked early in the year that Richmond might set a record this season for the least time in forward half in VFL/AFL history this season, but in the first half at least the Tigers were ferocious and constantly forced forward half turnovers.
It finally looked like an Yze game, at least at points.
But separate to game style, Richmond officially has some personnel answers.
Obviously, the Tigers need high-end talent.
Players like Hugo Ralphsmith and Sam Banks manned the wings instead of the great but ageing Kamdyn McIntosh and played well.
Seth Campbell, Steely Green and Rhyan Mansell were all over the place as pressure forwards while Tom Brown had some moments.
Of the under 24 brigade, I also have faith in Tom Brown, James Trezise, Josh Gibcus, Maurice Rioli, Kaleb Smith, and Jacob Koschitske.
Richmond does have some young talent, but it’s not high-end talent and little of it plays a premium position.
Best case scenario: all of those guys are B+ players except Gibcus who could be anything if he can get fit.
Of particular note, though, is that none of Richmond’s young talent plays on the ball.
Richmond is almost wholly reliant on plodders, other than Shai Bolton and Liam Baker when they’re in in the middle.
Even though Richmond won clearances and basically broke even in contested ball, they were beaten at scoring from stoppage.
The game was decided by high impact, highly pedigreed players like Luke Davies-Uniacke, and Harry Sheezel.
Those players have juice. The Tigers don’t.
Pick #1, which the Tigers pretty much sewed up in the loss, could go quite a way to fixing that.
North Melbourne got a win by winning.
Richmond got a win by showing the future of Yze-ball enough, but still losing and putting themselves in the box seat to add some zest to a stale midfield in the draft.
It’s a rare game where two teams must have walked out happy.