Four Signs of a Successful Richmond Season in 2025

Four Signs of a Successful Richmond Season in 2025

GuyWhoLikesSport

None of the signs will be wins.

The Tigers head into the 2025 season with the least experienced list in the AFL and virtually no established AFL talent.

This year, weā€™re just hoping for the first season of a soon-to-be successful TV show.

They usually start with unknowns and make them stars.

Kieran Culkin wasnā€™t famous before Succession, now heā€™s an Oscar winner.

Instead of wins, Tiger fans just need to see these four signs for the season to be an overall success.

1. Games have to be a more pleasant experience than sticking needles in my eyes.

Watching Richmond in 2024 was more painful than that COVID celebrity-filled imagine video.

Richmondā€™s ball movement out of the back half was particularly awful. As soon as the ball got to defensive 50, nobody was less dynamic.

If you offered me a dollar for every time someone got the ball at half-back and hoiked it up the line to nobody, I wouldnā€™t take it because that many billions isnā€™t worth my happiness.

It showed in the numbers.

The Tigers were the least fluid, most risk averse, team in footy.

This season, there has to be more dynamism and run coming out of the back half. It doesnā€™t even need to work, just try something. Be like Ani from Anora.

Make it clap and maybe youā€™ll get a diamond ring out of it, even if the marriage to an oligarch end-run doesnā€™t work.

Another year of dour, ā€œMelbourne without any good playersā€ type of football from Adem Yze and I might cry.

2. The highly pedigreed kids need to have a moment or two.

Itā€™s unlikely that all of Richmondā€™s top picks will become AFL stars. The draft is inexact, and if I were betting, Iā€™d say three of the seven top-30 picks donā€™t work out.

But this is a year where hope should spring eternal for all of them.

Even if they donā€™t imprint themselves on the competition like Harley Reid did, they just need to have a moment.

Give me an insight into who you are, like the Godfather 2 scene between Michael and Senator Geary. That scene showed what Michael had become.

I need something like that from Sam Lalor.

I still remember being at the ground for Dustyā€™s first ever goal in what was a just okay first year for him.

Richmond was getting pumped, but it wasnā€™t the point.

In that goal, you saw his traits.

You saw the breakaway speed, the ability to roll through traffic, the poise, and the kick.

Each give me one moment like that.

3. Listen to Bill Belichick

Bill Belichickā€™s famously said ā€œdo your jobā€.

He gave players with limited skillsets specific areas of responsibility and had them focus on that.

The Tigers need to do the same for the less talented guys on the list.

Post-dynasty, this was one of Damien Hardwickā€™s strengths.

The most successful one was taking an average small forward Dan Rioli, and turning him into an elite running half-back who he then poached.

Yze did it last year with Rhyan Mansell who became a terrific small forward last year.

Do it with more players.

Take Thompson Dow.

Among all players who attended more than 15 centre bounces per game and played over 15 games, Dow got the fewest clearances.

He canā€™t do that! Can he do anything else?

He is a good runner. Try him on a wing?

Tyler Sonsie, Tom Brown, Steely Green, Hugo Ralphsmith.

All candidates for the Belichick treatment.

None are going to be stars. Give them one job, define its parameters, and tell them to focus on just that for the whole year.

4. Start abandoning the sunk costs.

Remember Mark Brendanawicz from Parks and Rec?

They started the show with him as this crucial character, then after one season where he didnā€™t quite work they slowly got rid of him. He never came back after season 2.

Richmond should Brendanawicz a few this year.

To be clear, Iā€™m not saying get rid of everyone over 28. A big issue last year was that Richmond got bullied all over the ground due to a lack of size.

Certain players do need to be phased out, though or at least put some kids into the crucial roles alongside them.

Take the centre bounces again. This is a focus area for me because it clearly wasnā€™t for Richmond.

The eight players who attended the most centre bounces last season were as follows: Nankervis, Taranto, Hopper, Prestia, Dow, Bolton, Graham, Baker.

Richmond was 18th in clearances, contested ball and scores from stoppage in 2024.

Brendanawicz the few from that list that havenā€™t left and put the new kids into the firing line. Start with Jacob Hopper and go from there.

I know you canā€™t drop him but start him on a flank or something. Donā€™t let him clog development.

One experienced player for every two kids in every centre bounce.

Lean in.

 

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