The world today confuses me.
It doesn’t remind me of the world that I grew up in.
I could be referring here to the rapid decline of international institutions, but if you look at the 1948 Italian election you’ll see they’ve been declining basically from the moment of conception.
I could be referring to a general lack of decency among the people of the world, but before I was born there were thousands of wars of choice. Now we just tweet angrily at each other while still waging wars of choice.
No. What really confuses me is football. Especially the contentedness of the fans and the wider footy commentariat with the position that my beloved Tigers are in.
If that happened to Carlton, Blues fans would angrily demand a Royal Commission. If it happened at Essendon, Bomber fans would be even more checked out than they are. If it happened at Richmond in 2009, Tiger fans would rightly be baying for blood.
But at Tigerland today, one of the biggest clubs in the land with a massive supporter base, the reaction is like a rat pissing on cotton.
Richmond is in just as bad of a position as Essendon and Carlton, albeit with more theoretical top end players under 23.
The why is easy.
Richmond won three premierships in four years, the last of which came six years ago. Since stopping trying to be competitive when Damien Hardwick left in 2023, the Tigers have been consistent in their messaging that this is a rebuild and it will take time, even through occasional good patches in 2025.
Tiger fans have accepted that because, it seems to me, they have faith in the institution. But the institution has changed. The coach is different, the CEO is different, the president is different.
The only institutional carryover is the laundry.
Those colours, despite our memories of glory in them, don’t guarantee glory into the future.
Since taking over for Damien Hardwick, Adem Yze has coached 49 games. The Tigers are 7-42 in those 49 games. In those 42 losses, 14 have been lost by ten goals or more. Just six were by single digits.
Why are we still happy with being this uncompetitive? Why do we trust in this process?
It’s not like all the players are terrible either. Some of the older pillars can still play, led by Vlastuin and Nankervis.
But separate to them Lalor, Grlj, the small forward brigade of Mansell, Rioli, Campbell, and Green are all good players. Liam Fawcett looked a good player last week as well. Beyond them, Hotton and allegedly Cumming and Smilie are good but they’re all out or haven’t been seen enough to make a certain determination about.
There’s also a potentially spectacular back line taking shape around Ben Miller, Noah Balta and Josh Gibcus though the latter two have regressed badly this season.
But even with a lot of good players on the list now, and theoretical good players in the future, Yze’s method is vomit inducing. Richmond has exceeded 100 points just once under Yze and scored under 30 twice.
His method, such as it is, seems to be to chip the ball around and try and use the wings when there are openings. When there aren’t, he’s content to send the ball to a contest and try and win from there, apparently ignoring that Richmond have been bottom four in contested ball differential every year under Yze.
Because of that “method”, the only stat that Richmond is elite at is metres per kick. Against Port, the down the line option was Samson Ryan in Toby Nankervis and Tom Lynch’s absence. Despite Ryan being one of the least effective AFL footballers I have ever seen, at no point did Richmond try to do something else.
Richmond is turgid by default. They are bottom four in every single transition stat. Their ball movement is more stagnant than the Strait of Hormuz.
When I watch Richmond play dreary game after dreary game, contemplating whether it would be better to watch the game or saw off my own leg with a butter knife, I think about what I see from the modern Demons.
Where Adem Yze is still trying to play Simon Goodwin’s ball control, defend first game, Steven King entered Melbourne and modernised a tired game style. The Dees run and expand their game and are willing to live with getting beaten out the other side because footy now is about speed and scoring.
I could point to 100 stats that show how much better suited Steven King’s Demons are to the modern game than Adem Yze’s Tigers, but the best illustration is the centre bounce.
Footy this year has become about the ability to drag the ball from inside contest to outside and run with handball from there. Coming from Geelong, King understands the need to get speed on the ball out of the middle.
As a result, he happily jettisoned Petracca and Oliver and now their top three centre bounce mids are Steele, Pickett, and Windsor. It’s one inside beast and two pure burst players, one of whom is 20 and in his third year.
At Richmond the top three centre bounce mids are still Taranto, Hopper, and Ross. Not one of those players is over 300 metres gained. All three of Melbourne’s centre bounce mids are.
That need to stick with what he knows, even when blind Freddie can see that what he knows doesn’t work, is an anvil around Adem Yze’s neck that nobody can seem to take off.
Despite the parade of misery that I have shared in this piece, all I hear in the media and from Tiger fans is how good of a position the Tigers are in with their youth and their potential for growth. Ken Hinkley said he wouldn’t need to be paid to take the Richmond job.
What am I missing here? Is it just based on a draft where we got a lot of players two years ago, almost all of whom have been injured?
Richmond will be 17th or 18th this year. West Coast and North Melbourne are clearly better than the Tigers, while the Dreamtime game threatens to plumb new depths after last year’s instalment found a school of prehistoric giant squid.
At what point does recognising the potential for something good give way to actually needing some runs on the board, like West Coast have had this year? At what point can we start holding Yze to the standard of a big club?
Why are we fine with treating the 2026 Tigers like the U.N. judging them on theoretical success that has no basis in reality?