Despite Richmond’s patchy start to the season, ruckman Ivan Maric remains buoyant about the team’s prospects in the coming weeks.
Speaking to the media at the ME Centre on Tuesday, Maric said the playing group is remaining positive, and is now focused on improvement.
“We hate losing. Ideally we would have liked to win every game. It’s great though, because we have realised what we need to improve on,” he said
“So I can’t be totally disappointed about the first five weeks, or else we don’t know how to improve, and that’s what we want to do.
“There are always a lot of areas to improve on. Our team defence is probably our number one priority. If we can get that right it is going to improve a lot of things.
“So we’ve focused on that in the last few weeks, and that’s what we will be training today, and will be continuing to train for the rest of the year."
After the Tigers’ nine-point loss to Geelong on Saturday afternoon, Maric believes a shift in mentality is required if they are to match the top teams.
“We want to be able to just rock up every week and just play our way. You look at teams like Hawthorn. They went through a bit of adversity in the first quarter against Port Adelaide and they just kept coming back,” he said.
“That’s what we want to be like. We don’t want to rely on the fact that we are underdogs or favourites. We just need to keep playing the same way.
“You can’t let the fear infect your mind and the way you play, because as soon as you second guess yourself, the game is too quick.
“You just need to take the game on, not think of the consequences and see what happens."
Maric says the team’s focus is now firmly on preparing for Saturday’s Round 5 clash with North Melbourne at Blundstone Arena.
“At the moment we need to focus on training today, improve, improve again Thursday and then bring our A-game on Saturday,” he said.
“It shouldn’t matter where we are on the ladder, where we play, or the conditions. We have to turn up and play our way, and that’s going to be really important this Saturday.”
