While Saturday’s loss to Sandringham ended Richmond’s VFL finals hopes, coach Tim Clarke believes the development program is playing an important role in preparing young Tigers for senior football.

After controlling the majority of game and leading at three-quarter-time, Clarke was disappointed the 12th-placed Tigers lost some critical contests and conceded seven goals in the last quarter.

“It’s disappointing for the people involved in the VFL program that we don’t make finals,” Clarke told Roar Vision, “but we’re here to develop our players and we’re here to have a program that allows us to develop them.”

“Some of the guys that have gone up and played senior footy this year, we’ve been able to prepare them in positions that they’re going to play in and been able to give them an environment where they can play and they’re confident and they enjoy their football and that’s had a massive tick from my point of view.”

Clarke confirmed that in-form Matt McDonough, who booted three goals against the Zebras, will continue to spend time up forward and believes that experienced midfielder Shaun Grigg is ready for a return to the senior side.

“He’s done everything he needs to do. We wanted him to play that contested role on the weekend…25 contested possessions and just under 20 clearances, which is huge,” Clarke said.

“He was terrific for us, his leadership was really good for the boys as well. I’d assume that he’d be pushing pretty heavily to go up this week.”

The Tigers travel to play bottom-placed Bendigo on Saturday evening and Clarke is confident his side can get the win and finish the season strongly.

“We’re going to go up there and really have a contested ball focus, real pressure focus, which is what we’ve been training here at Richmond for some time now.”

“If our guys turn up with the right mentality and the right game, we should be able to put them under enough pressure to play good footy.”