Damien Hardwick has lamented Richmond's "incredibly poor" lack of discipline as the Tigers slumped to their third consecutive defeat.

Richmond has managed just one win from the opening five rounds and fell to Sydney by 44 points at Adelaide Oval, with Tom Papley cutting through the Tigers with six goals.

Hardwick's side got to within seven points of the Swans at three-quarter time before last year's Grand Finalists ran away with the contest, with the Richmond coach unhappy with what he saw.

"We've got to get better first and foremost with our smarts and ball execution inside 50 and I thought our discipline was incredibly poor tonight. There were a couple of incidents we just look at and go 'It's just ridiculous what we're doing' so we'll chat to the boys about that," Hardwick said.

"At the end of the day, it's all good to push and shove but the reality is you've got to pick the ball up. That's tough footy sort of stuff. I'm disappointed with that and our fans will be and I'm sure they [the players] will be when they see them."

Hardwick said it hadn't been a trend across Richmond's season, but that costly moments had come back to bite the Tigers in the Gather Round clash. 

"I actually think we've been pretty good. We certainly had a focus on reducing our number of free kicks and it's been a lot better this year but we let ourselves down. They kicked two 50-metre penalty goals and they were just easy goals you can't defend against," he said.

Richmond drew with Carlton in round one and followed it with a win over Adelaide in round two but has now had successive losses against Collingwood, the Western Bulldogs and Swans, with Hardwick saying the Tigers were "disjointed".