Livewire small forward, Robin Nahas, one of the Club’s most improved players this year, told Radio Sport National’s breakfast program this morning that morale within the group had remained high in the face of a six-match losing streak, which has now been snapped with back-to-back wins (against Sydney and Melbourne).
“I know in the outside world, in that six-week period, where we didn’t get a win, everyone thought, oh, there goes Richmond, they’re going downhill. But we knew, internally, that we weren’t far away from a win and all we had to do was tinker with a few things,” Nahas said.
“With a young group the biggest thing is intensity. So, we’ve brought that the last couple of weeks and we’ve come away with a couple of wins. With a young group, you’re always going to drop away and have your bare patches, but we knew if we brought that intensity, we’d get some more wins.”
Nahas firmly believes the tight bond formed among the playing group at Tigerland is another significant factor in the team’s capacity to bounce back from adversity . . .
“We’re definitely a tight-knit group down here. It helps that we’re all around the same age . . . we’ve all grown up together,” Nahas said.
“Dimma’s a great coach and he’s a great people person, so we have that leeway to come in and do stuff with him, like jumping in on his press conference (and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him last week) because we know that he’ll receive it well . . .”
The 23-year-old has played all 20 games this season, kicking 21 goals and averaging nearly 20 possessions per game.
He attributes his improvement in 2011 to a huge pre-season, which provided his fitness levels with a significant boost.
“Coming off the rookie list, you don’t get too many chances to impress, and my year last year was pretty bare, so I knew that I had to come in this year and give everything I had,” Nahas said.
“I knew I had to get myself super-fit and really impress because when you get your chances at AFL level you’ve got to take them . . .
“Fitness is one of the massive keys to playing AFL football . . . being able to run from contest to contest puts you in many more positions to get the football.
‘If you’re continually running all day, sometimes, by luck, you get the ball because you just seem to be in the right spot.
“That seemed to happen to me this year, where I was capable of getting from contest to contest, and the more contests you get to, the more ball you can win.”
