Esteemed Richmond veteran Nathan Broad has a message for the AFL football experts predicting the Tigers to struggle big time in 2025 following the departure of several star premiership players at the end of last season.
Richmond goes into the new season with the least experienced playing group across the AFL in terms of games played, prompting plenty of critics to pencil the Tigers in for a second successive wooden spoon and precious few wins.
Broad, however, is exuding genuine enthusiasm about the team’s chances in season 2025.
“I’m loving all the external noise . . . win one game, win none, or finish last. I think it’s great,” he said on the first episode for the year of the Club’s Talking Tigers podcast.
“There’s no pressure on us this year. We’ve got nothing to lose.
“But we’re not training or preparing to finish last. We’re training and preparing to make finals.
“We’re kind of like Hawthorn (in 2024) . . . just have a crack, and I’m really excited with what’s going to happen.
“I think we can shock a few, which will be good.”
The 31-year-old triple Tiger premiership defender, who is entering his 10th season of AFL football, and on the cusp of 150 games (148), has thrived during the pre-season under the Club’s new High Performance Manager Ben Serpell.
“He’s been amazing,” Broad said.
“He came in good cop, bad cop, and he played bad cop and just set the standards. But I think it’s what the group needed.
“They spent the first month a little bit shocked and taken aback by this is the way we’re doing it type thing.
“But once the boys got into the routine of what’s required – a bit of a change to the way we’ve done things in the past – Benny’s true personality has come out.
“He’s an awesome man. You work hard and do what’s required, you can have a bit of fun then, too. So, he’s been great.”
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Broad detailed the key differences in this pre-season period under Serpell.
“Sprint’s probably the main one. We’re not doing any long-distance stuff. We’re moving a lot quicker and doing a lot of sprint metres per session,” he said.
“But we haven’t just gone bang, straight into it, we’ve trained our running technique. And we’re doing a lot of stuff pre-training . . .
“We’re probably spending around 20 minutes before we even start training doing a lot of these quirky things, some weird things – skipping ropes while running, running with weight plates above your head, changing direction with the weight plate and dropping it.
“There’s a lot of quirky things, but, especially at my age, it’s been awesome for the brain just to get some fresh stuff in.”
The Richmond return of highly-regarded assistant coach and football tactician Blake Caracella is another reason for optimism at Punt Road, according to Broad.
Caracella was a two-time Tiger premiership assistant coach in 2017 and 2019, during his previous three-year stint at the Club.
He’s a genius. He’s very quirky, very smart, sees the game in a lot of ways that many other people can’t. His influence has been awesome for ‘Ooze’ (senior coach Adem Yze) and the playing group,” Broad said.
