FUMING Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has issued a stern ultimatum to his players: lift your game or lose your place on the Tigers' list.

After his side went down to Carlton by four points at the MCG on Saturday night - the Tigers' third successive defeat by less than a goal, and their sixth by no more than two goals - Hardwick declared his side simply wasn't good enough to be a finals contender this season.

Although their finals hopes are all but extinguished, he ruled out putting players out to pasture early for operations, saying he was determined to finish the season strongly.

Hardwick put his players on notice in no uncertain terms.

"We're starting to get some guys back, so the pressure's going to start to come," Hardwick said post-match. "Either they start playing for the jumper the way we want them to play or they don't play and they'll quickly find themselves out the door."

Hardwick described the loss to the Blues as "a really bad result", which he largely blamed on basic skills errors that gifted easy goals to the Blues at crucial stages.

"When you lose three games by under a kick, there's some things going wrong that we've got to fix," he said.

"Obviously we're not good enough at this stage. It starts with me from a coaching perspective, all the way down. We've just got to get better in a hell of a lot of areas. I could reel off 10 to you.

"We've lost too many games under two goals. Good sides, first of all, don't get themselves into that position, and good sides win those games. And we're just not there.

"We've got five games to try and salvage something for our supporters, our teammates, our coaching staff. We're not going to put anyone out for ops or anything like that - we're going to go all guns blazing for the remaining five games."

Hardwick also had some encouraging words for Steven Morris, who gave away the free kick from which Brock McLean scored the winning goal.

"He fights and he probably embodies the way we want to play the game," he said. "This guy beside me (Trent Cotchin), Stevie Morris - we've just got to find more of those players who are prepared to do that on a more consistent basis because there were times when we had to go head-first into a contest [but] we just weren't all prepared to do so."

Cotchin said the past three losses had hurt, particularly as they had been the result of their own mistakes rather than the opposition's efforts. "No doubt it hurts, but it's only going to make us stronger and want it even more in the future," Cotchin said.

Cotchin said he and his teammates needed to challenge each other more at training.

"Players need to start getting tougher on each other and competing a little bit more at training, and over time we're going to get better at that and those critical contests will be won more often than not," he said.