Richmond CEO Brendon Gale provided his views on a broad range of topics related to the Tigers’ overall performance this season in an extensive interview on SEN’s ‘Crunch Time’ program last Saturday. Here’s an edited transcript of what Gale had to say . . .
Tough time at Tigerland
“It’s been a tough year, and that’s what happens when you’re short on expectations . . . We would have expected to be better, based on last year, and we’re not. So that’s tough, but that’s okay, that’s footy. We’ll work our way through that and we’ll be better for it . . .”
Investing in youth
“We’ve introduced young players over the course of the year . . . Early, in the first phase of the season, we started to play a lot of young guys all at once, and probably lacked coherency at times. But we had to, because we’d lost three finals in-a-row and, if we kept doing the same thing, we’d get the same results. I think we’re starting to see we’ve got some good youth. We’ll obviously play them, and we look forward to seeing them over the next couple of months.”
Backing Hardwick to the hilt
“We think Damien Hardwick’s a strong coach (now) for our footy club, and we think he’ll be a strong coach into the future as well . . . He’ll get better and better. I believe he has all the attributes required to be a premiership coach . . . (although) that doesn’t guarantee anything. In terms of Damien’s ability to coach, he’s a guy that has a clear sense of what he wants to see on the football field. And I think he carries himself with a great purpose and a great confidence . . . We’ve got a shared vision of the future, and what that looks like, and we believe Damien’s a very important part of that. It’s a shared responsibility, and that means everyone has to pull their weight and do their bit.”
Hardwick’s half-step back comments
“I understand the potential for that message to be misconstrued . . . But the message is the right message. The observation is the right observation . . . We got to three finals series with the same group, largely, and we’ve been found wanting each time. We were confident we had some elite, young players, and we had to get them into the team . . . We had to get Corey Ellis and Connor Menadue more game time. We wanted to have a look at (Daniel) Rioli . . . we think he’s going to be a good player. We wanted to have a look at (Jason) Castagna early . . . We (also) had to see if (Shaun) Hampson could offer us something. For us to continue to evolve and get better, we’ve got to give our younger players an opportunity . . . We’ve played a lot of young guys together at the same time – a lot in the back half, too – and that’s why we’ve looked incoherent at times. But Damien’s comment was absolutely correct.”
Hardwick’s best-list comments
“I think he’s talking about the best list he’s had to work with in his time (coaching Richmond) . . . That doesn’t mean he has a premiership list right now in the making. That means, in terms of the composition of the list –age profile, talent and positional – it’s as well positioned and balanced as he’s had in his time. We’ve two players 30 (years of age) – (Ivan) Maric and (Troy) Chaplin. Our elite players are about to enter their prime, we’ve got a bunch of young guys we’ve seen over the course of this season and, hopefully, we’ll see a few more in the next few weeks as well. I think some of those guys are of elite talent. Are they physically and mentally ready to play football consistently at the level? Probably not. But we’ve got to get them into the team.”
Reviewing performance
“Performance is a very complex thing, and there are a lot of inter-relating factors . . . The opportunity now is to really get under the hood to try and understand why we’ve performed short of expectations . . . People just shouldn’t assume we’re sitting on our hands doing nothing, treading water. Football clubs are very sophisticated these days. They review every aspect of their performance every day. We’re going through a fairly intensive phase of that at the moment and trying to understand, firstly, what are the real drivers of performance, and to what extent are they contributing – good, bad or indifferently – to our performance itself . . .”
Winning is what drives us
“We worked hard to build a really solid platform for the Club, but those things are a given now . . . Right now, I can assure you, we really care about winning. Everyone is invested in winning, and we have a vision to win a premiership for our footy club. At the moment, the fact it’s not going to happen this year is a real disappointment for all of us.”
Boosting the playing talent stocks
“There are people much more capable and experienced than me in these areas (recruiting and list management) that are working their backsides off to take advantage of what opportunities arise to improve our list.”
