Richmond great Matthew Richardson believes the current Tiger playing group’s pre-season series campaign should hold them in good stead for the upcoming premiership season.

The Tigers, who will face the Western Bulldogs in their final pre-season hit-out, at Visy Park this Saturday afternoon, comfortably defeated Melbourne, before scoring last-gasp wins against Essendon (at Wangaratta) and Hawthorn (at Launceston) in successive weeks.

“Why I liked it was, they’ve won two close ones in-a-row now and all summer all we’ve heard about Richmond is, yeah, they had an improved season (in 2012), they won 10 games, but they lost too many close games.  How are they going to fix this for next season?” Richardson said on this week’s episode of the Club’s official podcast, “Talking Tigers”.

“So, two close wins in-a-row, it just gives the boys, I reckon, a little bit of self-belief that they can close games out.

“I don’t care that it’s the NAB Cup – you’ve still got to win games.

“At the end, Hawthorn wanted to win just as much as the Tigers did, so it was good to close it out.

“I reckon just a little mental hurdle may have been crossed in the last few weeks for the boys.”