Richmond CEO Brendon Gale has given an insight into the mood at Tigerland in the aftermath of last Sunday’s elimination final loss to North Melbourne.
“It’s been a tough couple of days, it’s fair to say, Gale told SEN.
“We’re all invested in the Club and what we’re trying to achieve, so when it comes to an end like that it’s very disappointing . . . We expected more.
“Upon reflection, I think it’s been a strong year . . . We’ve set a new high-water mark for the Club by virtue of some of our performances during the year.
“But you’re only remembered for your last two hours, and we were well short . . .
“We’d prepared well . . . We couldn’t get ourselves quite in the top four, but we weren’t far away.
“Our best had been very, very good, and I felt we were well equipped to take North, a team that had troubled us. And, it certainly looked like that would be the case.
“We settled into the game well, but just before half-time I noticed our contested-ball numbers were flagging and our tackle count was flagging.
VIDEO: Fans pay tribute to Chris Newman
“That goes to intensity, it goes to attitude, and that got worse in the third quarter . . .”
Gale acknowledged that the high-profile nature of Richmond meant the team inevitably was going to be heavily scrutinised following a third consecutive elimination final defeat.
“It’s open season, we know that,” he said.
“We’re a club that attracts a lot of interest. If we win we’re the story, if we lose we’re the story, and we’re getting all sorts of advice at the moment what we should do.
“Everyone has their views and everyone’s conducted post-mortems . . .
“At the end of the day, we lost the contested-ball count.
“We base our game around that ability to win the ball, control and stretch defences, and make teams defend.
“We’ve proven time and time again that we’re pretty good. We’re pretty good against top eight sides, in particular.
READ: Dylan Grimes re-signs at Tigerland for an extra three years
“But, to their credit, I think North Melbourne were better than us on the day . . .
“It’s (contested ball) an area where we were exposed. And, we’ve got to get better. Damien’s not going to accept it.”
Gale declared that the Tigers would not have a knee-jerk response to their disappointing 2015 finals exit.
“We’ll sit back and look at this rationally,” he said.
“We’ve got some real attributes to our team, but we’ve got some areas we need to improve.
“We identified this time last year that we’d be more active post season ’15, and we will be.
“But, having said that, we believe this list, the existing list, has considerable improvement as well.
“We played a side on Sunday that’s also much, much older than us . . . In the next few years, we’re going to be moving into an age profile that makes it more likely to be winning finals and becoming a serious contender.
“So, we need to look at talent to bring in, but I think there’s considerable improvement in our list as we have it.”
