Despite the Tigers’ win-loss record heading into the back-end of the 2014 season, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick insists games will not simply be gifted to young players; instead they must earn their senior opportunity.

Hardwick acknowledged the importance of providing developing players with valuable AFL experience, but stressed a large contingent of the Club’s young talent is already playing senior football.

“There are some guys that are slowly putting their hands up at VFL level that we’d like to see at some stage, but they’ve got to play some better footy to earn their jumper,” Hardwick said on Thursday.

“We’re really strong on that.  We’ve had our period of giving games out, but we’re not at that stage now. The majority of our young talent is in the side, they’ve just got to play to a higher standard.”

Liam McBean is one emerging Tiger who is working hard at VFL level, but Hardwick says the young key forward, and others like him, must improve before being considered for senior selection.

“He’s a player with some talent, there’s no doubt about that…we’d be really happy if he put his hand up, but he’s got some areas that he needs to address in his game,” he said.

With a lot of football still to play this season, Hardwick explained to the media that list management decisions would be kept inside the Club, but noted it was an ongoing focus.

“We know where we’re going with that, and those are the sort of conversations that we keep in-house, from our point of view, but that’s something most footy clubs will do,” he said.

“They’ve got one eye on the future, and one eye on the now, so we’re no different to that.”

Hardwick also has his eye on Saturday’s clash against St Kilda at Etihad Stadium, and is confident the Tigers can get a result given their improvement in recent weeks.

"We’ve got some areas that we want to make sure we exploit against the opposition. They’ve got some strengths also, so we’ve got to make sure we negate those,” he said.

“We’ve been playing some reasonable football over the last couple of weeks, we just haven’t got the points we’ve been after.

“It’s really important we start well and continue to get our best football up and going this week.”