Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has not wavered in his belief the Tigers are on the right path, despite the team’s slow start to the 2014 season, which sees them with two wins and five losses after seven rounds.
In an interview on Fox Footy’s “On The Couch” last Monday night, Hardwick expressed total faith in the direction Richmond is taking.
“We know where we’re at and, more importantly, we know where we want to go to,” Hardwick said.
“We’re not playing anywhere near well enough at the moment. We’ve been really disappointed with our form over the course of the first seven rounds.
“I think the good thing about our footy club is there was always going to be a hiccup at some stage, and you find out a lot about yourself, a lot about your footy club, and a lot about your players.
“We feel that we’re over the worst of it, and we’re on an upward trend.
“Even against Hawthorn (Round 6), we had some relatively good signs about how we played. The Geelong game (Round 7), again, we were reasonably competitive.
“We’ve just got to make sure that we take stock, and we hit the next block of four games up and running . . .
“It’s a really even season. I think 12 wins probably gets you in.
“We’re not where we want to be, but we’re capable of winning the 10 games to get us there.
“We’ve just got to play more consistent footy.
“I think we’ve played four of the top five sides at the moment. We should have been more competitive against a couple of those sides, and we’re disappointed with that.
“But we certainly think we’ve got the game to take it up to the other sides.”
Hardwick also used Collingwood as an example of where Richmond needed to get to, in terms of developing strong midfield depth, which would drive top-class performance on a consistent basis.
“They’ve got a regular five contributors of 25-plus (disposals) – Ball, Swan, Pendlebury, Sidebottom, Beams. We’ve got Cotchin, Deledio. Martin is getting there, Ellis is getting there, Conca’s getting there, Vlastuin’s getting there,” he said.
“So, we’ve got a relatively young, inexperienced group, who we think are going to be elite players, waiting to get to that consistent stage.”
