Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has labelled his team "very mediocre" after its 50-point loss against Essendon in the Dreamtime match at the MCG on Saturday night.

Hardwick was furious after the game, delivering a stinging post-game address to his players.

"When you dish up that sort of performance, it's to be expected," Hardwick said when he calmly faced the media half-an-hour after addressing the players.

"You get belted in contested ball, you get belted in tackles, you're a fair chance to expect a spray at the end of the game.

"Every now and then you give one, mate. Like I said, the performance validated it."

"You give up 125 uncontested marks, there is a chance that at some stage you'd expect to man up.

"And then to get belted in contested ball through the middle of the ground by I think minus-25, you're never going to win a footy game.

"I thought they out-hunted us around packs, around scrimmages. They had two or three (players) to our one on a number of occasions, and they managed to get the ball out.

"It probably is work-rate. Offensively, Essendon uses the ball very well, don't get me wrong. But I thought our accountability was poor.

"We couldn't manufacture the even numbers across the field, which is really disappointing.

"We're just really disappointed in the performance that we put out there tonight. We're a very mediocre football side at the moment. Very mediocre."

Hardwick admitted he was enduring his "most challenging period" since taking over as Richmond's senior coach for the 2010 season.

"There are mistakes we're making that are really poor. From coughing up the ball, to kicking the ball away, handballing the ball away. Just mistakes we shouldn't be making,” he said.

"Unfortunately, at the moment, it's a reflection on me and my coaching staff. We have to get that better and the players have to accept some responsibility also. 

"But we're all in it together. We just have to make sure we work our backsides off."

Despite slumping to 3-7, Hardwick isn’t about to dump half the senior team and start a rebuilding process.

"We're still trying to win as many games as we can," he said. "That's our aim as a footy club, and we'll continue to do that.

"We've got some players that we think can add some value going forward, so we'll continue to play those guys and make sure we get them better.

"At the end of the day, we owe it to our footy club to put the best side out there possible and get some wins on the board.

"We need to start winning some games, not so much from a making finals point of view, but just actually getting some respectability back in our footy club."