RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace says his young Tigers are about ready to pounce and fans should keep the faith.
The Tigers have won four of their last five matches and sit just half a game outside the eight, two points behind the free-falling Crows and one match behind the Kangaroos, but with a significantly slightly percentage.
The coach said the disappointment with the Tigers in recent years had been caused by a less than accurate assessment of where they were in their rebuilding process.
"I've thought that the whole time it's been others that have thought we've lost our way," Wallace said. "I just think that people don't understand how your list shapes up and how long things take.
"I've seen us being in a similar position to Carlton over the period of time. I know people have compared us to the Bulldogs and Hawthorn, who were down when we were down, but I thought that they had already started their processes and had young players at the club at that stage.
"I go back to Hawthorn going back four years ago – they had Hodgey (Luke Hodge) running around at 20 years of age, and (Sam) Mitchell running around at 21 years of age – they were 15th because those blokes were just too young at that stage to be able to impact games, but we didn't have that group of guys, so they were able to rebound a little bit quicker than us.
"The Bulldogs were a bit the same – they went down because they had so many of the Giansiracusas and Murphys and Hahns and all those in the side – the Gilbees – all in the side at the one time.
"They weren't able to win games with them, but rebounded quicker because they were a bit more mature.
"We were in a different position – we were similar to Carlton who had a lot of top-end in age players and had to virtually start from ground level zero with your young players, and it takes you four or five years for them to start to come in and develop, and that's just the way it is.
"Our boys were 17 when we gave them the opportunity to come in to the process. Now some of them are 20 and starting to impact."
