In a recent interview with ‘Fox Footy’, brilliant Richmond key defender Alex Rance spoke about his 2017 form, the team’s bold showing, a key influence on his AFL career, and what lies ahead at the business end of the season for the Tigers. Here’s what he had to say . . .
Review of his Round 21 duel with Geelong’s Harry Taylor
“At the end of the day you can say, take lead lane, take the back space, take the front space, engage at different times, but it comes down to contests. I was poor . . . and didn’t win those contests. So I know for next time I’ve just got to bring a better effort in that contest.”
Positive mindset change
“My idea of intercepting and always wanting to be involved in the play, used to be, like, I need to do this because, if I don’t, we’ll lose the contest. Now I’m doing it because we can get an advantage.”
Spreading the defensive load
“I haven’t felt I’ve had the year that I had last year. I thought last year was a far better year for me, personally. But, in terms of a whole team, I feel like we’ve spread the load a lot easier. David Astbury and Dylan Grimes, especially, have really stood up this year and spread the load. I feel that I’ve had a very consistent year, but when it comes to the whole team success, it’s good to be able to take a back seat some times and allow ‘Grimesy’ and Dave and Nick Vlastuin, Brandon Ellis, Bachar Houli – blokes like that – to really explore their own games, and what that looks like at the highest level.”
Learning large from Leppitsch
“’Leppa’ (assistant coach Justin Leppitsch) is one of the best tactical coaches I’ve ever come across. It’s a part of my career that I really cherish. I think his tutelage is what’s made me the player that I am today . . . To be able to emulate him in the way he played, and then pick his brain, was invaluable for me.”
Cotchin’s impressive captaincy growth
“His leadership this year has been the best I’ve ever seen it. He’s comfortable with it, he’s himself, he’s playing the brand that he wants to play, and he’s dragging others along with him. There were a lot of questions over whether he was going to be the captain and what the leadership group was going to look like, but in my mind it was always him. He was always going to be our leader. He’s the best of us.”
Richmond’s premiership aspirations
“Why not us? You have to, in some part of your mind, believe that you can. You don’t want to be too carried away with, ‘Yeah, we’re going to win this easy’, or ‘We’re no chance to win this’. We know that our best is good enough and we’re capable. It’s just a matter of maintaining that connection and resisting the pressure that the other clubs are going to put on us at certain times . . . Resisting that pressure, maintaining the fact that we know that we’re good enough, and then executing.”
