BROWNLOW medallist Ben Cousins is a chance to return for Richmond next week but not even that news could brighten coach Damien Hardwick’s mood, who was again in despair after watching another second-half mauling.

For the second consecutive week Hardwick’s Tigers were beaten badly in the latter stages of the game after showing fighting spirit and the ability to stay in the contest in the first half.

But the new coach reminded fans that his team was extremely young and playing against far more seasoned opponents.
 
“It was very similar (to round one),” Hardwick said. “I thought our intensity, our competitiveness, was pretty good for the first half, maybe two-and-half quarters and then young legs fell away.

“The Bulldogs have been playing with each other for six or seven years and probably just run over the top of us from that point of view.

“But we’re disappointed with that last quarter again….probably very similar to last week. We’ve just got to get that better and over the course of time hopefully that will improve.”

But improving is going to be tough, especially with some torrid games on the horizon that takes them to Sydney, Subiaco, Geelong and Adelaide in the next five weeks.

“We’ve just to get experience. We’ve got a young list, young side, we’ve just got to get better,” Hardwick said.

Once again skill errors returned to haunt the Tigers, which gave the Bulldogs easy possession and scoring opportunities.

“We did give the ball back too which probably didn’t help,” Hardwick said.

“I think in the last quarter they kicked 4.5 (it was 3.7) or something from our direct turnovers straight out of our defensive 50 which didn’t help our cause.

“They had something like 20 inside 50s for the quarter so from that point of view it really was a disappointing finish for us.”

But Hardwick was buoyed by the performances of Trent Cotchin, Dustin Martin, Brett Deledio and Will Thursfield - who was given the daunting task of taming Barry Hall.

“[Cotchin] was terrific. I thought Dustin Martin was good too, worked his way into the game. There were some pleasing signs,” he said.

“We’re really disappointed with the loss, don’t get me wrong. But the positives are: [Ben] Nason looks like he can play this game, Martin, I thought Deledio was good on [Adam] Cooney - he did a good tagging job, and Cotchin was terrific.

“We’ve just got to wait for those guys to get more mature and get more games into them and just keep playing some kids and learn how to play together.”