ALTHOUGH his team suffered a 13-point loss to North Melbourne in its final match of the season, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has no doubt that the Tigers are heading in the right direction.

Richmond finished 12th on the ladder, having ended its 2011 campaign with two and a half more wins than it recorded in 2010.

"There's no doubt we've improved," Hardwick said.

"You've only got to look at the youth of our spine - Vickery, Riewoldt, and Rance and Post down back - they're all 22 years of age or under, so that's exciting for our footy club.

"They get another pre-season into them, and a guy like Dylan Grimes comes back into the equation as well.

"Then we've got Ben Griffiths, who we think is going to be a good player also.

"From last year, we've become younger, more inexperienced, but we've won more ball games.

"We spoke about the difference in feeling from 12 months ago.

"We used to go into games hoping to win; now we believe we can win, which is a step forward for the group.

"Granted, we're still a fair way off that top four to five bracket. The majority of sides are.

"But I think the great think about our group is they go into any game confident the can win, or at least compete, against the better sides."

The Tigers dominated much of their game against the Kangaroos, but couldn't get over the line despite winning the inside-50 count 61 to 43.

"Our inefficiency of ball-use going inside-50 [was the problem]," Hardwick said.

"They counter-attacked and kept getting us over the back, so there's probably a few things we've got to work on.

"Unfortunately, we couldn't quite get the chocolates when we had a lot more of the ball in our forward half.

"When you lose what we can 'critical contests' in the middle of the ground, and then you get caught out trying to win the ball back, I think we've just got to get better in that area."

Richmond played into North Melbourne's hands by continually bombing the ball into their forward line, rather than kicking to the advantage of Riewoldt and Vickery.

"The majority of the game was played up in our half, so the amount of numbers we had in our forward half - [North ruckman Todd] Goldstein was sitting back behind the ball all day - meant it was really hard to negate that half the time," Hardwick said.

"We were always a couple short because their wings were dropping back also. It's something that as a young side we've got to get a little bit better at finding avenues to goal when they've got numbers back.

"That's part of the development curve of a young side."

With the players to start their holidays in the coming week, the club's focus now turns to strengthening its list.

And the Tigers are aiming to play a major role in trade week, with ruckmen and key defenders at the top of their shopping list.

"I think most sides will be active this year," Hardwick said. "We know that the draft pool is relatively shallow, so there'll be a bit of movement this year I'd say."