How the Tigers started winning run

By Jake Niall
Updated August 24 2014 - 12:13pm, first published 10:59am
Illustration: Mick Connolly.
Illustration: Mick Connolly.

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" – Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch in the 1976 classic, Network.

Richmond supporters have been, at different stages, mad as hell and mad as hatters. They've suffered indignities that no other tribe, not even martyred Saints or downtrodden Dogs, can match.

Under Damien Hardwick, the Tigers made steady progress by remaining measured. The people in charge, such as Hardwick, chief executive Brendon Gale and the football department brass, were resolute in their rationality. Neither type of "mad" – insanity or anger – has been evident at Punt Road for some time.

The Gale-Hardwick regime has been marked by steady, rather than spectacular, progress. The off-field game plan since 2009 was logical: clean out the dead wood and the oldies. Go to the draft. Fill a few holes with some cheap cast-offs or bargain recruits, Sydney-style (though not Sydney-quality). Stick with Hardwick, beef up a malnourished football department, tap some Sydney fund managers and rich supporters for money before hitting up the masses. Wipe off the debt.

Not everything has been perfect – the club overdosed on second-rate recycled "talent" – but, in corporate terms, the growth graph was enough to satisfy the shareholders. If Richmond was a stock, it would have given them nice returns since 2010.

This rationality is fine, and has served the club well. Geelong has a similarly composed temperament. When Mark Thompson and Gary Ablett left, the Cats – aside from some initial angst about Bomber's defection – quietly replaced them en route to the 2011 flag.

But there comes a time in a club's development, when there must be more than rational acceptance, when the playing group decides it is fed up with losing, that it can't accept this crap any more, that excuses won't wash. This moment came for Geelong in 2007, after five rounds, when the players themselves took responsibility for their gross under-achievement, bared some inconvenient truths and began demanding more of each other – and winning.

They haven't stopped.

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