2017 Grand Final. Adelaide vs ..........Richmond (yes really)

Not a Tigers sympathiser, but all credit to Richmond for their flag. A flag hard earned without hand-outs from the AFL, unlike those afforded to those northern COLA rorting pri cks or the excessive draft concessions given to the “fake” franchises.

The past 2 seasons have offered hope to the other battling Melbourne based clubs, including Essendon.

There’s a lot Essendon could learn from the pressure and intensity the Tigers played with.

Dean Wallis comes to mind.

Bulldogs 2016
Tigers 2017
Make Victorian clubs great again!

Essendon 2018

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Full credit to B Gale for answering the same questions dozens of times since yesterday afternoon without losing his mind.

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Agreed, but I think a lesson we can learn is about finding the right players to complement your game style.

If we’re serious about playing ‘speed kills’ football, we really need to ensure that our less skilled players are, at a minimum, capable of hard two way running

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This might sound stupid, but I reckon the clash strip helped the tiges a bit with the umps. Some of those jumper tugs stood out like Dog balls which if they weren’t wearing high vis may have gone unnoticed.

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I was just amazed the AFL didn’t leave the umps in yellow too.

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They were in red+white+blue in 2016.

#stillholdinggrudge

The J Riewoldt version of Mr Brightside is now available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play.

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The one where he was mouthing the words to the lead singer’s vocals there?

Spot on.

this year in particular we seemed to be stuck between trying to resuscitate Jimmy’s sides (which worked and worked well in their time) and building a new one. Neither here nor there.

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That’s the one.

It’s incredibly short sighted to say “apart from 4 stars” of words to the effect. Cotchin, Martin, rance and reiwoldt is a excellent core start yes, but the rest of that team is still very good. I think they have a few plodders, or just average guys - ie mcintosh, grimes, butler, costagna etc, but they all play their role and the thing that strikes me with tigers is all of them are 100% committed and try their guts out. I don’t think we put in nearly enough effort sometimes. Them guys I mentioned above would be how the rest of the game views blokes like hartley, green, Myers, colyer etc.

But the rest of that Richmond team is decent. Rioli. Houli. Caddy. Prestia. Vlaustin. Nankervis. Them guys can also play.

I do agree to a extent with what grant Thomas said but their is still talent in that side and a lot of it. But they all bought into a plan, worked hard and look at them now. We could learn a thing or two off them

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That’s actually quite an interesting theory. Can’t prove 100% but when you work in results based fields or science, things such as this can potentially be proven. Bill Shankly famously wanted Liverpool to play in all red as it was seen as more intimidating.

There were a few frees that were pretty bad [cough] Rance [cough] but it didn’t so much as effect the outcome.

The game really made me wonder if our inconsistencies that align with Adelaide’s come from having similar gameplans or separate issues. Adelaide were killed on the inside and their ball use suffered from pressure. Our 22 compared to Richmond’s is arguably on par or if not better, with Adelaide’s being easily better than both teams on paper.

Adelaide executed the gameplan to perfection against Geelong and reaped the rewards, but was easily dismantled by Richmond’s pressure and inside ball winners. It seems difficult to stem the bleeding in high intensity games ala finals when not everything is going your way with a gameplan that requires precision or else fails.

Richmond are a fantastic example of a good gameplan being executed by a mediocre team, on paper they are one of the worst premiership teams I can remember but they still give me a feeling they could take it to any of the premiership teams in the last 20 years.

So if the Swans were 65 points better than us …
The Cats were 69 points better than the Swans …
The Crows were 61 points better than the Cats …
The Tigers were 48 points better than the Crows …
Then if we had played in the Grand Final the Tigers would have beaten us by 233 points.

Q.E.D.

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I had the same thoughts about the hi-vis tigers strip.

I’ve been wondering for many years whether the bad deal we get from the umpires is partly due to our black jumper not making enough impact on their retina in the split second decisions.

I’m still in shock to know I have seen a Richmond premiership. For most of my life (34 years) they have been the point of ridicule. As wob said, their discipline and complete buy-in to a game plan and fight for the cause is something we, and a host of other clubs, can learn off. I look at that side and ours and man for man we are not that far short in terms of pure footballing ability. But this year they have brought supreme effort for all but a handful of games. We have been so inconsistent and just not knowing which Essendon will turn up from week to week, even quarter to quarter. We lack a bit of hardness in midfield and their full ground pressure is far superior to ours. If they can go from 13th to 1st in 12 months then we can make a similar step. I hope our boys were watching…