I like your enthusiasm and bright outlook Cups. To counter your claims I put it to you that:
1. We have definitely been outcoached multiple times these past few months. If you don't select the correct cattle and play them in the correct position you are pushing boulders up a hill.
2. We have dismantled our own system. Choking up leads like a cat hawking up a hairball. Fumbling, bumbling, brain fades and explosions. Anti-Richmond.
3. A couple of close games going the other way is weasel speak for mental weakness. We didn't lose those games in some heroic fashion: Brave, courageous, compelling. We whimpered our way out of winning. We lost. Our opposition didn't win. The Norf game was the epitome of failure.
The RFC does write this story.*
(* Provided Bulldogs and StKilda lose)
I would love to see a win from outside the 4. However, I don't see everything lining up for that accomplishment. I see a Richmond that has consistently failed to address glaring deficiencies despite claims of "we will learn" and "we will better for it". In order to execute change you actually need to plan for and implement it. We haven't.
Some good points you raise. I'll counter with the following:
1. It's true that the coach has made selection mistakes throughout the season. But it's acceptable because you'll always have hits and misses when you are trying new things, and we needed to try new things.
Still, this team has not been outplayed in 2-3 months, and by that I mean, nobody has made us look like the definitive 2nd best team on a football field in months. That's a promising sign compared to 12 months ago.
2. The outcome of a couple of games isn't evidence of a problem with the process or system. Perform an action a thousand times and you'll end up with an expected ratio. That's the system. The last few minutes of a game, and only from a couple of recent losses, are just the most recent coin tosses from a larger system. The losses should therefore not be viewed as reflective of the overall system, and shouldn't guide our expectations for the next handful of outcomes.
3. We would need a larger sample size to attribute these losses to mental weakness. When we zoom out to include a larger sample size of this team's performance in high-pressure games, there's 3 premierships of evidence to the contrary in recent history.
I don't see a flawless team. But I do see a unique Richmond that looks to have addressed key weaknesses from earlier in the season. It's a team that has improved on where they were 12 months ago, 6 months ago, and 3 months ago.
So, this is an ever-changing team that's looking better defensively, with Martin and Lynch soon to add to an already dangerous and unpredictable team with the ball, and fresh young players stepping up to play various roles that the team needed. Subjectively, I also like the hunger and intensity in general play.
If we win this week, we'd back ourselves to enter the finals off 4 straight wins, with a refreshed best 22, and 3-4 months of never once being definitively beaten on our day.
Yeah, you always need a bit of luck to win premierships... but what if we're luckier in September than we were in July?
