Richo spared for Geraldton
Samantha Lane
afl.com.au
7:31:45 PM Wed 26 February, 2003
Richmond will field a greatly undermanned team in its practice match against Fremantle in Geraldton, Western Australia, this Saturday, opting to spare gun forward Matthew Richardson, midfielder Joel Bowden and possibly bigman Brad Ottens the lengthy travel.
It looks like it will almost be an under-23 squad, and thats not by design, but by virtue of the fact that Matthew Richardson struggles to make the trip because of the (problem with your) lower back (when) sitting on the plane, Tigers football manager Greg Hutchison told afl.com.au.
We just get a bit concerned with our big blokes Greg Stafford and Richo, Brad Ottens and Ray Hall and all of those guys that are fairly tall sitting in a plane for four-and-a-half hours and then in a bus from the airport and then travelling again the next day, I dont think its the ideal preparation for them.
Hutchison said captain Wayne Campbell and Justin Blumfield - who is suffering from osteitis pubis - would not travel, but that they may have played had the match been scheduled in Melbourne.
Maybe if we had played in Melbourne they might have played a quarter, but theres not really much point taking them there.
The Tigers were scheduled the match officially a part of the Wizard Regional Challenge - after they were eliminated from the pre-season competition in the first-round match against Melbourne.
It does impact on the preparation of the team for round one. However we were aware, and we knew that if we got beaten in the first round (of the Wizard Home Loans Cup) that we were likely to end up anywhere because thats part of this regional challenge series theyve got going.
You put up with it, and you do what you have to do it the home-and-away season, but its a risk maybe that we dont need to take with those guys at the moment.
The ideal situation is that you play a nice comfortable practice match on the MCG, you play against a Victorian team and you play nice 25-minute quarters. But the reality is it doesnt happen anymore. Its part of the competition, and we just have to get used to it and deal with it the best way we can.
The Tigers will attempt to lessen the travel burden by staggering their journey over three days.
The 28-man squad will fly at midday on Friday, have a training session at Perths Subiaco Oval and stay overnight. The team will arrive in Geraldton at 1pm on Saturday before the 3:30pm match, and will return to Perth to spend another evening before returning to Melbourne late on Sunday afternoon.
It sounds a lot, but the thing is its only the one flight on the day so its a little bit like if we jumped on a plane and flew to Sydney on the day of the game, its just that weve got a big trip on the day before, Hutchison said.
Its disappointing from a preparation point of view of not being able to take all our players, but on the positive side it gives us a really good opportunity to put the Richmond Football Club out there so people can see us and to take some players away theyll really have a good opportunity of bonding together.
I shoud be able to go.
