Lack of confidence is making us look worse than we are...

[67 special]

All the media commentary suggests our list is the worst in the AFL and the perception is that if the players in the seniors aren't up to it, the players not even in the team must be even further from the mark..so the perception is that the whole list is pretty much rubbish......But how much of the crap football we have seen so far is due to a lack of confidence and how much does that lack of confidence feed on itself? PLayers with confidence in teams that are going well will make 100 metre leads to take a mark...If you lack confidence maybe its too easy to take the soft option and not run off your opponent. That leads to stagnant players up the field forcing the player with the ball to chip sideways and backwards which leads to turnovers etc...surely confidence is a huge factor in our current malaise...and maybe just as quickly as you lose it...you can get it back again....i know thats probably being overly simplistic and optimistic...but you gotta have some hope!

 

[Massai]

Confidence is CRUCIAL to winning. That said you can always get over confident and as the Cats found out in last years Grand Final being over confident cost them the flag.

Richmond are in the opposite camp, there is no confidence from the Coaching Staff down thru the players.

There have been one or two rare glimpses of when the team plays hard running attacking football then they make an impact on the game. Problem is the opposing team simply man up and apply physical pressure, flood the forward line etc and suddenly the bad habits of handballing all over the place, kicking its backwards or sideways in 15 metre chip's etc come in and then a player makes a clanger, the turnover is then used by the opposition well and a goal results. Result whatever confidence left in these players goes down even further.

The issue of confidence can be addressed during the year, the problem as I see it is that the Coaching Staff, the whole lot of them are "dead men walking" and they are not thinking about anything other than trying to get thru this season with a couple of win's under their belts before they have to job hunt for another role at another club (if another club would have them). If the coaching staff aren't focusing properly on what needs to be done confidence wise with the Clubs Sports Psychologist, then the players are going to continue with the only way they know how for the present, which means we're going to lose more games than we win and hopefully we'll win a couple of games more this season.

The good news is that a lot of this can be changed fairly quickly as long as Richmond get the right people with the right skills and knowledge in place to get the players back up and firing.

Roll on 2010.

 

[67 special]

Is it just the coaching staff though? Granted they're obviously important and our coaches will all be looking over their shoulders now.....but I dunno... you look at Essendon...surely their list can't be that much better than ours ......they're running hard and taking chances and its coming off...so the next time they do it again...just seems to feed on itself...Our blokes just seem to have dropped their heads after the first shocker against Carlton and haven't poked their head out of the shell since....Maybe one inspirational effort might be all it takes to get things happening again.....but alex Rance's effort didn't seem to fire them up last week....whats it going to take?

 

[Streak]

All the media commentary suggests our list is the worst in the AFL

The majority of the media, going by the writers in The West and the Sunday Times (WA) had us to make the 8 before the season.