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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
Greetings all! To twist a commonly used phrase on radio, I’m a long time reader first time poster on PRE. Whilst none of you know me I am fairly familiar with a lot of the members on here as I’ve appreciated reading all your views and knowledge over the last few years. Please excuse the length of this first post, I certainly won’t be bombarding you all with long posts, just a lot to get off my chest in my first post LOL.
It would be fitting in my first post to put out a big thank you to Rosy for all her work on this site. I have become addicted to this site over the years and come to rely on it to quench my insatiable thirst for all things yellow and black. I think the work she puts into this site is amazing and I am very appreciative for its continuing existence. In my opinion the AFL site and the RFC official site (some would say same thing lol) bomb abysmally. As far as I am concerned this is the official RFC site.
Next up I would like to put a big thank you out there for all the hardcore members of this site and their posts. I love reading CC Tiger’s pre-season training posts as well as Phantom, Evo and company’s never ending knowledge on young talent etc. I could ream off a whole list of names that I have come to appreciate reading on here, but would rather just like to throw out a blanket thank you for all your time and effort as you are all what make this site so addictive and interesting. There are some members on here that I don’t agree with in general but still find their posts interesting as I still find they have some thought provoking points, which is of course what these forums are all about.
I’ve notice Rosy extend the invitation for guests to sign up frequently so decided it was about time I actually joined in the fun as I’ve often read threads and wanted to say something but not been able to.
I look forward to chatting with you all over the off-season/pre-season while we are all suffering footy withdrawal. I thought as a first post I might share some of my general views on RFC and this site.
I must admit I do regularly see some things on this site that I don’t understand, for instance people who talk about cutting up their memberships because of list management (or lack thereof) etc. Sure, I understand people get frustrated and disappointed in the club if they feel things are not being done properly. Especially as we have had such a long period of non-success and those same people may be of the view that is never going to change soon. However, as far as I am concerned, yellow and black is in the blood. It’s not just a campaign slogan you should bleed yellow and black. Like a son or daughter making a bad relationship decision, you don’t turn your back on them or stop loving them simply because they might make a decision you don’t approve of or frustrate you. You’re always there in the background supporting them when needed. I have no problem taking the hard-line that anyone happy to threaten to cut up their memberships we don’t want anyway, but if you’re going to cut up your membership and not support the club financially, don’t waste true supporters time hanging around like a bad smell whining about it. Talk about wanting it both ways!
Another thing that makes me shake my head is all these people every year at trade time who talk about trading Richo, Johnson, Brown etc. You cannot tear away at the soul of a club, especially one that has a questionable culture to begin with, by axing heavily embedded players. It is terribly simplistic to say, “We are re-building, we could do with two extra picks in the top 20, let’s trade Richo”. Footy clubs, like life, is not black and white. There is more to your list than just form and worth of a player. A lot of people on here condemn our captain, yet the only points I have ever seen people make badly about him are form related (which is even debatable). The facts are he provides a high level of leadership, and is our only credible captain with premiership experience. His professionalism, discipline and work ethic are possibly second to none at the club and these factors are crucial to have around the locker room when you’re raising a young list. The coaches have a obligation to sponsors, members, the football public etc to give the club some chance of winning games, take out game winners like Richo, Brown and company, and the leadership of Johnson and Bowden etc and we would be loosing far more than we currently are now.
It’s not a case of being long sighted, and saying short term pain for long term gain. That’s just a cliché people like to tout without actually thinking analytically. The reality of the evolution of clubs is that you cannot start from scratch when building a list, due to contractual obligations and the need to have an attractive brand to potential sponsors and members. The better clubs balance their “Top End” (experienced players) with their “Bottom End” (Inexperienced Players). Geelong, West Coast, Kangeroos, Essendon have all be relatively good at this and prove it works and most importantly prove if you can balance both ends of your list you will consistently play finals. All these people who have a love affair with Hawthorn over look one thing when saying we should be like them as far as getting rid of inexperienced players, they actually just got rid of damaged goods. Holland, Hay, Thompson were all not performing for them or the club lost faith with them. Richo, Brown, Johnson or Bowden are hardly in this category.
Loyalty is also an issue, we all know there is no loyalty in football now, but there is still a sense of brotherhood. I’ve seen people on here suggest trading Raines or Foley when they had their first good seasons as they have “currency”. Great idea! Let’s send out a message to our NO:2 pick in the draft this year that no matter how hard he trains for us, and how well he plays, we could easily trade him as he has currency. Watch what that does to our contract negotiations for players we want to keep! People are inspired by reward for effort and recognition, it’s why this subtly “unofficial” promotion policy at Coburg is working so well at the moment for Coburg. Since the promotion of quite a few Coburg players now, the burgers have been performing much better as the kids are inspired by the chance they will be rewarded for effort and promoted to a rookie spot. Loyalty may be dead, but you can promote an effective illusion of it.
Our name is already mud for club loyalty since the way we dealt with Wayne Campbell, Matthew Knights, Duncan Kellaway and Darren *smile* to name only a recent few, let’s work at rebuilding it rather than making it worse. Let’s have clubs and coaches happy to come to us because of how we treat them, rather than see us as a basket case. I’m all for ruthless aggression and Graham Richmond’s methods, but when we were good at it we had controlled/calculative aggression, not aggression for the sake of it. There is a bond off the field within clubs that if you sever no amount of sexy recruiting/drafting/trading will fix. Yes, let’s make hard decisions about peripheral players. But don’t forget about the soul of the club in the process. It’s the only thing that’s kept the Kangeroos going for so long, so it’s a pretty potent force. We certainly would have more bite in our snarl if we recaptured the essence of Punt Road.
It would be fitting in my first post to put out a big thank you to Rosy for all her work on this site. I have become addicted to this site over the years and come to rely on it to quench my insatiable thirst for all things yellow and black. I think the work she puts into this site is amazing and I am very appreciative for its continuing existence. In my opinion the AFL site and the RFC official site (some would say same thing lol) bomb abysmally. As far as I am concerned this is the official RFC site.
Next up I would like to put a big thank you out there for all the hardcore members of this site and their posts. I love reading CC Tiger’s pre-season training posts as well as Phantom, Evo and company’s never ending knowledge on young talent etc. I could ream off a whole list of names that I have come to appreciate reading on here, but would rather just like to throw out a blanket thank you for all your time and effort as you are all what make this site so addictive and interesting. There are some members on here that I don’t agree with in general but still find their posts interesting as I still find they have some thought provoking points, which is of course what these forums are all about.
I’ve notice Rosy extend the invitation for guests to sign up frequently so decided it was about time I actually joined in the fun as I’ve often read threads and wanted to say something but not been able to.
I look forward to chatting with you all over the off-season/pre-season while we are all suffering footy withdrawal. I thought as a first post I might share some of my general views on RFC and this site.
I must admit I do regularly see some things on this site that I don’t understand, for instance people who talk about cutting up their memberships because of list management (or lack thereof) etc. Sure, I understand people get frustrated and disappointed in the club if they feel things are not being done properly. Especially as we have had such a long period of non-success and those same people may be of the view that is never going to change soon. However, as far as I am concerned, yellow and black is in the blood. It’s not just a campaign slogan you should bleed yellow and black. Like a son or daughter making a bad relationship decision, you don’t turn your back on them or stop loving them simply because they might make a decision you don’t approve of or frustrate you. You’re always there in the background supporting them when needed. I have no problem taking the hard-line that anyone happy to threaten to cut up their memberships we don’t want anyway, but if you’re going to cut up your membership and not support the club financially, don’t waste true supporters time hanging around like a bad smell whining about it. Talk about wanting it both ways!
Another thing that makes me shake my head is all these people every year at trade time who talk about trading Richo, Johnson, Brown etc. You cannot tear away at the soul of a club, especially one that has a questionable culture to begin with, by axing heavily embedded players. It is terribly simplistic to say, “We are re-building, we could do with two extra picks in the top 20, let’s trade Richo”. Footy clubs, like life, is not black and white. There is more to your list than just form and worth of a player. A lot of people on here condemn our captain, yet the only points I have ever seen people make badly about him are form related (which is even debatable). The facts are he provides a high level of leadership, and is our only credible captain with premiership experience. His professionalism, discipline and work ethic are possibly second to none at the club and these factors are crucial to have around the locker room when you’re raising a young list. The coaches have a obligation to sponsors, members, the football public etc to give the club some chance of winning games, take out game winners like Richo, Brown and company, and the leadership of Johnson and Bowden etc and we would be loosing far more than we currently are now.
It’s not a case of being long sighted, and saying short term pain for long term gain. That’s just a cliché people like to tout without actually thinking analytically. The reality of the evolution of clubs is that you cannot start from scratch when building a list, due to contractual obligations and the need to have an attractive brand to potential sponsors and members. The better clubs balance their “Top End” (experienced players) with their “Bottom End” (Inexperienced Players). Geelong, West Coast, Kangeroos, Essendon have all be relatively good at this and prove it works and most importantly prove if you can balance both ends of your list you will consistently play finals. All these people who have a love affair with Hawthorn over look one thing when saying we should be like them as far as getting rid of inexperienced players, they actually just got rid of damaged goods. Holland, Hay, Thompson were all not performing for them or the club lost faith with them. Richo, Brown, Johnson or Bowden are hardly in this category.
Loyalty is also an issue, we all know there is no loyalty in football now, but there is still a sense of brotherhood. I’ve seen people on here suggest trading Raines or Foley when they had their first good seasons as they have “currency”. Great idea! Let’s send out a message to our NO:2 pick in the draft this year that no matter how hard he trains for us, and how well he plays, we could easily trade him as he has currency. Watch what that does to our contract negotiations for players we want to keep! People are inspired by reward for effort and recognition, it’s why this subtly “unofficial” promotion policy at Coburg is working so well at the moment for Coburg. Since the promotion of quite a few Coburg players now, the burgers have been performing much better as the kids are inspired by the chance they will be rewarded for effort and promoted to a rookie spot. Loyalty may be dead, but you can promote an effective illusion of it.
Our name is already mud for club loyalty since the way we dealt with Wayne Campbell, Matthew Knights, Duncan Kellaway and Darren *smile* to name only a recent few, let’s work at rebuilding it rather than making it worse. Let’s have clubs and coaches happy to come to us because of how we treat them, rather than see us as a basket case. I’m all for ruthless aggression and Graham Richmond’s methods, but when we were good at it we had controlled/calculative aggression, not aggression for the sake of it. There is a bond off the field within clubs that if you sever no amount of sexy recruiting/drafting/trading will fix. Yes, let’s make hard decisions about peripheral players. But don’t forget about the soul of the club in the process. It’s the only thing that’s kept the Kangeroos going for so long, so it’s a pretty potent force. We certainly would have more bite in our snarl if we recaptured the essence of Punt Road.