By Caroline Wilson
realfooty.theage.com.au
June 18 2003
At least six Richmond players have had their holiday weekend cancelled in response to the club's undisciplined and disappointing form in recent weeks.
Coach Danny Frawley has also shelved his weekend off in a bid to salvage the Tigers' season.
Two senior Tigers, Rory Hilton and Adam Houlihan, are believed to have responded to Frawley's call after Richmond's seven-point loss to Carlton last Saturday, to put up their hands and offer to play in the VFL this weekend.
Hilton and Houlihan will be joined by David Rodan, who has been dropped to Coburg for the first time since coming to Tigerland at the start of 2002, Kayne Pettifer, Craig Biddiscombe and Tim Fleming.
Rodan, a two-time Morrish medallist, is one who must prove he can play a more disciplined brand of football if he is to continue his unbroken record of 34 senior AFL games.
Classy 22-year-old Aaron Fiora, who controversially gave away the free kick at full-forward to Brad Fisher in the dying minutes of last Saturday's Carlton game, is also on the brink of a game in the twos, while Andrew Krakouer is expected to win a reprieve with the club mindful of the youngster's early season knee problems.
Frawley told The Age yesterday that he had also cancelled his weekend off. This time last year he spent a long weekend in Bali with his family but this year Frawley will spend a day and a night at his family farm at Bungaree before returning to Melbourne on Friday and attending Coburg's clash with Preston on Saturday.
"I was going to have a football-free weekend but that won't be happening now," he said.
The Tigers have dropped from third to ninth following four consecutive losses and go into the bye with six wins and six losses and away games looming in rounds 13 and 14 against Brisbane and Adelaide.
The coach met his players for a long, soul-searching session on Monday and yesterday hosted a mid-season review with football operations chief Greg Miller and the Tigers' match committee at Frawley's bayside home.
The prevailing view was that most of the players who will be playing for Coburg had been playing seniors only because of the club's large injury list.
Against Carlton, Richmond was without its two best midfielders, Wayne Campbell and Kane Johnson, and has lost its star defender Darren Gaspar for the season to a knee injury.
"We should have won the last two games and we we should be eight-four," said Frawley, who was to take Richmond's last training session for the week at Punt Road from 11am today. "That would have been a good pass rate.
"There's been a few issues. I said after the (Carlton) game we were selfish and players were trying to win the game off their own boot. But I would dispute it's a form slump."
Ruckman Greg Stafford told Channel Seven's Talking Footy on Monday night that the club had struggled largely because players were not following instructions.
In a rare interview - the coach has avoided the media since Miller took over the football department last year - Frawley was non-committal as to whether the Tigers, out of the eight on percentage, could reach the finals.
Next week the club will fly to Queensland mid-week and spend two days at a training camp-clinic in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast. The club hopes to have Campbell back, along with Johnson and Ben Holland.
"We're going to have to play a lot better than we have in the first half of the year because we've got some tough games coming up," said Frawley.
realfooty.theage.com.au
June 18 2003
At least six Richmond players have had their holiday weekend cancelled in response to the club's undisciplined and disappointing form in recent weeks.
Coach Danny Frawley has also shelved his weekend off in a bid to salvage the Tigers' season.
Two senior Tigers, Rory Hilton and Adam Houlihan, are believed to have responded to Frawley's call after Richmond's seven-point loss to Carlton last Saturday, to put up their hands and offer to play in the VFL this weekend.
Hilton and Houlihan will be joined by David Rodan, who has been dropped to Coburg for the first time since coming to Tigerland at the start of 2002, Kayne Pettifer, Craig Biddiscombe and Tim Fleming.
Rodan, a two-time Morrish medallist, is one who must prove he can play a more disciplined brand of football if he is to continue his unbroken record of 34 senior AFL games.
Classy 22-year-old Aaron Fiora, who controversially gave away the free kick at full-forward to Brad Fisher in the dying minutes of last Saturday's Carlton game, is also on the brink of a game in the twos, while Andrew Krakouer is expected to win a reprieve with the club mindful of the youngster's early season knee problems.
Frawley told The Age yesterday that he had also cancelled his weekend off. This time last year he spent a long weekend in Bali with his family but this year Frawley will spend a day and a night at his family farm at Bungaree before returning to Melbourne on Friday and attending Coburg's clash with Preston on Saturday.
"I was going to have a football-free weekend but that won't be happening now," he said.
The Tigers have dropped from third to ninth following four consecutive losses and go into the bye with six wins and six losses and away games looming in rounds 13 and 14 against Brisbane and Adelaide.
The coach met his players for a long, soul-searching session on Monday and yesterday hosted a mid-season review with football operations chief Greg Miller and the Tigers' match committee at Frawley's bayside home.
The prevailing view was that most of the players who will be playing for Coburg had been playing seniors only because of the club's large injury list.
Against Carlton, Richmond was without its two best midfielders, Wayne Campbell and Kane Johnson, and has lost its star defender Darren Gaspar for the season to a knee injury.
"We should have won the last two games and we we should be eight-four," said Frawley, who was to take Richmond's last training session for the week at Punt Road from 11am today. "That would have been a good pass rate.
"There's been a few issues. I said after the (Carlton) game we were selfish and players were trying to win the game off their own boot. But I would dispute it's a form slump."
Ruckman Greg Stafford told Channel Seven's Talking Footy on Monday night that the club had struggled largely because players were not following instructions.
In a rare interview - the coach has avoided the media since Miller took over the football department last year - Frawley was non-committal as to whether the Tigers, out of the eight on percentage, could reach the finals.
Next week the club will fly to Queensland mid-week and spend two days at a training camp-clinic in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast. The club hopes to have Campbell back, along with Johnson and Ben Holland.
"We're going to have to play a lot better than we have in the first half of the year because we've got some tough games coming up," said Frawley.
