Kapowie1
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AFLW 2024 - Round 10 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
News Media Thread, 2023: Insightful, Inciteful and Incomptent
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I think the club is handling this well. Holding their head when all around them are losing theirs. We have deap trouble on field with player availability. But out of darkness comes strength. Enjoy the last games with kids getting experience (what most wanted) as we stock up on draft picks.
There is no quick fix but we are holding the course.
There is no quick fix but we are holding the course.
Good read here on Hardwick's coaching by a Richmond insider. For all the obsession with list management, recruitment, game-day coaching etc, there's undoubtedly some intangibles that go a long way towards determining whether clubs are successful (although we rarely get much of a glimpse behind the curtain).
Could Dimma recreate the magic with another club? I doubt it. Hard not to admire what he pulled off though.
www.theage.com.au
Inside Hardwick’s premiership years: Dad jokes, vinyl records and the Queen cover band
Konrad Marshall
The first time I spoke at length with Damien Hardwick about coaching mortality, he sat at the big oval-shaped desk inside the Tigerland war room, only months after surviving an ill-conceived coup. “You enter this game knowing there’s a bullet out there with your name on it,” he said. There was precious little to indicate that one day he himself would be the trigger man.
Or was there? He did talk about the grind, the constancy, and the way the creeping tendrils of the job insinuate themselves into every aspect of your life. He mused a little, too, on what the end might look like, and smiled at the thought. “I might finally get to see Greece in summer.” I heard him say that more than once.
I was lucky enough to write three books about Richmond’s three flags under Dimma’s watch, remaining connected to the club since January 2016 in a way that goes well beyond the dreams of my lifelong fandom, and to me, the most striking aspect of the great cultural transformation at Richmond has always been the coach.
In 2016, the players spoke lovingly of him, but also of a highly specific playing method that required study - sometimes hours of homework each week - within an atmosphere of complexity and control, and - for some of them, at least some of the time - confusion. But he was no automaton. He was a rousing figure, with passion and combustible emotion always on display.
I used to sit in the briefing room before big matches, watching and listening as the coach delivered fire and brimstone oratories in the minutes before the first bounce. After one such soliloquy, then football manager Dan Richardson turned to me in the back row. “One of his best,” he said, smiling and excited. “Chills.” The hair on the back of my neck was up, too. But the Tigers lost. And kept losing. The bakes and sprays after the losses were memorable, too, except for those times when - “Konrad, can you leave the room for a minute” - there was nothing for me to remember.
The fateful off-season before 2017 happened, and that’s been well dissected - new leadership philosophies and programs were brought in, along with new assistants and players and cultural figures, but the biggest shift was always within the man in the middle, and his rare ability and willingness at that moment to shed that micromanaging side of himself.
He began sharing his silly side more - the dad jokes, yes, but also the rambling stories with stupid non sequiturs. Before one of the biggest games of the 2017 season, his pre-game speech riffed on a short video of his daughter utterly destroying him in a game of Connect 4, and the coach having a tantrum about it.
Before another game, he wanted to explain - at length, eating into game analysis time - why he had a red spot on his forehead. Apparently he had tried to clean his favourite water bottle by shaking it full of boiling water, and when he unscrewed the lid it exploded all over his bonce.
The visual aid before the 2017 grand final was an A3 sheet with a headshot of every player in the team, only these headshots were action photos, with their tongues lolling out to the side, or their eyes half closed, jawlines kilter or cheeks stretched in panic. They looked ridiculous.
Dimma called them “the munted heads” - but in their expressions he saw individuality and imperfection, and that was what he expected to see because grand finals are imperfect and messy, and he would need them each to bring their best munted selves to the field to meet the moment.
In subsequent years these little expressions of affection turned even more overt. He started giving players gifts related to the theme of the week, whether a De Walt hammer or an NFL ball.
Often the gifts were personalised. A vinyl record, for instance, for each player - Liam Baker got Lose Yourself by Eminem, Kamdyn McIntosh got I Am The Walrus, while Straight Outta Compton seemed the best fit for Dustin Martin - and he penned a handwritten letter for each player explaining why.
At some point, it all started to sound a bit cultish, and outsiders would sneer a little about this perception of Richmond exceptionalism, from the mindfulness program that had players laying in darkened rooms, imaging lines of purple energy emitted from their body and linking them on field, to the tearful “Triple H” sessions in which players broke down sharing three stories about a hero, hardship and highlights from their most intimate lives.
It was all a bit too easy for some to assume the Tiges were drinking kumbaya Kool Aid. Imagine what the punditry would have thought in the days before one preliminary final when the entire playing list and coaching staff sat in the old change rooms of the Jack Dyer Stand, coming together in a frenzied Senegalese drum circle, or the day before another preliminary final, when Dimma invited a Queen cover band to rock the entire club in the Maurice Rioli Room. (We are the champions, indeed.)
Vulnerability and authenticity may well have become buzzwords in the wider sporting world, but the belief in them at Richmond was carefully practised and planted and nurtured, and that only happens when the coach - the sun within the solar system of any club - shines on those programs.
He found that they dovetailed well with his tactical acumen, too, with a defence built on system but dependent on trust and anticipation, and an attack predicated on sharing the footy - the so-called “Spurs mentality” of always putting a teammate in a position to score, giving up a good shot in favour of a great shot - and the desire to “fight forward”, even if through grubby handballs and tap ons and blast kicks.
In a measured and quantified world that so often focuses on weaknesses, Dimma focused on strengths: “I love your run, Bachar” and “Keep jumping, Jack” and “We look our best when you’re hunting, Cotch.” He knew what it meant to us, too, in the grandstands, and in private meetings with his players he would ask them: “Tomorrow night, what do you want the fans to see?”
He knew what he wanted to see, commissioning his audiovisual team to assemble game clips set to music, so the players could watch ragged, dirty passages of play, and he could shake his head and smile at how proud he was of their ability to corral and chase and menace.
Or he might stop match review vision to demand applause for a player nowhere near the ball, who stopped an exit from an opposition forward line because of a selfless 100-metre sprint to stand on a vacant patch of grass on the fat side of the ground. He saw everything that unfolded on the field, but more importantly he let the players know that he saw them, too, and how they fit within the story of any game.
He was a storyteller to the end, and his favourites were always seemingly about mountains. Overcoming the perilous final “Hillary Step” on Mount Everest perhaps, or the treachery and danger of the Bottleneck on K2. On a trip to America, Dimma stood at the bottom of the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, and marvelled at how a person might claw their way up, alone, with no rope, free-climbing its sheer face.
He constantly compared the AFL season - and even specific matches - to that act of scaling a mountain, imploring his players to strive for the summit together, step after step.
With the announcement of his resignation on Tuesday, it simply feels as though he didn’t have another ascent in him - not right now anyway. Maybe putting one foot in front of the other, climbing that mountain again and again, became too Sisyphean for him to contemplate. Maybe right now he doesn’t want to climb. Maybe he just wants to go for a walk.
Could Dimma recreate the magic with another club? I doubt it. Hard not to admire what he pulled off though.
Inside Hardwick’s premiership years: Dad jokes, vinyl records and the Queen cover band
I was lucky enough to write three books about Richmond’s three flags under Dimma’s watch, and to me, the most striking aspect of the great cultural transformation at Richmond has always been the coach.
Konrad Marshall
The first time I spoke at length with Damien Hardwick about coaching mortality, he sat at the big oval-shaped desk inside the Tigerland war room, only months after surviving an ill-conceived coup. “You enter this game knowing there’s a bullet out there with your name on it,” he said. There was precious little to indicate that one day he himself would be the trigger man.
Or was there? He did talk about the grind, the constancy, and the way the creeping tendrils of the job insinuate themselves into every aspect of your life. He mused a little, too, on what the end might look like, and smiled at the thought. “I might finally get to see Greece in summer.” I heard him say that more than once.
I was lucky enough to write three books about Richmond’s three flags under Dimma’s watch, remaining connected to the club since January 2016 in a way that goes well beyond the dreams of my lifelong fandom, and to me, the most striking aspect of the great cultural transformation at Richmond has always been the coach.
In 2016, the players spoke lovingly of him, but also of a highly specific playing method that required study - sometimes hours of homework each week - within an atmosphere of complexity and control, and - for some of them, at least some of the time - confusion. But he was no automaton. He was a rousing figure, with passion and combustible emotion always on display.
I used to sit in the briefing room before big matches, watching and listening as the coach delivered fire and brimstone oratories in the minutes before the first bounce. After one such soliloquy, then football manager Dan Richardson turned to me in the back row. “One of his best,” he said, smiling and excited. “Chills.” The hair on the back of my neck was up, too. But the Tigers lost. And kept losing. The bakes and sprays after the losses were memorable, too, except for those times when - “Konrad, can you leave the room for a minute” - there was nothing for me to remember.
The fateful off-season before 2017 happened, and that’s been well dissected - new leadership philosophies and programs were brought in, along with new assistants and players and cultural figures, but the biggest shift was always within the man in the middle, and his rare ability and willingness at that moment to shed that micromanaging side of himself.
He began sharing his silly side more - the dad jokes, yes, but also the rambling stories with stupid non sequiturs. Before one of the biggest games of the 2017 season, his pre-game speech riffed on a short video of his daughter utterly destroying him in a game of Connect 4, and the coach having a tantrum about it.
Before another game, he wanted to explain - at length, eating into game analysis time - why he had a red spot on his forehead. Apparently he had tried to clean his favourite water bottle by shaking it full of boiling water, and when he unscrewed the lid it exploded all over his bonce.
The visual aid before the 2017 grand final was an A3 sheet with a headshot of every player in the team, only these headshots were action photos, with their tongues lolling out to the side, or their eyes half closed, jawlines kilter or cheeks stretched in panic. They looked ridiculous.
Dimma called them “the munted heads” - but in their expressions he saw individuality and imperfection, and that was what he expected to see because grand finals are imperfect and messy, and he would need them each to bring their best munted selves to the field to meet the moment.
In subsequent years these little expressions of affection turned even more overt. He started giving players gifts related to the theme of the week, whether a De Walt hammer or an NFL ball.
Often the gifts were personalised. A vinyl record, for instance, for each player - Liam Baker got Lose Yourself by Eminem, Kamdyn McIntosh got I Am The Walrus, while Straight Outta Compton seemed the best fit for Dustin Martin - and he penned a handwritten letter for each player explaining why.
At some point, it all started to sound a bit cultish, and outsiders would sneer a little about this perception of Richmond exceptionalism, from the mindfulness program that had players laying in darkened rooms, imaging lines of purple energy emitted from their body and linking them on field, to the tearful “Triple H” sessions in which players broke down sharing three stories about a hero, hardship and highlights from their most intimate lives.
It was all a bit too easy for some to assume the Tiges were drinking kumbaya Kool Aid. Imagine what the punditry would have thought in the days before one preliminary final when the entire playing list and coaching staff sat in the old change rooms of the Jack Dyer Stand, coming together in a frenzied Senegalese drum circle, or the day before another preliminary final, when Dimma invited a Queen cover band to rock the entire club in the Maurice Rioli Room. (We are the champions, indeed.)
Vulnerability and authenticity may well have become buzzwords in the wider sporting world, but the belief in them at Richmond was carefully practised and planted and nurtured, and that only happens when the coach - the sun within the solar system of any club - shines on those programs.
He found that they dovetailed well with his tactical acumen, too, with a defence built on system but dependent on trust and anticipation, and an attack predicated on sharing the footy - the so-called “Spurs mentality” of always putting a teammate in a position to score, giving up a good shot in favour of a great shot - and the desire to “fight forward”, even if through grubby handballs and tap ons and blast kicks.
In a measured and quantified world that so often focuses on weaknesses, Dimma focused on strengths: “I love your run, Bachar” and “Keep jumping, Jack” and “We look our best when you’re hunting, Cotch.” He knew what it meant to us, too, in the grandstands, and in private meetings with his players he would ask them: “Tomorrow night, what do you want the fans to see?”
He knew what he wanted to see, commissioning his audiovisual team to assemble game clips set to music, so the players could watch ragged, dirty passages of play, and he could shake his head and smile at how proud he was of their ability to corral and chase and menace.
Or he might stop match review vision to demand applause for a player nowhere near the ball, who stopped an exit from an opposition forward line because of a selfless 100-metre sprint to stand on a vacant patch of grass on the fat side of the ground. He saw everything that unfolded on the field, but more importantly he let the players know that he saw them, too, and how they fit within the story of any game.
He was a storyteller to the end, and his favourites were always seemingly about mountains. Overcoming the perilous final “Hillary Step” on Mount Everest perhaps, or the treachery and danger of the Bottleneck on K2. On a trip to America, Dimma stood at the bottom of the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, and marvelled at how a person might claw their way up, alone, with no rope, free-climbing its sheer face.
He constantly compared the AFL season - and even specific matches - to that act of scaling a mountain, imploring his players to strive for the summit together, step after step.
With the announcement of his resignation on Tuesday, it simply feels as though he didn’t have another ascent in him - not right now anyway. Maybe putting one foot in front of the other, climbing that mountain again and again, became too Sisyphean for him to contemplate. Maybe right now he doesn’t want to climb. Maybe he just wants to go for a walk.
- Jun 11, 2013
- 11,156
- 13,045
- AFL Club
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Of course Shueballs is gonna come out and say all that stuff, but he and guys like Naitanui, Yeo etc are a big part of the problem because they’re constantly injured.
They’re also so much better than 99% of every other player we have on the list including draftees (although they should be given time to see what they can be), that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I really think we need to move Shuey and Naita into coaching /mentoring roles and give Yeo another season to prove his body can handle the rigours of modern footy or he’s gotta go too. It’s gonna suck but we then need to load up on the draft as much as possible and hope we can find some bloody good replacements coz at the moment we don’t have much to work with.
It’s a sad state of affairs.
They’re also so much better than 99% of every other player we have on the list including draftees (although they should be given time to see what they can be), that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I really think we need to move Shuey and Naita into coaching /mentoring roles and give Yeo another season to prove his body can handle the rigours of modern footy or he’s gotta go too. It’s gonna suck but we then need to load up on the draft as much as possible and hope we can find some bloody good replacements coz at the moment we don’t have much to work with.
It’s a sad state of affairs.
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- Aug 13, 2014
- 27,828
- 50,257
- AFL Club
- West Coast
Surely Bung and Shuey are gone this year. Nic should probably pull the pin too but why would he with a contract in place?
Yeo is the greatest tragedy of recent times. It would be amazing if he gets back for 1 more solid season but I fear he's past the point of no return with his body.
They be looking for answers under rocks scattered around mineral Resources Park?
It’s annoys me when opposition fans(even our fans) and people within the club bring up 2010 and what happened after as an example. The list is drastically different then than what we have now. In 2010 we had been active in a few drafts leading up to that year and had more exciting kids on hand. We also had also no one over the age of 30 and the only really cooked senior player at the time was kerr but he was 27 (same age as what Ryan/Duggan are now).
We had a good core or players between 23-28 back then with Jk,Bunga, Nikoski, priddis, Lynch, Rosa, butler, Adam Selwood and Beau Waters. In the same Bracket we currently have Allen, Cole, Ryan, Duggan, Sheed and Barrass.
This time around we are gonna take a lot longer to climb up the ladder due to the lack of future leaders and also the lack of quality kids we have on hand atm
We had a good core or players between 23-28 back then with Jk,Bunga, Nikoski, priddis, Lynch, Rosa, butler, Adam Selwood and Beau Waters. In the same Bracket we currently have Allen, Cole, Ryan, Duggan, Sheed and Barrass.
This time around we are gonna take a lot longer to climb up the ladder due to the lack of future leaders and also the lack of quality kids we have on hand atm
This feels more like 2008, but your reference to 2010 shows how quickly things can turn.
Everyone references 2010 tbh. Also thing changed so quickly in 2010 cause our list wasn’t that terrible. We actually had alot more good players in their prime, alot of good kids that around that were ready to take a step up and seniors that weren’t super old and cooked
- Sep 15, 2011
- 33,431
- 52,359
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Thinks there’s a bit of revisionism going on there. I don’t think anyone thought our youth was particularly exciting then. Yes, Shuey, Gaff and Darling came on, but I don’t see any reason why Ginbey, Hewitt and Chesser can’t either. That middle bracket wasn’t that exciting either, guys like Nicoski and Butler were far from world beaters and not that much different from a Witherden or SPS. But history shows that went alright once the team improved.
We’ve also hit the last couple of drafts.
No comparison is the same but neither do I think it’s as far removed as you do.
- Jan 9, 2013
- 3,656
- 6,177
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- Other Teams
- Perth Scorchers, South Fremantle
Eagles supporters who feel “disconnected” from their beloved club are demanding a seat at the board table as West Coast languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
A number of administrators of the West Coast Eagles For Life fan forum, which has almost 9000 members, believe the time is right for fans to either cast a vote for the directors or have a seat on the board themselves.
West Coast fan forum wants a bigger voice in club affairs
West Coast fans are demanding a seat at the board table as the club languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
thewest.com.au
If I wanted more idiotic list management and general running of the club I would listen to anyone in that group and I am a member of that group.View attachment 1695745
Eagles supporters who feel “disconnected” from their beloved club are demanding a seat at the board table as West Coast languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
A number of administrators of the West Coast Eagles For Life fan forum, which has almost 9000 members, believe the time is right for fans to either cast a vote for the directors or have a seat on the board themselves.
West Coast fan forum wants a bigger voice in club affairs
West Coast fans are demanding a seat at the board table as the club languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
Wait - there's another footy forum beside this one! How active is it? I find it hard to believe they have 9k active members.View attachment 1695745
Eagles supporters who feel “disconnected” from their beloved club are demanding a seat at the board table as West Coast languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
A number of administrators of the West Coast Eagles For Life fan forum, which has almost 9000 members, believe the time is right for fans to either cast a vote for the directors or have a seat on the board themselves.
West Coast fan forum wants a bigger voice in club affairs
West Coast fans are demanding a seat at the board table as the club languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
- Jan 13, 2013
- 23,954
- 48,317
- AFL Club
- West Coast
It's a facebook group....
Well that's disappointing. Without anonymity I'd have to actually stand by my wild opinions and half-baked takes.
Waiting for a big footy article to come out.
“One member who is highly regarded and goes as The A5, believes the club should go as far as folding. While this measure seems extreme, it is one example at how frustrated Eagles fans are”
#
Will be quoted by barrett
I bet the genius I heard on Grandstand who wanted a member-elected board so we wouldn't have to play the Sunday arvo slot is prominent in that group.
Sounds like this needs a referendum.View attachment 1695745
Eagles supporters who feel “disconnected” from their beloved club are demanding a seat at the board table as West Coast languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
A number of administrators of the West Coast Eagles For Life fan forum, which has almost 9000 members, believe the time is right for fans to either cast a vote for the directors or have a seat on the board themselves.
West Coast fan forum wants a bigger voice in club affairs
West Coast fans are demanding a seat at the board table as the club languishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder for a second straight season.
I’ll fold that kent then
- Feb 5, 2009
- 8,995
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It said 9k members, not 9k active members. In however many years since the group formed. Also it's a number of group admins calling for it which is probably four or five people.
This sort of reporting saps my will to live.
- Sep 8, 2011
- 11,364
- 11,755
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I don’t understand why there’s so much hate for the Sunday arvo slot. It’s a great time slot. Maybe it’s because I grew up on Sundays at Subi. For me, A good variety where half are Sunday days mixed with sat nights and some Thur/Fridays are perfect.
I don’t want to be at Optus every Saturday night. Saturday day sucks as local footy is king. And I don’t want to be rushing from work every Thursday or Friday.
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