Inside Richmond's flag blueprint: the hunt for the next Riewoldt and Rance

The Age

a day ago

Richmond have proven most critics wrong by winning five games with five rounds to go in a season doomsayers predicted last year's wooden-spooners may not win once. The Tigers have also blooded the second-most debutants (nine), behind only injury ravaged Essendon (13).
Losing top-tier talent
The bulk player exits in Yze's first season at the helm, after celebrating only two victories, could have been daunting – but the coach insisted this week there was never any panic.
'You go through what we went through, and the toughest part of it was injury. Players leaving and retiring [is] part of footy,' Yze said. 'You're constantly regenerating your list, and guys are finishing and starting.'
Injuries were a genuine excuse: only Carlton lost more games last year to first-choice players (167) than Richmond (155).
As soon as Tigers list boss Blair Hartley knew Rioli, Bolton and Baker were leaving, he resolved to maximise the trade return and use it to make a major investment in a loaded 2024 draft that they recognised years earlier as a standout crop.
Richmond's actions the previous year showed how much they loved that draft class.
They made several trades, including sending Ivan Soldo to Port Adelaide and twice moving down in the 2023 draft, which resulted in them gathering future assets.
Hartley then secured picks six, 10, 11, 18 and 23 for Rioli, Bolton and Baker, and engineered a separate deal with Brisbane – who were looking to stack draft selections to match father-son and academy bids – to also receive the Lions' No.20 for some of those future picks that were acquired 12 months earlier.
The strategy
The Tigers came no higher than ninth, and averaged a 13th-placed finish, during a difficult 11-year period between 2002 and 2012.
In the early years under Hardwick, Richmond eventually played finals in each of the next three seasons before tumbling again, only for club officials to famously stick by the man who went on to lead them to three flags.
That fateful decision paved the way for one of the Tigers' greatest periods – but as important were their drafting calls years earlier.
After far too many recruiting missteps, and watching Hawthorn swoop on twin towers Jarryd Roughead and Lance Franklin either side of Brett Deledio and Richard Tambling in 2004, Richmond began identifying building blocks – big ones – who became an enormous part of the future success.
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Francis Jackson's first draft as national recruiting manager in 2006 saw him select Jack Riewoldt (pick 13) and Shane Edwards (26).
The next year, it was Trent Cotchin (two) and Alex Rance (18). In 2009, the Tigers snared Dustin Martin (three) and David Astbury (35) before using a pre-season draft pick on a kid from the Northern Knights, Dylan Grimes.
Six of the seven played integral roles in Richmond's 2017, 2019 and 2020 premierships. Five-time All-Australian key defender Rance played in the first, but an ACL rupture cost him from featuring in the second, before his shock retirement.
Four of them were important bookends. In between, they also used a top-10 pick on forward-ruck Ty Vickery, who left for the Hawks at the end of 2016 – but assembling key-position talent was a priority.
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That strategy was front-of-mind when current list boss Blair Hartley presided over a haul of seven first-round draft picks last year. Jackson is still at the Tigers, working in the 'futures' talent market.
Richmond used six of those selections, on midfielders Sam Lalor (one), Josh Smillie (seven) and Taj Hotton (12), plus key forwards Jonty Faull (14) and Harry Armstrong (23), and tall defender Luke Trainor (21).
They savvily traded the seventh in a package for North Melbourne's 2025 first-rounder, which currently projects to be the No.2 pick. The Roos drafted swingman Matt Whitlock.
On day two of the draft, the Tigers resisted the temptation of rival clubs' offers to pick 199-centimetre forward-ruck Tom Sims with the opening selection of the second round. Sims was their fourth draftee who stood at least 195 centimetres tall.
'We're trying to pick a premiership team, not a team to win potentially next year,' Hartley said in November.
'You look at the basis of a lot of the premiership sides, even [going] back in time with Richmond, and it was Riewoldt and Rance in '06 and '07. Building that base of talls allows them to develop as we continue to build our side over the next few years.'
Differing approaches
By contrast, North Melbourne opted to build from the midfield out. It is too simplistic to just compare the Roos and Tigers in this way, but their respective recruiting blueprints were at odds.
Richmond entered round 20 above North on the ladder, despite the latter launching their rebuild with a massive cleanout at the end of 2020.
The Kangaroos, for various reasons, have not won more than four games in any season since, whereas the Tigers are already up to five this year.
'I recall being asked before the season, 'How are you going to cope when you're not winning, or you're getting 100-point losses?' – but we can't live in that headspace,' Livingstone told The Age.
'We understand there are going to be bumps in the road with players developing their game, but we want to teach them winning habits. We want them to be able to learn how to fight through games, and how to be down by a lot against Geelong [in round 17], down at GMHBA, and then fight through and have a competitive second half.
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'They're the sorts of things that will set you up for long-term success.'
An opposition recruiter, who spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity to discuss another club more freely, described the Tigers' early rebuilding efforts as 'unbelievable' – and forecast they could contend for finals again as soon as 2027, ahead of Tasmania's entry into the league.
'It's a credit to them for being brave enough to let all those guys go, then to make all those picks in one year,' the recruiter said.
'They would have known it was an average draft this year, particularly with how compromised it is, and that last year's draft was the one to do it [invest heavily]. But it's also a big credit to the coach for playing them all, and Blair's done a great job.'
Richmond's ex-chief executive Brendon Gale famously made a bold but stunningly accurate prediction in 2010 that they would win three premierships by 2020.
Yze and Livingstone were unwilling this week to do any such crystal-ball gazing, beyond saying they wanted to 'bounce back as quickly as we can'.
'We're not going to say, 'We should be here in two years' or three years' time',' Livingstone said.
'Our player development team is doing a wonderful job at trying to fast-track their careers and help teach these guys the winning habits that are going to take us forward sooner than we think. But putting time frames on it is not for us to worry about right now.'