Am I Allowed to be Upset?

George Santayana famously said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. That saying has been Chinese Whispered into the modern version which is that “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”.

 

That sentiment applies to global events, just as much as it applies to the AFL. Footy’s future is written in the past.

 

If you understand the history of the club that you follow, you will also be able to understand how your club will perform moving forward. The players at clubs change, but the DNA doesn’t.

 

Take the Bulldogs.

 

While they are a small club and have not won a lot of premierships, over the last 25 years they are one of the most consistently performing clubs in the AFL. They basically live in the AFL’s middle tier, sitting sixth in win percentage over the last decade.

 

They don’t dominate and generally don’t win premierships, but they play in a lot of prelims and haven’t won a wooden spoon since 2003. Before 2003, their last wooden spoon was 1982. Before that, it was 1967.

 

The Bulldogs are the Australian dream in a football club. Always middle class, always with a chance to be upwardly mobile.

 

My club, Richmond, is different to the Bulldogs.

 

The Tigers are crypto-billionaires. Shooting stars. The footy equivalent of Joe McCarthy or Saul Goodman.

 

They burn brightly then burn out.

 

If you look at the history of the Tigers, they win premierships in bunches.

 

The first two premierships were three years apart, in 1902 and 1905. Then it was 15 years until 1920, when the Tigers won two consecutively.

 

Then it was 11 years, before the next two in three years in 1932 and 1934.

 

1943, 9 years later, bucked the trend as that was a rare, isolated Richmond flag.

 

Then it was another 26 years before we get to the glorious late 60s and early 70s, where Richmond won in 1969, 1973 and 1974.

 

1980 was another random premiership, before a 37 year wait for 2017.

 

Then, of course, came the three in four years from 2017 to 2020.

 

In the long waits between premiership eras, the Tigers underwent mismanagement, financial ruin, poor coaching, atrocious drafting, and bad list decisions.

 

The Tigers are like Kendall Roy giving the Living+ speech, vacillating between it’s so over and we’re so back.

 

I fear that we’re so over, again.

 

In this trade period, Richmond has lost virtually all of the bridge players that I viewed as being the kinds of players that can get the Tigers from the glorious late 2010s into the next era of competitive Richmond football.

 

Players like Dan Rioli and Liam Baker are ones that I would have been desperate to keep. They have elite attitudes and never stopped trying, even as Richmond went through the worst season in club history.

 

Even a player like Jack Graham, who is not brilliant but he is big, and Shai Bolton who is the inverse Graham, would have been helpful to protect the bumper crop of draftees that are coming in. But they too are gone.

 

Who are the in their prime professionals left? Hopper and Taranto? Lynch if he plays? Vlastuin and Broad in their post-prime? Is that it? Who sets the standards now? Who looks after the younger players?

 

I understand that the Tigers have got a lot of picks in the upcoming draft, but if there’s no mature bodies to protect them what’s the point?

 

Media will fawn over the picks, but that’s just because it’s easy to understand trading all the experience for picks.

 

That part is easy, and it buys administrations time.

 

But from there it’s hard. It takes a village to turn a big group of draft picks into a cohesive football team. The Sopranos was great because of the secondary characters, but the secondary characters were only great because Tony was great. 

 

That’s where I get to my next source of concern. The coach.

 

I’m sure Adem Yze is a nice fella. He seems like it. He’s encouraging and he’s warm. I don’t think the professional athlete of today wants or responds well to a disciplinarian, drill-sergeant type of coach.

 

My problem with Yze is the game style.

 

Richmond players looked like they spent all of season 2024 thinking deeply about what to do next and being stumped.

 

There was no flow to the games. They played constipated football.

 

Watching the Tigers get the ball to half back and then just hack it forward reminded me of myself struggling with a year 10 maths problem, where I’d eventually just throw up my hands and have a guess.

 

I think he wants to play a Melbourne/Brisbane type of game, but that game relies so heavily on having heft around the ball and talented ball users. At their best, those teams live in the forward half and generate repeat 50 entries, then have pinpoint kick and control games from the back half, and are generally dominant in the middle. 

 

The game style is about control as much as it is territory at its best.

 

The Tigers were 14th in marks, 15th in inside 50s, last in contested ball, and last in clearances.

 

If that was the intended game style, it didn’t work.

 

I was worried about the hire in the first place. I have no idea who looked at Melbourne’s stodgy footy in 2023 and thought “that’s how we want our games to look”, but given the talent on the list (which has decreased over the offseason), Richmond can’t even execute what might be a regressive way to play.

 

The crop of high picks might get Richmond to better ball users, assuming that they pick the right players (which is a poor assumption), but at a certain point you need some professionals who understand how to play.

 

It’s hard to tear it down to the studs and rebuild quickly, especially when you have Richmond’s DNA.

 

So, am I allowed to be upset?

 

In the last two years my club has lost every single key pillar of the dynasty that brought me more joy than anything in my life, and is now losing the secondary pillars.

Dan Rioli and Liam Baker were my two favourite players left and they’re gone.

 

My club also tends to do this, and is historically more likely to be terrible for another two decades than make a real go of this golden opportunity to rebuild.

 

I know that the players asked out and this is what’s meant to happen after a period as good as Richmond had, but I still think I am allowed to be upset.