What is Richmond’s next step in their rebuild?
That was the question on the mind of Kane Cornes and SEN Breakfast co-host David King after the Tigers slumped to 1-6 after their 42-85 loss to Melbourne on Anzac Eve.
While Richmond tried to rebuild on the run following their premiership successes by adding the likes of Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper via trade, both Cornes and King think that the club now needs to hit the pointy end of the draft hard to acquire top-level young talent.
The duo discussed how Richmond does that and the futures of out-of-contract utility Liam Baker, free agent Dustin Martin and other ways that they could manoeuvre to get those picks, including trading players that hold value.
Cornes thinks that the Tigers can no longer look at their list as a short-term proposition and should instead look at five years down the line when they may enter premiership contention again.
Cornes: “What do you do? … Can you finish as low as possible without suggesting that you're gonna tank to try and get a pick one or two?
“That's the discussions that Richmond now must have, don't they?”
King: “You can't have this discussion in hindsight. So what do you do? This is the old discussion.
“So everyone says, ‘Oh, you know Sam Mitchell cut too hard. This is going to be a 10-year rebuild’. Others say, ‘Oh, Adam Simpson is too loyal to these older blokes and should have got second-round picks for them’.
“So, what do you do?”
Cornes: “Well, the first point is Liam Baker will make his call. So that will be taken out of their hands.
“If he wants to go, he'll go. You offer him the contract. Clearly, you would love to keep him … but he's going to make that call.
“So then you do the best that you possibly can out of that (if he leaves).
“The Dustin Martin one is the really interesting one. He doesn't look as motivated as he has been in the past.
“You want to be really clear with him, ‘Are you prepared to put yourself through another pre-season and play in a side that is essentially rebuilding?’. Or, ‘Is this the right time to have the biggest victory lap you can have? Play your game 300, we’ll send you off in the way that you deserve to be sent off’. That's what I would be doing with Dustin.
“Is he helping them? Is he a Dyson Heppell type that you want in there showing leadership, rocking up to training, giving it absolutely everything, and setting a great example for all these young players that are going to be there?
“You've got to ask him that.”
King: “All that might be correct.
“But how do they get the glut of first-round picks that are needed? The absolute high-end first-round picks that are needed to give you any chance of coming out of a rebuild phase.”
Cornes: “So you look at who's got currency and who is potentially going to give you that. Dan Rioli has been spoken about – is he one that's going to give you a first-round pick? You have to look at that.
“You maximise what you can get for Baker. West Coast and Fremantle are stacked with picks.
“We don't need to be seeing (Marlion) Pickett and (Nathan) Broad and these players getting games over young players … like why are you playing Sam Naismith over Tyler Sonsie?
“That's just bizarre to me.”
King: “Let's talk about the rebuild phase, which I think is the toughest phase of the lot, how do you actually set for a rebuild? Do you purge rather than support?”
Cornes: “I'd purge as much as you can because you've got to look at it as a five to six-year window.
“It's not, ‘How do we get better?’, that’s not the discussion for Richmond.
“It’s, ‘We win four games this year, we get a top pick, then we trade a couple out, we get more picks and then you build and you play those games together over a five-year period’, that's the discussion they need to have.
“It's not going to be a rebound quickly up the ladder for Richmond … it’s going to be punishing.
“All Richmond fans can cop it because they've had the success and everyone would love to be in their position that they've seen that success in the last seven years it's been a great ride for them.
“Now it's about a bit of pain and enduring that.”
Richmond next face Fremantle at the MCG next Sunday.
