Just before half-time of Saturday night’s game at the MCG, two very different footballers went toe-to-toe on the members wing: Trent Cotchin, who looks like an articled clerk but plays a blue collar game, and Bailey Smith, who looks as if he’s just stepped off a float at Royal Randwick.
With Cotchin right on his hammer, Smith spilled a chest mark. The 32-year-old Tiger, who recently relinquished the Richmond captaincy, has always excelled at ground ball scrimmages. On this occasion, he was better balanced, a bit cannier and that little bit more ferocious than his 21-year-old rival. Cotchin got the faintest of fingers on a stationary ball, which released Noah Balta, and it led to a Tom Lynch goal.
It’s the sort of action that doesn’t show up on stat sheets, and doesn’t garner Supercoach points. But it encapsulated a career, and the Richmond era. The Tigers were never going to lose after that.
In previous weeks, Richmond sleepwalked through the final quarters of games against Carlton and St Kilda. Six days earlier, on a ground they’ve always hated, against a side that often gives them trouble, they conceded 10 goals in a row. Their best player was mourning his dad. Their co-captain was injured. A host of others were clearly not right. Their ‘suffocate and surge’ trademark was conspicuously absent. The Tigers were 3-1-9 from their previous 13 games. “I think the Dogs can end Richmond’s season this week,” Matthew Lloyd said.
The bookies wound them out to 2-1 outsiders. But Richmond would have fancied their chances. They always match up well against the Bulldogs. Jack Riewoldt and Dion Prestia slotted back in. The Dogs are undersized and far from convincing down back, and the loss of Alex Keath exacerbated that.
As always, the Dogs racked up the stats. They had five of the six leading possession winners on the ground, nine more inside 50s, and won the centre clearance count 16 to 7. But it meant nothing. It was moments like Cotchin’s, along with a dozen chase down tackles, that decided this match.
The Tigers have never really made sense statistically. In 2017, they were among the lowest for disposals, and hit outs. They had the most clangers. The way they played didn’t really translate well to television.
But when you saw them live, you understood. When you saw the state of the opposition players as they keeled over on the bench, you knew. They’d bowl blokes over, thump the ball forward, and run in waves. It was exhausting to watch – and write about. God knows what it was like as a player opposing them, halfway through the last quarter of a big game, when your lead had been whittled down, and they were coming hard.
Last year, the Tigers were tired, cranky, sore and not very good. There was a new champion side up the road. Martin was no longer the Player of the Colony. Their game against Gold Coast at docklands, in front of a handful of drunk teenagers, each apparently with their own drum kit, was depressing. Some Richmond supporters wrote about the end of the era like the death of a pet.
But others were reluctant to completely write them off. It’s like the press gallery journos who can sniff another Scott Morrison miracle. They’ve been stung before. In 2019, the Tigers were ninth after 14 rounds. So was Morrison. Both he and the Tigers had good timing. Both were indefatigable. Last year however, both were dire.
Whenever a great side goes through a rough trot, there’s a rush to frame it as ‘the end’. We’re into the twelfth year of Geelong’s supposed decline. Yet, like the Cats, Richmond present as a team that will stick around, that will nag away, that will reinvent itself on the run. No matter what trends emerge in the game, you suspect Cotchin’s little win on the wing will personify how they want to play.
In the next three weeks, Richmond travel to Adelaide and Perth, and square off against the best team in the country on ANZAC eve. Martin is still a chance to return. Prestia, so often their barometer, will get better by the week. Rioli has been reborn as a ferocious tackling, rebounding defender. The Tigers’ young kids are prone to brain fades, but are clearly going to be good footballers. They’re still piecing the puzzle together. They’re not ‘back’, but they’re far from cooked. They’re always dangerous, always compelling, and still very much in the mix.
