Richmond coach Damien Hardwick is not overly concerned with his team’s lack of scoring power so far this season.
The Tigers are ranked 11th in the competition for total points scored and have managed to kick 100 points or more only three times, with the most recent century having been chalked up against Collingwood in Round 7.
Hardwick admits it’s something he’d like to see rectified, but not at the expense of a tight defence that is currently ranked fourth in the competition.
“We probably feel at stages we haven’t used the ball well enough inside 50,” Hardwick said.
“We went through a number of examples, once again through the week, where we just felt we didn’t quite get the reward for effort (against Hawthorn last Friday night), whether it was kicking the ball to the favored side of the forwards, or making a better decision inside 50 to handball back and get an easier shot on goal.
“So they’re the constant challenges for us as a footy club.
“We all want to see more goals, but we still rate defence and out contested game incredibly highly, and they’re two areas that we’re doing really well.
“Offensively, we can still improve . . .
“We’d always like to score more, but the fact of the matter is, if we can keep a side to 10 goals and we kick 12, we still win.
“Ideally, we’d love to be kicking 15-16 goals, but you’ve just got to take what the opposition gives you at stages, and our set-up behind the ball and at the ball won’t differ too much.”
