The Richmond team that defeated the West Coast Eagles by 15 points at Etihad Stadium last Saturday night, was the Tigers’ most inexperienced for 15 years.
It contained a total of 1210 games experience, at an average of 55 per player. If you took Ben Cousins’ 243 games out of the equation, the average number of games among the other 21 players fell to only 46.
Just three members of the Tiger side who went into the Round 12, 2009 clash with the Eagles, had played more than 100 games – Cousins, captain Chris Newman (144) and Shane Tuck (102). Six players had played 10 games or less – Andrew Collins, Robin Nahas, Tom Hislop, Alex Rance, Angus Graham and debutant Ty Vickery.
You have to delve back into the Tigerland history books, to Round 20, 1994, to find the last time Richmond fielded a team with such little senior league experience.
On that occasion, the Tigers 12.21 (93) defeated St Kilda 9.7 (61), with a line-up containing a total of 1154 games.
Matthew Richardson was a 19-year-old veteran of just 29 games in that side, with Greg Dear (155 games), Matthew Knights (125 games) and Paul Broderick (111 games) the only Tiger “centurians”.
Another interesting sidelight to last Saturday night’s Yellow and Black inexperience, was the fact that it was the first time since 2004, and only the second time since 1998, that both Matthew Richardson and Joel Bowden had been missing from the Tiger team.
