Richmond coach Adem Yze has declared he hopes his young side can learn from Adelaide's developing players, after Sunday's 68-point loss at the MCG.
Despite the heavy loss, the coach explained how some of the Crows' stars provide somewhat of a blueprint for how the Tigers' youngsters need to develop, and as proof of the good that is to come for Richmond.
"We've just come up against a really good footy team and their polish and execution was better than ours," Yze said post-match.
"Our entries, we didn't maximise ours, but Jonty Faull is going to be better for it. Down their end, Riley Thilthorpe (Adelaide forward) kicks five and looks like a man mountain. But he's in his fourth or fifth year. Jonty's in his first. That's the type of player we need him to become.
"Luke Trainor's standing on Daniel Curtin, and Daniel Curtin's in his third year. And he's (Trainor) commented to me in the third quarter saying how big he is. But that's how quick it can change.
"We're trying to fast track, not only the development of our players to make them feel like they belong on an AFL field, but they need to fill in their bodies."
Richmond managed to return to parts of its brand of football after a poor opening half, with Yze saying it was pleasing to see the response and investment from the playing group.
"Our boys are frustrated and disappointed," he said.
"To have two goals at half time was pretty bleak, not a lot of excitement in our game. To respond in the right way and keep trying to play our way and get some energy, celebrate little things like Jasper Alger kicking his first goal and Luke Trainor kicking his first goal.
"Little moments like that felt like they still cared, which is all I can ask while we're going through what we're going through."
There were some negatives out of Yze's control, particularly when forced to shuffle the magnets to fill the hole left by forward Mykelti Lefau, who sustained a calf injury in his first AFL match in 393 days.
"Mykelti going out of the game is almost the perfect storm. We lost a guy that's going to give us a contest forward of the ball, we then had to move Noah (Balta) forward, which I thought he did really well," Yze said.
"It was really disappointing, not only for today, but for the body of work (Lefau's) put in over the last month to put himself in a position to pretty much get straight back in.
"It showed how important he is to us in that aerial battle, when he did go out of the game. We did miss him."
Another tough challenge lies ahead against a fourth-placed Geelong outfit at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday, but it's a test Yze refuses to back down from.
"We'll be looking always to the future, but at the same time, right now we expect to put on a performance that our Tiger Army are proud of. The last couple of weeks, that hasn't been the case. We need to address that, train hard, go down to Geelong and do what we need to do," he said.
"The spirit is going to get dented when we feel like we're playing the right way and our execution at our front end is not as good as theirs'. That's okay, we can work on that, we can train that and build into that.
"I'd be more worried if our spirit, our energy and our system went out of whack and our players didn't look like they cared. That's something we won't tolerate."
Richmond take on the Cats at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday at 4.15pm.
