Richmond coach Adem Yze has travelled to Perth with an unchanged lineup and 'expecting to win' in Saturday night's clash with West Coast.
The Tigers flew to Perth on Thursday, in hopes of acclimating to the conditions of Western Australia ahead of Saturday night's match.
“The boys are pretty excited. They flew over yesterday afternoon to acclimate and get their body clocks right,” Yze told the media on Friday.
“We have a young list, so getting them climatised and they did some recovery today, obviously a Captain’s Run this afternoon, to just give us the best chance to perform tomorrow and leave nothing to chance.
“A few of the boys haven’t been over here. Taj Hotton, I don’t think he has been to Perth at all.
“Try something different, different to what we are used to, but it seemed like the boys ran around nicely today.”
Yze spoke to the decision of bringing an unchanged lineup to WA, after recording a win over the Bombers last week.
“We are in good enough form that they all warrant keeping their spot,” Yze said.
“There are a few unlucky guys. Three of our emergencies have travelled over, and they are pretty stiff not to get a game. We thought we performed well last week, and we will give them another crack at it.”
Richmond claimed victory over West Coast in Round 9 by just two points in what was a back-and-forth contest.
Yze expects a similar battle in the return fixture, as the Tigers prepare to face the Eagles at Optus Stadium.
“They are probably expecting to win, but so are we,” Yze said.
“More importantly, we know the way that we want to play, so we understand that we had a good win last week, but there are still elements of our game that we didn’t do well enough.
“We worked hard during the week, and hopefully we can rectify that this weekend.
“Irrelevant of who is favourite, we can’t wait and hope it’s a really good contest.”
A focus for the head coach will be to stop Eagles young gun Harley Reid and minimise his impact.
“We can’t have him being best on ground,” Yze said.
“Last time we played, when he played well, they hit the scoreboard and got a lot of momentum, so we have to keep an eye on him for sure.
“We've got to make sure he isn’t having too much of an impact on the game, but I know a few of the boys know him, and it will be a good contest, and we can’t wait.
“He is obviously a highly talented player, and he will be another one of the West Coast players that we need to target. We aren’t going to be just looking at one player.”
