Richmond coach Adem Yze did not hide his disappointment on Saturday evening, laying bare the gulf between where his Tigers currently stand and where he wants them to be. 

The 114-point blowout loss to Sydney stood in stark contrast to the previous week, when a gritty 18-point Dreamtime at the 'G win over Essendon had dragged Richmond off the bottom of the ladder. 

Despite the result, Yze is determined to use the heavy defeat as a development tool for the future, admitting the match proved to be a bridge too far for his Tiger cubs against one of the league's true heavyweights.

“We got taught a footy lesson today from a powerful team, and a team that's playing some really, really good footy — especially at this ground, they're hard to stop,” Yze said. 

“We probably took a couple of steps backwards today. It felt like for the last month we've been playing the right way and hanging in there; we've had little lapses within games, but today just wasn't good enough. When I say it wasn't good enough, it wasn't as good as them. They were way too good for us.

“We'll lick our wounds. We've got a bye coming up, so it's a disappointing way to go into the bye. But we'll learn from it. (The Swans are) at a point now that we're trying to get to, where our younger players get a feel for what A-graders are. They've got a lot of A-graders out there, and that's what we're trying to grow our players into. Right now, we don't have enough of them.”

Despite the final margin, Richmond showed early promise. When asked if any positives could be drawn from their strong start, Yze acknowledged the importance of a young team establishing early momentum in a hostile away environment. 

Yze applauded his side's early effort but noted that defensive lapses and frustrating execution errors ultimately cost them. The Swans capitalised heavily on their mistakes, launching rapid coast-to-coast transitions to score just as the Tigers looked poised to attack.