RICHMOND coach Damien Hardwick's clearly-defined task when he came to Punt Road ahead of the 2010 season was to return the Tigers to the finals and ultimately deliver the club its eleventh flag.

Not cobble together a bunch of players capable of scraping into the eight, but building a team talented and well-drilled enough to make the finals and compete with the best of them once there.

There have been some stumbled steps along the way, but Richmond's 16-point win against top-four, quality opposition in front of a heaving MCG crowd on Saturday night has to be among the greatest encouragement Hardwick has received as he plots a course back to the top for the club and its long-suffering fans.
 
"To play in front of 83,000 people like that, both teams had their armies out today, and for such a significant event with the Indigenous Round, it probably ranks right up there," Hardwick said of the win against traditional rival Essendon.

"I think for a young footy [team] to find its feet [like that] … we haven't had any finals experience for a long time, it's probably as close as we've come to a final in a long time.

"The atmosphere was electric and I thought the game was a really great endorsement for the Indigenous Round."

The crowd noise, although near-deafening at times, wasn't the main reason for the coach's satisfaction.

A week after his team failed to beat an undermanned Western Bulldogs side, Hardwick could have been forgiven for wondering just what sort of an effort he was going to get against the high-flying, if similarly short-staffed, Bombers.

He needn't have concerned himself.

"I was really pleased with the way the guys fought it out," he said.

"The Bombers kept coming and we kept responding. The game opened up there in the last quarter and a half. When Dylan Grimes went down I thought we might be in a little bit of trouble, but the guys, to their credit, fought hard on a number of occasions.

"It was good to get a good start for a change and they fought it out really well."

Grimes has injured a hamstring, but the length of his time on the sidelines will be determined by scans on Monday.

It's a cruel blow for the 19-year-old in just his eighth AFL game who formed part of a defensive unit that needed to respond from a disappointing game last week - and did.

"They were really poor last week, but I thought Grimes, Alex Rance and Luke McGuane really steadied the fort," he said.

"They're a proud bunch and they were really disappointed with their efforts last week so I'm really happy they stood up and made a fist of it this week."