Kicking The Can Down Punt Road
Thoughts on long rebuilds, itchy feet, and the price of not knowing in an industry that demands answers.
Apologies for a later newsletter this week – I was sick for a couple of days.
Social preview photo courtesy of the Richmond website.
Times are tough in Tigerland. Richmond’s scorched earth rebuild isn’t yet yielding enough of the green shoots that all fans crave and many expected. Despite the underlying metrics being better than a 75-point loss to North Melbourne on Sunday suggested, the result injected a little more black into yellow and black moods. Coach Adem Yze has won just seven of his first 45 games in charge.
The current state of affairs at Punt Road isn’t wholly unexpected. Richmond’s list is both callow and injury-riddled. Senior players, like Toby Nankervis and Tom Lynch, whose backups can’t shoulder the demands of senior footy have succumbed to injuries that might benefit player development in the long run but certainly hurt results in the short run. Losing almost every week sucks, and the pain isn’t necessarily dulled by the lingering glow of a recent dynasty or the tantalising prospect of future glory. But I’ve still been surprised, and slightly perplexed, by the depth of frustration and despair I’ve encountered among some pockets of the Richmond fan base. If you’re anything like me, you’re interested in what that discontent might suggest about living with uncertainty, the difficulty of rebuilding in the modern AFL, and how a media ecosystem that rewards hyperbole has distorted supporters’ expectations.
A key factor which doesn’t necessarily make rebuilding tougher, but makes the subjective experience of rebuilding more fraught, is the modern footy media landscape. Today, there are more mainstream footy media shows than ever before. And because most are determined to talk about anything other than what actually happens on the field during games (I’m aware I’m doing something similar in this post), that means more airtime than ever is spent dissecting and criticising. Just in the past week, Caroline Wilson has delivered a withering monologue about the current state of the club while Matthew Lloyd, on an AFL-produced program (I’ll leave the strange ethics and incentives of the AFL effectively criticising one of its own clubs for another time), labelled the Tigers an uncompetitive mess.
The extra layer that didn’t exist 15 years ago is fan media. Club-specific podcasts, social media pages, newsletters and Discord servers are made by and cater for very specific types of supporters. Whether you call them nuffs, tragics, or obsessives, they’re bound by a single common factor: they have strong opinions about what their club does. And when a team is losing, it’s easy to claim that their specific counterfactual – picking Player X over Player Y, the coach’s stubborn refusal to develop a Plan B, whatever it is – is the main obstacle to success. The algorithm rewards that kind of conviction. Measured takes don’t travel.
There’s another layer to excavate here: new media that isn’t dedicated to single clubs, but uses humour to drive engagement. I’m talking here about the Dan Gorringes of the footy world: creators who make shareable content that’s fun to send to mates smarting over their useless footy team’s latest loss, and rather harder to stomach when it’s your useless footy team that’s the subject of banter. It’s worth pausing for a moment to consider the incentive structure here. Content about losing clubs – their haplessness, their dysfunction, their beleaguered supporters – generates clicks, shares, and laughs in a way that content about winning clubs simply doesn’t. Joy doesn’t travel through space with the same fluidity as humiliation. Happy fanbases are all alike, but every unhappy fanbase is unhappy in its own way. Creators like Gorringe are, by now, a permanent and, for many, a genuinely enjoyable feature of the footy media landscape. But the asymmetry is real: the ecosystem has a structural bias toward making losing feel worse, and no equivalent mechanism for making winning feel better.
The modern footy media amplifies the emotional experience of fandom. But those feelings have to come from somewhere. The discontent of Richmond supporters comes from three distinct sources. The first is injuries to recent draftees – in particular Josh Smillie, Taj Hotton, and Sam Cumming. Tigers fans have invested lots of hope in this trio, all of whom were taken in the first round of their respective drafts. But, as I write this, they’ve only played seven of 64 eligible games since entering the AFL. All seven of those games belong to Hotton, who impressed when he made his debut in the back half of 2025. The news that he would be out for an indeterminate time after bone stress was discovered in his hip on the eve of the season was a big blow to the morale of supporters who just wanted to see a bright prospect realise his potential. Hotton is one of four Tigers currently listed as TBC. Those are scary letters to see on an injury report.
The plight of Josh Smillie is just as troubling. The tall midfielder, taken with Pick 7 in the 2024 draft, hasn’t yet played a single game due to a raft of soft-tissue injuries. I can count five discrete injuries and setbacks. The worst-case scenario – that so many injuries, sustained at such a key point in his development, will permanently diminish him as a player – is now live. Injuries don’t just create pessimism. They also create uncertainty. To return to a sentiment I’ve expressed in past pieces: data is one of a club’s most valuable resources. How young players get on in training and around the club generally can tell you a lot about their work ethic and their demeanour. But there’s simply no substitute for real reps. Had Smillie or Hotton played more senior games, Richmond and its supporters would have a clearer sense of whether they were future stars (Hotton does look like one, albeit on a minuscule sample size). Their ongoing absence is both disappointing on a personal level and creates the kind of doubt that can be corrosive to the positivity supporters need to get through the early days of a major rebuild. An important caveat: Sam Cumming, along with SSP pick Tom Burton, are making their senior debuts tonight. They could both contribute to a win over a talented but brittle Melbourne side. It’s a reminder that the picture can shift quickly, and that the week-to-week emotional boom and bust cycle is usually a poor guide to a club’s actual trajectory.
It’s not just injuries to young players causing discontent among some of the Tiger faithful. Injuries to senior players have had a pernicious concertina effect. Consider the case of Nick Vlastuin. He had a great year in 2025 before he broke his leg in the second-last game. His entire pre-season was basically ruined. And he hasn’t come back at the same level as he was before the injury. Just five players in the entire AFL averaged more intercept possessions than Vlastuin in 2025. His experience and composure provided the perfect platform for the likes of Luke Trainor, Tom Brown, and Sam Banks to hone their craft. It’s no surprise that, as Vlastuin tries to rediscover his form, his younger defensive peers are battling to improve theirs.
Rebuilds succeed and fail for many reasons, but the best ones thread the needle of surrounding talented youth with reliable veterans. The performance of core senior players matters a lot in the early days of a rebuild. When the old pros play at a high level, they buy wins in the short term while delivering invaluable experience to the next generation. I’m old enough to remember when many pundits predicted that Richmond might not win a single game in 2025. In the end, the Tigers won five games, despite having lost Shai Bolton, Liam Baker, Daniel Rioli, and Jack Graham over the 2024 trade period. Many neutrals and supporters interpreted that as a sign that the rebuild was well on its way to success. I saw it a little differently. Seth Campbell’s backflip after kicking the sealer against Carlton in Round 1 and Sam Lalor’s breathtaking introduction to senior footy notwithstanding, Richmond’s veterans did most of the heavy lifting last year. The list of Richmond players who recorded the highest average player rating for 2025 from a minimum of 10 games, in descending order: Nankervis, Taranto, Prestia, Vlastuin, Hopper, Campbell, Ross, Lalor, Ralphsmith, Miller. A couple of future stars, yes. But mostly established players with mature bodies and temperaments. Early in a rebuild, if the output of that senior cohort declines (for whatever reason) before the next generation is ready to assume the mantle, performances will decline, results will suffer, and the developmental path of young players becomes more complicated. There are few clearer examples than Richmond’s start to 2026.
Injuries to exciting draftees and the pain of regression after a promising 2025 are two of the reasons for the long faces at Punt Road. The third is the, thus far, underwhelming output of the two key forwards Richmond drafted in 2024: Jonty Faull and Harry Armstrong. Comparison is the thief of joy. And you can’t draft in hindsight. But those aphorisms are easy to forget when you look West and see Murphy Reid (taken three picks after Faull) and Jobe Shanahan (taken seven picks after Armstrong) tearing it up for their respective sides. Both are succeeding in different contexts: Shanahan is showing more flashes in an approximately equally bad West Coast side, while Reid has settled well into a strong Fremantle team. Both players so far look like better prospects than the Richmond pair. But even here, there are meaningful caveats: Armstrong has also been whacked with the injury stick. He played only eight senior games in his debut season and is currently sidelined with a bone stress issue in his foot. Faull, meanwhile, has had to play more games than he or Adem Yze would have liked against seasoned opponents due to repeated absences of older forward line colleagues Tom Lynch and Mykelti Lefau. Even the best prospects would struggle with the service Faull has received and the direct opponents he has faced.
None of this is to say that there aren’t grounds for concern – with Richmond’s drafting, Yze’s coaching acumen, or the club’s strength and conditioning program. Yze himself admitted, with surprising candour, on last Tuesday’s episode of AFL 360 that, in an ideal world, Faull would be sent to the VFL to rediscover form and confidence. Yze’s sceptics claim the Tigers play with no identity, no character, no dare. But guess what? This is what life is like down the bottom of the ladder. By definition, it involves residing in a world that’s far less than ideal. You don’t get “dare”. You mostly get what you get. It could be that every anxiety felt by Richmond supporters eventually comes to pass. The good kids could be injury prone. The healthy kids could be busts. Yze himself might not be the guy. The whole rebuild, or meaningful chunks of it, might need to be redone. Right now, the discovery process is much less fun than Tigers fans thought it would be. But one of the main points I’ve tried to make throughout this piece is that the current footy media landscape creates too many incentives to proclaim that a player or coach is bad, or that a rebuild is busted, and not enough to say the boring truth: it’s too early to say. Catastrophism and doom-mongering are more likely to go viral than calls for patience.
There’s one more cause I’ll advance for the current pessimism of Tigers fans: perhaps there’s a section of supporters that attained footy consciousness circa 2017 and thinks this footy lark should all be a bit easier? And perhaps the views of those disappointed supporters are overrepresented on social media and fancasts? I don’t mean entitlement. But there were Richmond supporters who were really excited by the return their club was able to get for Bolton, Rioli, and Baker in 2024, enamoured with the players those draft picks turned into, and convinced themselves that a big chunk of the rebuild had already been done. Again, it’s important to stress that the excitement of Richmond supporters – and envy of many opposition fans – could yet be vindicated in the long run. Fitness permitting, Lalor looks like he’ll become one of the game’s best players. He might be Richmond’s best player already. Trainor has looked good, as has Sam Grlj, Pick 8 in 2025. There really isn’t enough data yet in either direction. On some individual players, yes. On the overall status of the rebuild – no way.
The ability of some clubs to defy gravity for years at a time has probably blinded some supporters to how unusual and difficult indefinite contention really is. A look at Richmond’s historical ladder position confirms this.
Since 1950, the Tigers have won eight flags and six spoons (number seven is in the post). The club’s average finishing position in those 76 completed seasons? 8.51. Pretty much smack bang in the middle. Almost everyone wants to be Geelong, Hawthorn or Sydney. But that wasn’t an option available to Richmond this time around. That door shut as soon as the club committed Picks 12, 19, and 31, along with its 2023 first-rounder, for Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper. The bigger the swing you take, the more it hurts when you miss.
Sunday’s game against North Melbourne serves as both a cautionary tale and a hopeful one when it comes to rebuilding. It’s bloody hard. And, as I showed in my recent piece about the Father-Son rule, it’s getting harder. The top four and bottom four spots on the ladder have become more entrenched over time: harder to rise, harder to fall. Sides at the top enjoy advantages in unobstructed access to club-tied players and desirability as a free agent destination that the AFL’s equalisation methods are struggling to overcome. Even miserable, years-long rebuilds aren’t guaranteed to succeed. Ange Postecoglou was talking about Tottenham when he said that sometimes the approaching light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a train. But he could well have been talking about his beloved Carlton. Looking at North Melbourne, however, is also a source of some comfort: accumulate enough talent and results will eventually begin to turn. North Melbourne should be good – or at least much better than Richmond is in 2026. That’s the way the competition is designed to operate.
The questions Richmond’s football department must answer are when the inflection point of the rebuild will arrive, and what to do once it does. A few days before I first had the idea for this piece, news emerged that Richmond had thrown its hat in the ring for Zak Butters. I hadn’t considered the idea before the news broke. My immediate thought was that, given the likely cost any club will need to play (unless they offer Butters a contract so lavish that Port can’t match it), the opportunity has arrived a year or two too soon. There’s still so much uncertainty about Richmond’s list. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You draft players in the hope they become as good as Butters. He’d take attention off the kids in the midfield, he’d make the team more competitive, and he’d set an example to every young player on Richmond’s list.
They’re fascinating questions, condensed into the form of one pugnacious superstar, and they’re the same ones this piece has ultimately been interrogating all along. How much do clubs actually know, and when do they know enough to act on that knowledge? For supporters, commentators, and writers, “not yet” is sometimes the best and usually the most honest answer. For a football department, it’s a luxury. The Tigers chose to go a different way when they were building the list that delivered their recent dynasty: the club knew it had acquired proven talent through the draft and chose to supplement it with the likes of Toby Nankervis and Dion Prestia. Tom Lynch – the superstar free agent – joined after the first flag. Richmond are operating under a very different and much less certain set of conditions this time around. Bringing in Butters would be an admission that Richmond believes the foundation is solid enough to build on; that the uncertainty has narrowed enough to justify hitting the accelerator, even if it means forgoing some premium draft prospects in the years to come. Not trading for him would be a statement that it hasn’t.
Nobody outside or, frankly, inside Punt Road knows which of those judgments is correct. That’s the uncomfortable truth at the heart of any rebuild – and, really, the reason the frustration of Richmond supporters is understandable even when it isn’t quite warranted. (I’d like to believe I’d be more sanguine if my team was still less than a decade removed from a dynasty, but who knows.) At the end of the day, all of us – supporters, pundits, writers – are just guessing, with different amounts of information and different incentives to pretend otherwise. Clubs will make their choices. Fans will have their feelings. And reality, slowly and without sentiment, will eventually render its verdict.
Straight from the chart
Last week, I posted a chart of how efficiently sides are converting clearance wins into points this season. It’s by no means perfect – it doesn’t take into account accuracy, opponent quality, or a side’s quality on other lines. But as a single proxy for clearance quality, I think it works. This week, I thought it would be worth exploring the inverse statistic: how many points sides are conceding for each opposition clearance win.
Again, this is by no means perfect. It is also a proxy measure for the quality of a team’s defensive structures outside of the contest bubble (or, even more basically, a measure of how efficiently teams create spares in defence). But I think that, beyond saying something about midfield personnel quality (and age), it also tells you a bit about clubs’ risk tolerance. All else being equal, weaker midfields – and more conservative coaches – set up to minimise variance. Neither Justin Longmuir nor Matthew Nicks are universally beloved by their supporters, but they (and their midfield coaches) know how to set up to avoid leaking big numbers from clearances.
Last week, I also shared a chart showing how well teams are converting the turnovers they generate into points. Let’s look at the inverse.
The early-season performance of four teams surprises me here. Given how defensively secure Hawthorn look most of the time, the fact they’re currently conceding the fifth-most points from opposition turnovers – caveat: they’ve played GWS, Sydney, Geelong, and the Bulldogs, – would be a cause of mild concern for Sam Mitchell. Port Adelaide and North Melbourne, two sides usually regarded (justly) regarded as defensively flimsy, are both faring much better to start 2026. North’s defensive numbers have significantly improved through their first six games of the season: the real test will come over the next month, when they face a tougher slate of opponents. Then there’s Sydney. We know about the attacking power. I’m not sure we all knew they could put up those sorts of defensive numbers. For those keeping score: Sydney are second for points per clearance win, first for points per turnover affected, fifth for opposition points per clearance win, and first for opposition points per turnover. Pretty good!
Understanding the origin of teams’ scoring chains is one of the most effective ways, at least in general terms, to describe how they play. The basic, highly stylised contrast is between teams which press to win the ball back high up the ground versus those which are happy to allow the ball to come closer to their defensive goal, create intercepts, and then exploit large amounts of space out the back.
I certainly hadn’t anticipated the Eagles’ scoring profile to have changed so much. Last season, 49.7 percent of the Eagles’ scoring came from forward half chains (a stat highly reminiscent of the Damien Hardwick Richmond sides Andrew McQualter served his coaching apprenticeship in). Collingwood’s profile is also a far cry from their 2023 Premiership year, when they systematically generated scores from half-back. It’s early – these shares will likely shift. And again, it’s not perfect. A chain which began from a metre behind the centre circle is coded the same way as one that began from a kick-in. But it’s still illustrative.
As I do each week, let’s look at how many possession chains each side generated in its Round 6 matches. The numbers from the Carlton-Collingwood game slightly surprised; watching the game left me with the impression that the game was more interrupted by turnovers than it actually was (I think it was mostly just turgid – before sparking into life in the last quarter).
Elsewhere, Hawthorn would again be (mildly, given they still won the game) concerned to have generated under 100 possession chains. To an extent, possession chains are a proxy for chain quality and result. You can’t generate repeat turnovers and inside 50s if you score with your first one. But generally speaking, creating more chains is a reliable way to win games of footy. Richmond’s number – just 91 – is a stark illustration of where the side is so far in 2026.
Looking at how efficiently each side converted different types of possession chains into scores in Round 6 tells you a lot about how individual games were won and lost. Carlton had more opportunities than Collingwood, but weren’t as efficient. The injury-ravaged Bulldogs couldn’t generate volume or efficiency. The Giants would be kicking themselves for their inability to capitalise on multiple scoring opportunities generated from turnovers but, as the joke goes, they’d probably miss. Gold Coast bled a lot of clearances – a potential subject for a future post – but shot the lights out when they won the ball at stoppage. And Melbourne, historically unlucky last season (they won four fewer games than the numbers said they “should” have), are getting good rolls of the dice so far this season. What a difference it makes.
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Footnotes
According to Wheelo Ratings, which uses a slightly modified form of Champion Data’s player ratings system, Caleb Serong was best afield in Sunday’s Derby – but his game only merited a 15.2 rating, the 51st-best game of the round. That sounded unusual to me, so I asked Andrew Whelan, Wheelo curator, how often that’s happened. It turns out Serong’s game was the equal-seventh lowest highest-rating game in all AFL games since 2012 (excluding 2020, the weird year we all try to forget). It’s also the lowest since the Crows played the Saints at a soggy Adelaide Oval in Round 18, 2024, in a game best remembered as Riley Thilthorpe’s return from injury and debut as a muscle-bound caveman type. The player who rated 15.2 that night? Lachlan Sholl.
Melbourne had 729 games’ worth of experience go out of its side for last Sunday’s game against Brisbane. The Demons’ four inclusions accounted for 24 games’s worth of experience. According to friend of the newsletter, Emlyn Breese, 705 is the 12th-biggest net experience loss for a team that went on to win.
Another one from Sirswampthing: Mason Cox (211cm) and Isaiah Dudley (168cm) set a new record on Sunday for the biggest height difference between two teammates in the V/AFL area.
What unites Xavier Duursma, Nick Vlastuin, Mitch Georgiades, Josaia Delana, Jordan Croft, Jeremy Howe, Griffin Logue, Christopher Scerri, Chayce Jones, and Charlie Ballard? That’s right – they’re the 10 players who have played at least three games this season and have a 100 percent retention rate when kicking inside forward 50. Small sample sizes can produce strange results.
Recommended reading
Sarah Black also decided this was the week to write about the Richmond rebuild. It’s a scrupulous look at the club’s list, its young talent, and where the gaps still are.
Gemma Bastiani picks her AFLW Team of the Decade. It’s well-argued, even if there are some players very unlucky to miss out. Bec Goddard or Doc Clarke to coach, of course.
Jono Baruch, over at The Gardiner Stand (a great example of the intelligent and passionate club-focused content I mentioned in my essay), writes about Michael Voss’s combative press conference defending the club’s conduct during the sad Elijah Hollands saga. It’s well worth a read.
Ricky Mangidis reviews North Melbourne’s big win over Richmond, reflects on the first quarter of the season, and looks ahead to a tougher stretch ahead.
Leigh Eustace on footy, fans, and never forgetting the context of the Anzac Round.