Making Richmond great again starts now
RICHMOND'S lid needs to be blown off.
The Tigers sit third on the ladder, the highest they've been at this stage of the season since 1982.
They have played two bad games for the season – against Adelaide and St Kilda – with four of their six losses by fewer than 10 points.
Dustin Martin is the raging Brownlow favourite.
• Who's on track to take home Charlie? Check out AFL.com.au's Brownlow predictor
And the Tigers are tackling.
For the first time since coach Damien Hardwick took over in 2010, the Tigers have a positive tackling differential.
That's a change for a Tiger team that last season were the only AFL team to not have a single player lay 10 tackles in a game.
And skipper Trent Cotchin is leading the way.
In round 19, he passed 100 tackles in a season for the first time since his Brownlow medal winning season of 2012.
Twice he has laid 10 tackles in a game for this season and he is Richmond's leading tackler.
He sits 19th on the AFL's tackle count in 2017 with 106 tackles and needs just two more to break his 2012 tally.
The Tigers' pressure is forcing turnovers and allowing them to sweep the ball forward with pace, where their three ninjas, Dan Rioli, Jason Castagna and Dan Butler, use irregular means to create goals.
The Tigers have laid the second most tackles inside forward 50, a huge turnaround from last season when they were last in the AFL.
That forward pressure means the Tigers have spent 7.1 minutes more time in the forward half than their opposition, allowing their defence to set up behind the ball.
Pressure has made Richmond the hardest team to score against this season, conceding just 77.1 points a game on average.
It's a premiership formula.
Now the Tigers head to Geelong to book a top four spot and create a top two chance, essential to a team that is yet to win a final under Hardwick.
It's a tough ask. Richmond has not beaten the Cats anywhere since winning at Simonds Stadium in round nine, 2006
- The Tiges have lost 19 of their past 20 games against Geelong
- They've only scored more than 100 points at Simonds Stadium once this century
- Not one player on the list has been involved in a win against the Cats wearing a Richmond jumper.
The Cats will be without skipper Joel Selwood; one bonus as Richmond has not managed to beat Geelong in 12 attempts with Selwood in the team.
Finally ending the streak will remove internal doubts at Richmond as the external hype grows.
The Tigers' draw has been good and four of their losses have been to other top eight aspirants.
But it's their game style that has changed, with pressure the key.
If Hardwick's pre-season promise to make Richmond great again is to become true, it must start with a win in Geelong.
One 89-year-old record that sums up this season
You're not wrong if you think more games than usual are going down to the wire in 2017
With three rounds left to play there have been 27 games decided by less than a goal this season.
It's equal with the record tally of cliffhangers set in 1928, the record holding 88 years until this season had us reaching for the defibrillator.
A final quarter trend that should worry West Coast fans
For the second time in three weeks, the Eagles stopped winning contested ball in the final quarter.
Against Collingwood two weeks ago West Coast gathered 22 fewer contested possessions in the last quarter.
Against the Saints the Eagles were even worse, grabbing 31 fewer contested possessions when the game was up for grabs.
Fast starters? Not the Crows
Greater Western Sydney's 8.6 (54) against the Demons was the club's highest first quarter score, while the Sydney Swans' 7.5 (47) against Geelong equalled their highest first quarter score at Simonds Stadium.
Meanwhile, flag favourites Adelaide have won just eight of 19 first quarters.
The Crows sit 14th for that statistic but rebound quickly, winning 16 second quarters. The Crows must benefit from chats in the huddle with coach Don Pyke because they lead the competition for final quarters won too, with 15 last quarter wins this season.
Speaking of starts to games, Collingwood and North Melbourne managed to rack up 20 behinds in the horrible first half on Saturday night. It's the most behinds kicked in a half at Etihad Stadium.
Read more
• The run home: Tigers loom large, Eagles fall
