DESPITE falling short in its first finals appearance in 12 years, the Richmond class of 2013 will not be a one-September wonder like the classes of 1995 and 2001, Tigers coach Damien Hardwick says.
When the Tigers took to the MCG for Sunday's first elimination final against Carlton on Sunday, they were playing their first final in 12 years.
No player in Richmond's 22 who had started their career at Punt Road had previously played a final, with only the recycled Troy Chaplin (Port Adelaide), Aaron Edwards (North Melbourne), Shaun Grigg (Carlton) and Ivan Maric (Adelaide) boasting September experience.
The Tigers looked right at home in the first half, even before a record elimination final crowd of 94,690, most of whom were clad in yellow and black and expecting big things from their team after a depressingly long wait.
But after dominating general play to half-time and getting out to a 32-point lead at the three-minute mark of the third term, the Tigers were powerless to stop a Chris Judd-inspired Carlton from clawing its way back to a courageous 20-point win.
But where Richmond's playing groups of 1995 and 2001 never made the finals again despite preliminary finals appearances, Hardwick had no doubt his playing list can bounce back and become a regular September participant.
"It's an expectation at this footy club now, (playing in) September," Hardwick said on Sunday.
"Under (president) Gary March and (CEO) Brendon (Gale) we've set an agenda, a blueprint as you say, and we'll work our way through it.
"We've just started to scratch the surface I think, which is important for our fans to know.
"While we're disappointed today we'll certainly go away and work on some things which are going to make us better for the next 12 months."
Hardwick said the Tigers had come a long way in 2013 and said there was still plenty of scope for improvement.
"Our list and our core group of talent is young," he said.
"Cotchin, Deledio, Conca, these type of players are all really young in terms of experience."
To them, Hardwick could have added players such as Dustin Martin, 22, Alex Rance, 23 and Jack Riewoldt, 24.
Hardwick did not think his players had been overawed by the occasion on Sunday, but said they would learn invaluable lessons that they would have the next six months to dwell on.
"I've been around footy a long enough time to know big games are big games," he said.
"There's a lot obviously that hangs on this one. We'll learn some lessons with some stages of play where we had control of the ball and we went too fast.
"It cost us last time versus [Carlton] and it cost us this time. You'd see us streaming through the middle of the ground where we'd just couldn't get our defence behind the ball and you don't score and it ends up coming back the other way."
Conca injured his hamstring barely 10 minutes into Sunday's game and was substituted out of the match soon after.
Hardwick was not sure of the extent of Conca's injury but said it appeared "significant".
