RICHMOND assistant coach Brian Royal says his team's hard-ball skills will help them on Saturday as they work to wash away the memories of the first time they met Geelong last year.

The Cats pounded the Tigers at Telstra Dome early last season, but Royal said Saturday at the MCG was a chance for his club to show how far it had come, despite the Cats having bigger, harder bodies to throw into a possibly wet fray.

"I guess you've just got to have a look at the statistics at the moment – we're the number one hard-ball team in the competition. I don't think it matters the body size, it's about how you go after it," he said after training on Friday morning.

"We're quite considerably number one in that area.

"I guess what we can measure is how much we've improved - no doubt that was a game we'd like to forget, but it keeps getting brought up, and we need to show our supporters we have improved."

Royal said the concept of the honourable loss was wearing thin at Punt Road.

"It is [important to win], and Geelong, over the last couple of times we've played them, have had a good record against us, so that gives them confidence, so it's a great opportunity for us to measure ourselves against the best in the competition."

Gary Ablett is coming off a calf injury that kept him out of last weekend's Hall of Fame Tribute match and there were reports that Steve Johnson was looking a little proppy at training on Friday morning, but Royal said it made no difference to the planning process, and suggested a couple of opponents for star Matthew Richardson.

 "The work that we do on the opposition, we're always preparing for the best side to play, and Ablett and Johnson will be in all our work,” Royal said. “You always hope that they don't, but we'll be expecting them to play.

"I guess they've got a number of players who could play on him [Richardson] – probably [Darren] Milburn is one who could play on him, and they've been playing [Andrew] Mackie also out on the wing, so they're probably the size who could pick him up."