AFTER just one match of the 2009 season, the intense gaze of the football world is locked firmly on Punt Road.

Richmond was belted by Carlton to the tune of 83 points and coach Terry Wallace has admitted that interest in his club would intensify with the result, the hamstring injury to recruit Ben Cousins and next week's date with pre-season premier Geelong.

Following the arrival of former Eagle Cousins and with Wallace in the last year of his current contract, the Tigers had a summer of scrutiny.

"We’re all big boys, we’ve been in this competition long enough and we understand that that puts us squarely in the spotlight," he said after the game.

"Whether that be myself, or the playing group, or the football club in general, we understand that’s the case.

"You have to have a tough resolve in this industry and work hard to get your way over it.

"Obviously we’ve got Geelong next week down at Geelong, which is a tough game, but they still tell me that 13 games normally gets you into a finals campaign, and that’s what we’re going to keep working towards."

Wallace said his side would make no excuses for its season-opening performance and agreed it would have pleased no-one in yellow and black.

"It was incredibly disappointing," he said. "Our fans didn’t want to see what they saw, I don’t want to be sitting here trying to make excuses for what was a poor effort, the players don’t want to be going through any of that as well.

"We had a couple of players who are in our very best players at the club ... I think two blokes had something like 19 turnovers for the night, guys that you wouldn’t expect it from.

"It wasn’t anything we went into the game expecting at all, and we couldn’t have been more disappointed."

Wallace said that key mistakes early on would have dented his players' confidence and, from there, it made it difficult for them to win contests around the ground.

"When you back into the shell, if you’re not attacking the footy you just look second-rate," he said.

"[The players] need to speak to each other about what you need to do to recover from that sort of performance.

"It is one game, but you just can’t sort of say it’s one game and try to just push over the cracks.

"There are some things there that need to be addressed, and the playing group need to address them.

"Including Ben (Cousins), everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong."