RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace says every coach in the AFL agrees they’ve never instructed their teams to lose a game of football to improve their drafting position.

As the Tigers haven’t made a finals appearance since 2001, they’ve been able to accumulate a raft of strong picks in the years since, with the likes of Brett Deledio, Richard Tambling, Trent Cotchin, Adam Pattison and Jack Riewoldt all coming from the first round of the national draft.

Along with Carlton and Melbourne, Richmond were again criticised in 2007 for perhaps fielding teams not as strong as they could have been in the hope of procuring young talent at the end of the year.

However, Wallace is adamant no coach goes into a match hoping to lose, and says something needs to be done to fix the perception of tanking.

“We asked it at the coaches’ conference yesterday and we think it’s a real perception out there in the marketplace, and as a group of coaches together we felt strongly that it wasn’t in the coach’s best interests (to lose) and never has been,” Wallace told the media at Punt Road on Friday afternoon.

“Virtually everyone says players play the game and they don’t tank, so therefore it comes back on the coaches, and we’re not satisfied with that.

“We were unanimous in our view that it needed to be looked at, and we’ll take that back to the AFL that we think there is a perception out there.

Wallace said Richmond’s results in the latter part of last season indicated they tried to the very end.

“Certainly from our group of people and our football club in general, we think that we finished the season on a really honourable note and beat sides that had beaten us earlier in the year,”

But Wallace admitted he still wasn’t totally comfortable with the existing priority pick system.

“What I said before the last round [last year] was that I don’t necessarily like the ruling, which has us scrutinised in such a manner...every move we made and everything we did was scrutinised more [in the last round] than what it would have been on any other occasion,” he said.

“Clearly, yesterday we were strong on the fact (the picks) put us in a compromised position.”

Wallace said it was important the issue of list management was separate from deliberately losing.

“I think the Kangaroos did a fantastic job in getting some of their injuries fixed up early in the piece (last year) and then coming back and having a fantastic summer, getting on top of that and it worked out very well for them.

“I think Collingwood a few years ago did the same, so I think list management is completely different thing to the whole tanking issue.”