RICHMOND fans may have to thank Dion Prestia for the one-point triumph over Hawthorn, after the senior midfielder took over a meeting last week to run through plays in tight game scenarios.
Interim Tigers coach Andrew McQualter revealed the three-time premiership midfielder had flagged he wanted to reiterate what the team should do when the game is on the line – a situation which has haunted Richmond time and time again over the past two seasons.
"All credit goes to the players for that (close win). I want to single out Dion Prestia. Last week, he got the group together, and he took scenarios. It's a credit to our leaders in getting it done," McQualter said.
"We've spoken about it before, late in games, it's about moments and people getting things done in critical moments. The leadership he's shown – amidst some of our other leaders – we were able to get the result because of it.
"We have little sessions planned for things we want to achieve, and Dion put his hand up and said, 'I want to nail this'. He took control of it and worked with the coaches to get the scenarios right, there were things we wanted.
"But it just shows, most of it comes from the players, which is great."
Substitute Matt Coulthard provided some much-needed spark in his first game, coming on in the third quarter and bringing some zing to the half-forward line, setting up two fourth-quarter goals.
"I'm just rapt for him. They took (forward Denver) Grainger-Barras off, so we took (defender Tylar) Young out of the game as a tactical substitution.
"Matty showed us what we've seen at VFL in the past five weeks. His run and work-rate, he really connected our forwards a few times. He really gave our players some energy coming on, as well."
Richmond executed a six-goal turnaround from the end of the third quarter to over-run the Hawks, who certainly gave the Tigers a fright.
The ability for the older, more experienced Tigers to prepare for close finishes in comparison to the Hawks was made clear by coach Sam Mitchell.
"I'm sure there were positives out of that game, but I can't find any yet. I'm enormously disappointed, to give up a lead, having played so well for so long and not been able to retain it – it's part of our learning," Mitchell said.
TIGERS v HAWKS Full match coverage and stats
"The more close games we play, the better we will get at them. We haven't done a lot of scenario training – two goals up, two goals down, two minutes to go – we haven't done a lot of that training, because being in games has been a challenge for us across the course of the year.
"As we develop our group, we're going to get better at dealing with those moments. We had some players who really stood up, and some who have got some learning to do. Even the way we communicate with each other on the field, we didn't get much right in the last quarter."
Mitchell said consistency within games, and giving themselves a chance to be in a winning position more often would allow the group to train last-minute scenarios more frequently.
"We kept trying to attack at the start of the last quarter and a lot of things went wrong, a lot of skill errors. We made some mistakes and that gave them momentum. As we tried to slow the game down, we all weren't on the same page and we had some trouble getting the message across to everyone," Mitchell said.
"We've got some players who did some things that showed a lack of experience and it wasn't really on them, it was our communication and how we got across to everyone. They were coming and they were coming and they were coming, and could we hold them off long enough?
"At the start of the quarter, I thought if we could find ways to score, then they couldn't win. We went with that for a while, till it was clear that wasn't going to work. Then we tried to run the clock (down), and didn't quite run it for long enough."
