Hawthorn went eight seasons after their three-peat from 2013-15 without winning a final.
Richmond are now in their sixth season since their most recent finals win occurred in the 2020 grand final – their third flag in four golden seasons.
The Tigers have fallen further than Hawthorn ever did when upending their list after Sam Mitchell started in 2022.
But their rise back into contention appears shaky.
Their five wins in the 32 matches they have played since they beat Gold Coast in round six last season have all been against fellow cellar dwellers West Coast and Essendon.
Richmond’s injury list has given them a pass, but it’s also threatening their rebuild because the pipeline letting fresh water in at one end is blocked, while stale water escapes at the other.
Without the delay, their pitch for Zak Butters would look much stronger.
Only two of their eight-man 2024 national draft class – Taj Hotton and Jasper Alger – played against Collingwood, as did top-10 picks in 2025, Sam Cumming and Sam Grlj.
The talent among those draft selections is – apart from the unseen Josh Smillie – evident, but none command different assessments from the ones we could make of them two years ago.
At Hawthorn Nick Watson is already a game-changing star, while Josh Weddle and Cam Mackenzie are established guns from Hawthorn’s 14 draft selections since 2022.
The Tigers have picked 16 players via the national draft in that time and none are established.
We suspect Sam Lalor can reach a high standard, while Steely Green, Jonty Faull, Hotton, Grlj, Cumming, Alger and Luke Trainor look OK. But they are in for a rough time unless the Tigers grab some senior players to help in their development.
Tim Taranto is doing too much heavy lifting.
Nick Vlastuin, Nathan Broad, Jacob Hopper, Dion Prestia, Toby Nankervis and Tom Lynch are trying when available, but they are a peg below their best. None of that six have polled a coaches’ vote so far this season. Ben Miller and Jack Ross have been good but are no stars, and Noah Balta is too inconsistent.
Their skills are below par and their pressure is too low and not consistent enough.
Compare that to Hawthorn in 2023, when James Sicily, Jarman Impey, Karl Amon, Jai Newcombe, Dylan Moore, Luke Breust and Blake Hardwick contributed in positive fashion as a star in Will Day emerged. Jack Gunston returned a year later revitalised after his year in the sun at the Lions.
Their durability kept the balance of senior departures and emerging youngsters in sync.
That equation is out of whack at Richmond, and it is a looming problem they cannot ignore.
Richmond need more than glimpses or responses to poor performances to prove they have the right core of players to support the rebuild.
Leave the kick after the siren alone – we will not cop it
You don’t need much equipment to umpire a game of Australian rules football: A whistle, an earpiece to communicate and a good pair of runners.
You most definitely don’t need, and never have, either a set square or a tape measure.
Did that kick go 15 metres? Did the player run too far? Was that 50-metre penalty actually 50 metres?
We all take such measurements on trust, backing the umpires’ eye, experience and judgment.
Which leads us to the two most disturbing, if not the worst, umpiring decisions to have happened in the modern era, one of which occurred on Thursday night during the Brisbane Lions v Sydney match at the Gabba.
I don’t write lightly that the decisions to disallow goals to the Lions’ Logan Morris and Hawthorn’s Nick Watson, kicked after the siren at three-quarter time and half-time in round 16 and round 12 respectively, threaten the game’s fabric unless such idiocy is called out.
The Watson decision was backed by the AFL, which claimed the Hawks forward had deviated slightly off his line when taking a set shot after the siren.
The Morris decision, meanwhile, was apparently incorrect because – although the Lion was short of the imaginary line between goal, player on mark and kicker when he kicked it – he had kicked “over the man on the mark and has not improved the angle to the goal posts, and therefore play on should not have been called”.
The explanations are bureaucratic garbage from the AFL.
They should have said: The decision was incorrect because the umpires, in both instances, over-umpired in earnest attempts to adhere to an impossible-to-adjudicate rule which is based on such unnecessary, ridiculous fine-margin assessments.
Umpires for 100 years have been able to tell when a player has played on after the siren.
They could tell when a player was gaining an unfair advantage.
Unfortunately now, the next time a player takes a kick after the siren to win the game, as they have 38 times since 2000, we will analyse not just the kick but the player’s line and whether he kicked over the mark in a geometry examination the game just doesn’t need.
Don’t give me the rule. Give me common sense. Watch Geelong’s Jeremy Cameron and Gryan Miers, and Fremantle’s Shai Bolton, but don’t invent subjective boundaries.
The best umpires get it right in the big moments. There is no bigger moment than a kick after the siren if a game is on the line. Normally, they could just watch that the man on the mark didn’t run over it.
That was before their intrusion on Watson’s kick was approved.
We have put up with a lot, but this is where it must end.
Do not mess with the kick for goal after the siren.
As for Chris Fagan’s suggestion that the Lions should get the six points because the AFL admitted error – it’s fair to raise it, but it can’t happen. Adding the goal would be the slipperiest of slippery slopes for the game to head down.
Watson has kicked 39 goals and Morris 38 in 2026. Ben King leads the Coleman Medal on 42.
Essendon need a coaching panel who can teach defence
Galvanising a club is one thing, but the next Bombers’ coaching panel needs to connect the team enough to defend. The Kangaroos waltzed the ball from one end to the other and the winning margin should have been even bigger on Sunday.
Fremantle’s Jade Rawlings is leading the best backline in the competition under master defensive coach Justin Longmuir. Nathan Buckley and John Longmire know about defensive structures, as does Corey Enright, who has spent his time at Geelong and under Ross Lyon at the Saints. Ditto for James Kelly at Geelong alongside Chris Scott.
It’s become a problem Essendon coaches haven’t been able to fix. They need current experience gained away from “the Hangar” to get it done.
A Giant problem
Toby Greene has never played in front of more than 50,000 fans in a home-and-away match. It’s a giant problem for the Giants, who had very few fans on their side among the 35,238 attending Friday night’s match against the Hawks.
He has played nearly 190 of his 276 games (including COVID-affected seasons) with fewer than 20,000 supporters in the grandstand. Friday-night fixtures are rare and home crowds hover around 10,000 spectators.
No one could blame the champion Giant for wanting to play in front of a large crowd with more than half the fans barracking for him. It’s time for the Giants – who have been a great team – to focus on attracting crowds.
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.
