Posted on May 13, 2009 | Category: Players
Despite the doom and gloom, Saturday was not a complete loss: for starters Cousins got through the match unscathed. But more than that, we saw two young players prove that they’re a cut above a great number of their more experienced teammates.
Big Angus put in one of the best Richmond ruck performances I’ve seen in a long time. It probably didn’t hurt that his opponents were mostly makeshift ruckmen (Brennan even had a go for a while), but he ended up with a huge amount of ball for the game, all around the ground. He even kicked a vitally important goal, and gave some top quality ball in stoppages and centre bounces. Fitness does look like being a short to medium term issue: he was cramping so badly late in the game at one stage that he looked to have done a hammy. But if he can get the miles in his legs: Graham looks like the obvious choice for the number one ruck spot.
Nahas looked lively all game, got plenty of the ball and mostly made good decisions with it. Kayne Pettifer will be crying himself to sleep at the thought of how hard he’ll have to work to get back into the team now that we have a small forward who is willing to chase and run. But more than any of that, the most impressive thing I saw happened very late in the game. By this stage Brisbane were playing keepings off as they iced the clock. And they were consistently finding a loose man, but there was little Nahas – desperately chasing down every loose player and screaming at his teammates to cover the man left behind. Every other player was out there doing the minimum they could to not look bad, but there was Robin Nahas, still desperate to put as much pressure on the opposition as possible in the hope that we might steal the ball for a quick goal. It spoke more clearly about the character of the man than all his tackles combined.
So there is hope. It’s not the kind of hope that can make you feel that everything’s alright, but it is the hope that maybe, one day, it might be.
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