The Richmond Tigers have resumed training in preparation for the 2018 AFL Premiership competition and the pledges to maintain the spirit and intensity that led to a flag in 2017 were not long in coming.
Captain Trent Cotchin will lead the Tigers for the first time as a premiership captain. The Tigers were one of the last to start getting ready for 2018, but Cotchin has had over two months to prepare his press talk, complete with tiger metaphors, was more than ready.
“We’re going out there to hunt as we did in 2017,” he said. We created a really energetic and exciting environment from day one of pre-season and we’re looking to do the same. “The outside will want us to crumble under that pressure, but the reality is we had a really consistent year in 2017. We put some things in place and we continued to grow.”
He went on, at length, but you get the idea. There will be no resting on laurels or lounging about the lair gorging on last year’s kills.
The Tigers had not won a premiership since almost four decades in the past, so the Tiger analogies seemed original.
“The foundations that we created last year, if we can continue to build on those and repeat the sort of effort and intensity, that will hold us in good stead,” Cotchin said.
Cotchin was immediately thrown the lob about the Tigers having a premiership hangover, when he was asked to compare his club’s 2018 to future to that of the 2017 Western Bulldogs, who could not back their 2016 flag, or even make it back to the finals last season.
“I don’t know if it’s a premiership hangover. For whatever reason some clubs don’t perform to the level that’s expected the year following.”
Well done, Mr. Cotchin. Another few years of footy and you could do well as a paid spokesperson, perhaps for Emirates Airlines, or you could have a bright future as an MP from your birthplace.
