HURT TIGERS SKIP THE HUB

RICHMOND is expected to miss up to six of its premiership stars for the early part of its hub stay after an injurymarred win over Melbourne yesterday.

Midfielders Trent Cotchin (hamstring) and Dion Prestia (ankle), and ruckman Toby Nankervis (ankle) all face multiple weeks on the sidelines after going down in the 27point victory at the MCG.

Spearhead Tom Lynch broke his finger but played on wearing a glove.

Veterans Bachar Houli and Shane Edwards were also expected to stay home with their families instead of joining the Tigers in their Gold Coast hub from Monday.

Houli’s wife gave birth to a boy last week, while Edwards’ partner is heavily pregnant.

Hardwick said the Tigers planned to speak to the pair about their availability after more talks with their families.

The coach said he was excited to inject some young talent into the team over the next month with some of its biggest names out of action.

“It (the win) has come at a hefty price,” Hardwick said.

“But those boys will be back. We get an opportunity to see some other players fulfil some roles which excites us.

“We have been down this path before and we have dealt with it and I’m sure we will deal with it pretty well again.”

Pressed on Edwards, whose wife was “pretty close to giving birth now”, and Houli, Hardwick said “we are still working through that at this stage”.

“We fly out Monday at 1pm, but we sort of have a reasonable idea what it looks like but we won’t finalise things until tonight,” he said.

“We weren’t going to make decisions on players until we got through tonight.”

The Tigers will also be without gun defender David Astbury (knee).

Hardwick said the Tigers would opt against taking their full squad to Gold Coast in preparation for Sunday’s clash against Sydney Swans at the Gabba.

“We are probably a side that will look at fast-tracking the development of some of our players (in Melbourne),” he said.

“The overriding impression we got from the AFL — and I hope they are pretty strong on this — is that there would be no other scrimmage games up there. So there will be some players that will stay ... and we will have a couple of coaches stay, we will teach them the Richmond way and we expect that will be a reasonable result for us.”