Tiges keen to make COVID-year history

RICHMOND coach Damien Hardwick has declared this season will mark “one of the greatest premierships ever won” as the Tigers prepare to reboot their assault on a third flag in four years.

The reigning premiers returned to training yesterday with star midfielder Dustin Martin spearhead of the first group of eight to hit Punt Road with strict social distancing in place.

But despite the hurdles still facing football’s June 11 return and every team’s adjusted preparations, Hardwick insists that whichever team salutes — whenever that may be — will go down in the annals of football history.

“For us, it’s an opportunity. It’s great,” the coach said.

“I know a lot of people have probably jumped up in arms a little bit with regards to ‘it’s going to be an unfair playing field, it’s going to be a little bit different’.

“But this will be one of the greatest premierships ever won in AFL. The circumstances that we’re in presents an enormous opportunity for our footy club and our players are very much looking forward to it, as are our coaching staff and our fans.

“We can’t wait for it to start and we’re very excited about what it may look like and the challenges that it presents.”

Martin joined premiership skipper Trent Cotchin, Dion Prestia, Kane Lambert and grand final sensation Marlion Pickett in yesterday’s early session.

While some teams have opted to separate star players into different groups in order to avoid losing a swag of key players in the event of a coronavirus infection, Hardwick said his team’s synergy outweighed any risks, instead opting to group players by position.

“We’ve just backed in our system,” he said.

“At the end of the day, you worry about what we can control. Our backs are all together, our mids are all together. We’ve got an understanding of what that looks like, but the connection of how we play is vitally important.

“For us, it was about let’s get the connection of our team up and going straight away. We’ve got great faith in our players with regard to the hygiene … social distancing. They’ve been very well educated with that, so we’re very confident they’ll be OK.

“Our biggest No. 1 priority is getting our side playing together as quickly as we can in this threeweek period.”

Bachar Houli is the only Tiger to ease back into training after pulling up sore in recent days.

Only 25 club staff — including Hardwick — are permitted to have physical contact with players in what the coach admitted was a challenging selection process