Adem Yze: Can Richmond Review the System before It Reviews the Player?
Updated: Oct 9
The most convenient player to blame is usually the one nearest the mistake when the footage stops. A Richmond defender misses a target, a midfielder fails to close a lane or a forward arrives too late, and the review appears to have found its culprit. But what if that Tiger was already facing two bad choices because the teammate he needed had moved to the wrong place? What if the kick was poor, but the option Richmond trained never existed? Adem Yze has to make his players accountable in 2027. He also has to establish whether his system gave them a genuine opportunity to do the right thing.
That is a much harder exercise than pausing the screen at the final error. It asks Richmond to rewind until it finds the first decision that made the later failure more likely. Who was supposed to provide width? Which player owned the space behind the contest? Was the instruction clear enough to survive an opponent doing something unexpected? In the full RTSSG Members investigation, we examine why the order of a review changes the conclusion and how a football department can separate a player's poor execution from a team structure that left him with no reliable answer.
Did the mistake begin before the player touched the ball?
A turnover might be obvious. The broken chain that produced it may not be. One Richmond player can take the correct first action while a second fails to recognise the next responsibility; the last Tiger then appears careless because the camera catches only his impossible choice. Yet there is a danger in making every error a system error, too. Sometimes the coaching instruction was sound and the player simply ignored it. In the full feature, we dissect the evidence needed to tell those situations apart. We look at what a proper review must reconstruct before anyone can confidently decide whether the problem was design, teaching, recognition or execution.
For Richmond's young list, the way that verdict is delivered may shape the next game as much as the previous one. A teenager repeatedly singled out for the last visible mistake can learn to avoid risks rather than make better decisions. But a review that excuses every poor action teaches him nothing about responsibility either. In our Members investigation, we examine what young Tigers should actually hear in the review room. We ask how the coaches can demand courage and discipline together, and how they stop selection pressure from turning developing players into footballers who choose the safest-looking option rather than the most useful one.
Will Brett Ratten make the review clearer or more complicated?
Brett Ratten's arrival adds coaching experience and a wider view of Richmond's defensive responsibilities across the ground. That should offer Yze another way to examine why an opponent reached the dangerous space or why the same breakdown keeps recurring. But adding expertise does not automatically create clarity. What happens if a young Tiger hears one explanation from one coach and a slightly different one from another? In the full feature, we look at what Ratten should change about Richmond's coaching framework and review process. We examine how shared language, responsibility across lines and in-game adjustments could make the next instruction more precise rather than merely more detailed.
The consequences can reach well beyond Monday's video session. If Richmond blames a player for a structural failure, does it drop the wrong Tiger, teach the wrong skill and carry the same weakness into the next match? If it blames the system whenever a player fails to act, does accountability disappear behind the word 'rebuild'? In the full Members investigation, we dissect how review findings should influence selection and development decisions. We examine when a change to the game plan is justified, when an individual must improve, and who should own the correction before another young player pays for the same breakdown.
What must Adem Yze be able to prove by mid-season 2027?
Richmond does not need a review process that looks impressive because every mistake is analysed from six angles. It needs one that makes the next mistake less likely. That means players must know the cue they missed, coaches must know whether the planned option was actually available, and the team must be able to reproduce the correction under match pressure. In the full feature, we examine the mid-season evidence that would show Richmond's reviews are changing its football — and what Yze ultimately owns if the same failures keep returning. The toughest question is not who made the final error. It is whether Richmond has learned to find the first one.
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