What Could Richmond Lose by Finding the Right Player for the Wrong Job?
Richmond can recruit a gifted footballer and still lose value in the job it asks him to perform. The troubling possibility is that a mismatch may cost more than the player’s own missed contribution: teammates can be shifted to cover the gap, development time can go elsewhere, and later recruiting may be needed to repair what the original investment was meant to provide. Yet a player thriving in a new role does not prove the first one was wrong. Daniel Rioli helped Richmond win premierships as a pressure forward before earning a Jack Dyer Medal in defence; Jay Schulz went on to a much larger forward return at Port Adelaide. What, then, would show that Richmond’s position choices wasted value rather than developed it? In the full feature, we examine Rioli’s premiership pressure work, defensive transition and the teaching that made his new role possible.
The tempting answer is to compare a player’s Richmond output with what came later. But those numbers do not hold age, teammates, opportunities, health or responsibility constant. A half-back may touch the ball more than a pressure forward without making the forward contribution worthless; a key forward’s later supply may differ from what Richmond could have provided. The deeper question is what work the club assigned, what evidence it had, and what other work changed around the player. Rioli, David Astbury, Schulz and Matthew Richardson offer sharply different tests, not interchangeable examples of a single mistake. Their stories invite scrutiny of the price paid across a team, while leaving open whether the largest cost lies in a particular career or in how clubs evaluate roles. In our Members investigation, we trace Astbury’s early defensive projection against his three-goal debut and injury-interrupted seasons.
When does a positional change become a costly mistake?
Rioli makes it difficult to treat a later positional success as proof of an earlier failure. His pressure-forward work was part of Richmond’s premiership sides, and a forward’s value can include keeping the ball in attack or opening space for a teammate, not just personal statistics. His eventual defensive success matters too, but learning half-back decisions and patterns was part of that transition; pace alone did not supply the whole job. The unresolved issue is when a role that once delivered value stops being the best use of a player’s developing abilities. If Richmond recognised that change late, the cost might be real; if it changed his role at the right time, the same career could tell a different story. In the full feature, we test Schulz’s Richmond and Port Adelaide returns against the deeper role, fitness and confidence behind his resurgence.
Astbury’s timeline complicates a different accusation: that Richmond spent years discovering a defender in a forward. His three-goal debut makes that story easy to tell, but the contemporary accounts describe defence as a possible long-term home before his first season ended. Injury then sharply limited his chances to establish himself, so elapsed calendar years cannot be treated as uninterrupted positional experimentation. His eventual defensive reliability also mattered beyond his own statistics: a trusted matchup can affect what other defenders are free to do. The test is not simply whether his first AFL appearance came forward. It is whether the club’s early projection, the development he received and the opportunities available give grounds to call his eventual role a delayed correction—or a difficult development shaped by interrupted exposure. In our Members investigation, we dissect why player-stat comparisons cannot isolate role value from age, supply, teammates and opportunity.
What does Schulz’s career let Richmond measure?
Schulz presents the harder accounting problem because Richmond selected him as a tall forward, yet Port Adelaide later received 123 games and 275 goals after his 71 Richmond games and 58 goals. That contrast establishes a substantial return Richmond did not keep, but not what the same player would have produced in a different Richmond assignment. At Port, a deeper role with Warren Tredrea unavailable preceded a seven-goal match; Schulz also described changes in fitness, defensive effort and confidence. Role, preparation and opportunity may have reinforced one another. The unresolved question is whether Richmond gave his forward ability a sufficiently clear, sustained test before its assessment closed—or whether the later outcome depended on conditions it could not simply have reproduced. In the full feature, we examine how emergency assignments can distort later judgements of a player’s original strength.
Richardson’s 2008 move to the wing challenges the assumption that changing position means correcting a recruiting error. He was already a major Richmond forward; on the wing he collected 22 Brownlow votes, finished equal third, and continued to kick goals. The shift also changed the work expected of younger forwards, including Jack Riewoldt, rather than creating value only in Richardson’s statistics. That makes the decision a team-level trade-off: what did Richmond gain from moving an established player, and what responsibilities had to be absorbed elsewhere? A vacancy can create opportunity, but it does not guarantee another player will develop. Any judgement must account for the incumbent’s new contribution and the teammates who inherit his former work. In our Members investigation, we follow Richardson’s wing move through his Brownlow season and the forward responsibilities redistributed to younger teammates.
Who must answer for the job a player is given?
The same accounting matters whenever Richmond borrows a player for an urgent vacancy or considers a new long-term role. A defender asked to handle a stronger direct opponent may be filling a need, but those performances do not automatically test his intercepting ability. A forward used mainly to block space may not have a fair chance to demonstrate a projection based on scoring. The question is whether the job, teaching and later judgement align—and whether teammates’ responsibilities become easier or harder as a result. Recruiting, coaching and development all shape that test, while injuries and team needs can limit it. So when a player’s career changes direction, what evidence would let Richmond distinguish a costly mismatch from a necessary experiment that produced value elsewhere? In the full feature, we test how recruiting, coaching and development should account for role evidence, interruptions and costs borne by teammates.
Not a member yet? Join RTSSG for the complete investigation and more Richmond research.
Richmond news by Richmond people, for Richmond people.
Comments