What Do Richmond’s Kids Actually Need Experienced Recruits to Do?
Updated: Aug 30
The full RTSSG member feature “Richmond Supporters Aren’t Just Asking for Better Players. They’re Asking for Adults.” is available here.
When Richmond supporters reviewed 2026, some of the clearest calls were for mature bodies, fifty-game footballers and experienced players around the young list. The full RTSSG member feature asks what supporters are really requesting when they use the word “experience”.
Richmond is young. It has removed a huge amount of senior football from the list in a short period and repeatedly asked developing players to learn AFL responsibilities while the team itself is still being rebuilt around them.
But does that automatically mean Richmond simply needs to get older? If the club adds three mature footballers, has it solved anything merely because the average age rises?
What exactly is the experienced player supposed to change? Is the need physical strength, availability, game-state recognition, defensive organisation, ruck support, running durability, leadership, forward structure — or several different problems hiding beneath one word?
Which young Tigers are carrying responsibilities that would be more useful for their development if somebody else owned them for a while? Which responsibilities should never be taken away because learning them is the entire point of the rebuild?
How should Richmond distinguish an experienced recruit who genuinely helps the next team from a placeholder who merely makes the current team look more stable? What evidence would tell supporters the veteran is improving the football of the younger players around him rather than simply occupying a spot beside them?
And if mature help is brought in, when should responsibility begin moving back to the kids? At what point does protection become obstruction? How does Richmond use experience without delaying the very players the rebuild is supposed to produce?
Those are the questions beneath the supporter call for “adults”. The member investigation tests where Richmond is genuinely short of mature football responsibility, what type of help could matter and what the young core should eventually be able to own for itself.
Read the full RTSSG investigation: Richmond Supporters Aren’t Just Asking for Better Players. They’re Asking for Adults.
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