Collingwood’s emerging talent has shone through - but it was too little, too late for their premiership defence. And the reality of Richmond’s rebuild has hit as hard as ever, as a 20-year call looms amid trade chaos. The big issues from Round 24 of the 2024 AFL season analysed in As eight teams enter finals season, 10 others flip their focuses to the silly season.
And there will be no bigger off-field player and more newsworthy club over the coming months than Richmond. For the Tigers’ raft of calls threaten to blow the off-season up, as they’ll dictate the rhythm of the trade period and, therefore, the draft. A 28-point loss to Gold Coast on Saturday ensured Richmond finished the 2024 season with its first wooden spoon since 2007 and its worst winning season on record.
It comes amid a true changing of the guard, with premiership trio Dustin Martin, Dylan Grimes and Marlion Pickett all retiring. As pointed out on the Fox Footy coverage at half-time of the Tigers-Suns game, only seven players from Richmond’s drought-breaking 2017 premiership team remain at the club: Daniel Rioli, Jack Graham, Dion Prestia, Nick Vlastuin, Nathan Broad, Toby Nankervis and Kamdyn McIntosh. Yet that could be cut to five in a month’s time.
“It feels like yesterday we were celebrating that premiership drought, but we are seven to eight years on from that now,” triple premiership Tiger Jack Riewoldt told Fox Footy. “The next dynasty and generation of Tigers will need to start to ev.