Quote Originally Posted by Belgian Saint View Post
The last tackle was a weakness last year, but though Richardson is the player executing, should it all be down to him. You would expect that we would have some sort of plan as to what we will do in certain situations, and, that senior players would have some input on the field. I know you cannot cover every contingency, and when things don't go to plan the he has to make better decisions, but very often last year he was given the ball on the last because whatever we were trying to do on that tackle failed.
There's probably some truth in that, but what I remember most often is the ball coming to Richardson on the last tackle and him either a) running it, b) chucking it out to the threequarters, or c) running backwards and forwards across the line looking for a gap before deciding to kick, by which point the defence is all over him and the kick is invariably poor. And, ultimately, if you are the only player in the team with a kicking game then yes, the last tackle options are down to you.

I don't mean to say that Richardson is to blame for our failure to win major silverware last year. I think it was just a key weakness of our squad that we only had one player capable of running the last-tackle plays, and that player happened to be a rookie with only a handful of games under his belt. While we've started well this year I'm not convinced that we've fixed that problem.

All it will take for DR to improve is a shift in mentality, IMO. From what I've seen of him I get the impression that he sees kicking on the 5th as a last resort ... as if it is an admission of failure. I think he just needs to learn that he can make a huge contribution to the team with his kicking as well as (or more than) his running and handling.