Two More Locked In — Try Not To Spill Your Beer

Somewhere in the bowels of Punt Road this week, two blokes signed a bit of paper, shook a hand or two, and nobody had to front a press conference explaining why it definitely wasn’t a demotion dressed up as a “restructure”. That, friends, is what passes for a good news day at Tigerland in 2025 — one-year extensions for the utility and the pocket rocket, locking them in through to 2027, and not a single asterisk in sight.

No drama. We checked twice.

I want to be upfront: I went looking for the catch. Years of supporting this football club have trained me to treat “good news” the way you’d treat a free parking spot right out the front of the MCG — lovely, but surely there’s a council officer about to materialise with a fine. There isn’t one here. Two players, both of whom do the unglamorous stuff that doesn’t get you on the Friday night highlights package, have been tied down for another season. That’s it. That’s the story. I know, I’m devastated too.

The utility is the sort of player who gets talked about by commentators in that slightly apologetic tone — “he can play half-back, he can play the wing, he’s given it a crack up forward” — which is commentator-speak for “we’re not entirely sure what he is, but the team seems better with him in it than out of it”. The pocket rocket, meanwhile, is exactly what it says on the tin: compact, combustible, the kind of player who wins you a contested footy in a pack of taller blokes and then sprints 40 metres like he’s being chased by the tax office.

Why this actually matters more than it sounds

Look, I’m not going to stand here and tell you this is a marquee re-signing that changes the trajectory of the club. It’s not. Nobody’s ringing triple-m breakfast radio about it. But if you’ve watched this list get rebuilt from the studs up over the past decade — and let’s be honest, some of us watched it get rebuilt, collapse, and get rebuilt again — you learn to appreciate the blokes who just quietly do their job and then do it again next year.

Clubs don’t win finals on star power alone — ask any Richmond supporter who sat through the lean years waiting for a number one draft pick to turn into a top-four side on his own. It never works like that. What wins you September is depth, versatility, and players who accept their role without ringing their manager every second Tuesday demanding a trade to somewhere sunnier. A utility who can plug three positions and a small forward-cum-midfielder who brings genuine heat to a contest are exactly the type of player you want on modest, sensible deals rather than chasing them on the open market in eighteen months’ time.

The cap management angle nobody wants to talk about

One-year extensions tell you something too, if you’re reading between the lines — which, again, is a pastime Richmond fans have had plenty of practice at. It’s not a four-year ring-fence. It’s the club keeping its options open while still rewarding form and fit. In the current cap environment, where every list manager in the competition is doing mental gymnastics trying to fit a top-eight list onto a mid-table budget, that kind of flexibility is worth more than it looks on the surface.

It also tells you the club rates these two enough to keep them, but isn’t about to hand out a blank cheque for a bloke who, let’s be fair, isn’t walking home with a Brownlow medal any time soon. That’s not an insult — it’s just the honest tier of player we’re talking about. The honest tier is underrated. The honest tier is why your best eighteen actually function as a team instead of eighteen individual highlight reels chasing each other around the ground.

What it says about the list rebuild

We’ve banged on for a few seasons now about Richmond needing to find its next era of contested bulls and X-factor smalls, and fair enough — that conversation isn’t going away, and probably shouldn’t. But rebuilds aren’t just about unearthing the next superstar at pick four. They’re about the glue. The blokes who hold a team’s shape together on the field while the kids around them are still working out which boundary line is which.

• Utility types give the coaching box options when the game plan needs tweaking mid-quarter.
• Small forwards who tackle hard keep the scoreboard honest when the big men up forward are having an off night.
• Blokes on sensible one-year deals keep the list sheet tidy for when a genuine star becomes available.

Put those three things together and you’ve got a club that’s thinking a step or two ahead, rather than just lurching from trade period to trade period hoping for the best. I’ll admit — it’s a low bar to clear given our history, but we clear it, and that counts for something.

The gallows humour bit, because of course there’s one

I can already hear the keyboard warriors on the forums typing furiously that this is “nothing news” and the club should be chasing bigger fish. Mate, I’ve sat through number-one draft picks who couldn’t find the goals from 20 metres out directly in front, and I’ve sat through a wooden spoon or two that still haunts me at three in the morning. A couple of reliable, versatile players quietly extending their stay at Tigerland without drama is, in the grand scheme of Richmond’s modern history, basically a day at the beach. I’ll take boring. Boring is underrated. Boring means nobody’s demanding a trade out the back door at Christmas.

So what now?

Don’t expect a parade. Don’t expect Dimma — sorry, old habits — don’t expect the current coaching panel to be dancing on the song meeting table over this one. But do expect these two to keep turning up, keep doing the unsexy stuff that wins you quarters, and keep being the kind of player who makes the bloke next to them look better. That’s worth a one-year deal. Honestly, in this environment, it’s worth more than some four-year ones I could mention at other clubs.

So there you go — two Tigers signed, sealed, and not remotely a soap opera. Around Punt Road these days, I’ll happily settle for boring. We’ve earned a quiet week.