With Tom Lynch set to join Richmond as a free agent in the upcoming trade period, Tim Watson is incredibly impressed with their ability to balance their salary cap.
The Tigers have re-signed stars Jack Riewoldt, Alex Rance and Dustin Martin in the last 12 months on top of luring the Gold Coast captain.
“They’ve done a magnificent job of getting Lynch and they’ve done an amazing job to fit him into their salary cap,” Watson told SEN Breakfast.
“They’ve got five franchise players now. Trent Cotchin, Alex Rance, Jack Riewoldt, Dustin Martin and now Lynch.
“Then they’ve got to keep Shane Edwards who was just All-Australian, Kane Lambert who might be in their top five players, they’ve got great players in their backline like Dylan Grimes and other young players coming through.
“I mean, it’s an amazing job they’ve been able to do there at Richmond.”
Former Melbourne captain Garry Lyon believes it shows the kind of group they’ve built.
“It goes to the selflessness of the group,” Lyon said.
Riewoldt in particular is known to have taken a pay cut to help Richmond keep this list together.
Watson wonders how the Tigers will balance their new-look forward line.
“Next year they’ll have Tom Lynch and Jack Riewoldt in their forward line,” he said.
“It presents a good problem to play both those guys there. Tom Lynch with that sort of ball supply and in a great team like Richmond, how many goals could he kick?”
Lyon replied, saying coach Damien Hardwick will prefer balance over a dominant forward.
“Well this is the thing, Damien Hardwick is on the record as saying we don’t want Jack to kick 80, we don’t want one player to be a dominant goal kicking force so if Lynch kicks 50 and Riewoldt kicks 50, I reckon they’ll be happy with that outcome,” Lyon said.
“They won’t set it up so he kicks 90 goals. I think it’s such a great thing for Richmond, but the way they set up and their philosophy hasn’t been to isolate and make one person the key.”
The Tigers will take on Hawthorn tonight at the MCG in a Qualifying Final.