A CLIMBING rope and two carabiners hang on the wall behind Adem Yze's desk inside the Swinburne Centre, overlooking Punt Road Oval. They are a symbol of the theme at Richmond in 2026. Keep climbing.

The Tigers exceeded expectations in Yze's second season at the helm, rising from two wins in 2024 to five last year – and three losses by under a kick – following the departures and retirements of seven premiership heroes ahead of 2025.

Richmond enters this season with the third youngest (24.0 years) and second least experienced (58.7 games) list in the AFL, after selecting eight players in the first round of the past two AFL Drafts, including four inside the top 10.

"I've always had, even as a player, and a lot of teams have, a focus around getting better every day. McLaren have 'every second counts', so we spoke about every minute matters last year,” Yze told AFL.com.au ahead of the Tigers' season-opener.

"We're trying to climb a mountain, so we've got a bit of a mountain theme around the process, around climbing and getting to the top. Irrelevant of however you've gone the year before, there's a process around climbing, so we'll have that same theme.

"We understand where we sit. It's something you can draw on to say this is the start of our trek; last year we got five wins, then this year let's see how many we can get. There's no guarantee, but it's no matter what we're still climbing. We've got a couple of little themes in house that the players are really enjoying, so hopefully that translates onto the field."

WHY YZE WENT TO CROATIA

Yze travelled to McLaren’s Formula 1 base in Surrey, England after his first season in charge, but last year he spent part of the off-season in Croatia inside two football clubs: Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split.

Former Herald Sun soccer journalist David Davutovic helped connect him with Dinamo Zagreb in the capital, while former Socceroos midfielder Josip Skoko is now living in Croatia and linked him with Hajduk on the coast.

Despite being based in a country with a population of only 3.9 million people, both clubs run successful academies that produce high level exports. That was a key reason why, given the rebuild at Richmond, Yze went to look behind the scenes.

"When you look at teams that have been able to produce international standard players, Dinamo Zagreb are high, like they're in a top ten. They are only a small country, but their academy programs are outstanding from when they get them from when they're 13. So there was a lot of just digging in as deep as I can around how they develop talent," Yze said.

"But not only that. What drills do you do and what are you focussed on? And a lot of it was around just the finer details of their execution.

"My first role was a part-time goalkicking coach at Hawthorn, so I could take an iPad out there and film Jack Gunston and Buddy Franklin and Jarryd Roughead. That was the only part of my job, so I had time to then go review it and put different things through the software that we had. Then I could send it and they could watch five edits at home that night on whether they've kicked straight for the day or had some issues with their ball drop. I could look at the finer details of ball drop and where it's hitting on the foot, or if they're leaning back, so the detail of that skill. I had one set of eyes over it.

"So being able to give our coaches that opportunity to do that. If it's handball technique, drop a ball snapping, anything that's got to do with their role, we can give them the big, macro or the micro."

Richmond identified its development department as an area to increase last year and went and secured two of the more sought-after players exiting the game for coaching roles in Hawthorn premiership pair Luke Breust and Taylor Duryea. Yze coached both during his time at Waverley Park and was keen to add them to Jack Ziebell's team.

FIRST ROUNDERS SIDELINED, BUT NOT THIS ONE

The Tigers will start the season with four first-round picks – Taj Hotton (hip), Josh Smillie (quad), Sam Cumming (shoulder) and Tom Sims (foot) – unavailable due to injuries – but the first key draft pick post the 'Dimmasty' is now fully ready to resume his career.

Josh Gibcus has played three senior games since his debut season in 2022 due to long-term knee and hamstring injuries, but after returning for the final round of last season, before Yze subbed him out after half-time to not risk anything, the 22-year-old has banked a full pre-season and rebuilt confidence in his game.

"He wanted to fight me that day, but talking to him about it, it was exactly that. It wasn't about the next 40 minutes of footy, it was about the next ten years of your career. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if you went out and hurt yourself, but it did spur on his pre-season," he said.

"He's had a really, really strong pre-season. He went and did some sprint training with a few other players from other teams off his own bat, which for a key defender was a bit unusual, but he wanted to turn and cut and learn and just get some confidence in his body again.

"I still think he's got a little bit to go with that, I sense he's not playing with as much freedom as what he did when he first came in. That's understandable, but over the last two weeks I've started to see the real Josh. Josh has come out attacking the footy, attacking the contest and almost Thursday night just ready to unleash the shackles. I don't want him to hold back and think about getting through the season. I want him to just go out there and really compete and almost have that same attitude that when he wanted to punch me in the face at half-time late last year, that's the attitude I want him to have all game and all season."

LEFAU PUNISHMENT BACKGROUND

Mykelti Lefau managed only one senior game last year returning from the knee reconstruction that curtailed an eye-catching debut season in 2024, but the key forward won't be available against Carlton on Thursday night after being caught drink driving last month.

Yze said the club punishment, which also included the AAMI Community Series game against Melbourne, a $2500 donation to charity and the alcohol behavioural change counselling course, was sufficient for a player who won Richmond’s community award last year and has been a first class citizen since landing a shot at the Tigers.

"If you were to pick any player on our list that would do it or make a mistake like this, he would be in the bottom three; he won our community award last year; he's an amazing person. So with that, as a footy club, you look at and go, well, that's how mistakes can happen. If someone like 'Kelts' can do something like this and just a silly mistake like that, then anyone can," Yze said.

"Obviously you get your heads together and you need to obviously punish the guy in some way. Taking a couple of games away from a guy that's really driven, and he's had obviously a tough run with injury, we thought was fair. We've got a lot of young players that are looking up to a lot of those guys, a lot of our young forwards look up to Kelts because of the type of person he is, so that was really disappointing.

"We had to obviously punish him where we saw fit. But at the same time, he's such a good character that the way he's trained the last two weeks, he knows he's let the team down, and not only his team, his family and the footy club."

After playing just four games in 2023 and then four in 2024, Tom Lynch played 16 games last year – and would have played more if he didn't cop a five-game suspension for striking Jordon Butts in round 16 – to earn a one-year extension for 2026.

Yze said the 33-year-old still has a key role to play at Richmond, where the next generation of key forwards in Jonty Faull and Harry Armstrong – two first-round picks from 2024 – are still learning the craft.

"He knows how valuable he is to fast tracking the development of those boys in our craft sessions. But when they watch him do what he does out on the field, he's still got a lot left to give," Yze said.

"The voice, the knowledge that he's got out on the field, obviously there's what he does off the field and inside our four walls with education and craft, but out there, the way he crashes packs, his technique in aerial contests, it's the reason why he's been such a good player for a long, long period of time. He can have a huge impact on the field for this year, next year."