RICHMOND president John O'Rourke has backed Adem Yze to be the long-term coach for the Tigers, saying the club is "confident' its rebuild strategy will pay off. 

The Tigers' 114-point drubbing against Sydney on Saturday was the worst defeat of Richmond's season and the second-heaviest loss under Yze.

That performance came after a positive month for the Tigers, who had claimed wins over West Coast and Essendon in the previous four weeks to lift themselves off the bottom of the ladder. 

Pressure quickly builds on the coaches charged with leading a rebuild, one reason the Tigers moved to extend Yze's deal with the club until the end of 2028 last year.

Yze has won nine of 58 games as Richmond coach since being appointed for the 2024 season, but O'Rourke said the club had full faith in him to lead it out of the bottom of the ladder.   

"We don't want to put timeframes on wins and losses, particularly when he's had one hand behind his back with the availability this year. We're very confident in where Adem's taking the group and we've extended him out to the end of '28. I think that's a really deep commitment on our part," O'Rourke told AFL.com.au in an extensive interview ahead of the defeat to the Swans.  

"But it's also a solid and realistic commitment to say we expect that the growth will continue through that period. I'm very confident that the evidence will be there to say that the strategy is working and Adem's working and he's a long-term coach for us."

Richmond made the bold decision to cut back its list in 2024, just four years after its 2020 premiership ended a golden flag run, and agreed to trades for Liam Baker, Daniel Rioli and Shai Bolton. Jack Graham also departed as a free agent. 

Getting in a swathe of draft picks that year, as part of a plan to do all their picking before Tasmania's entrance, was step one in a rebuild plan O'Rourke expects to take at least six years after their successful era ended swiftly with Damien Hardwick's exit in 2023. 

"It can creep up on you pretty quickly. We have to accept that it ended faster than we probably thought and hence we pivoted quite quickly to go to the draft and trading out some players while they still had really strong currency," O'Rourke said. 

"But there is a realism that that can take time. We went back over all the data and history says to be going from the bottom to genuinely contending, it's a six to seven-year journey. That was the history of Richmond as well going back to the beginning of the Hardwick era. That's how long it took. 

"It can be shorter than that in terms of being competitive and playing well against the good teams, so that part of the journey can happen quickly. But we're all about the ultimate prize. That's what we're here for, to get back to the premiership window, and that's going to take some time."

Richmond considered trying to beat football gravity – like Geelong, Sydney and Collingwood have managed – but chose the draft route. Its loss to the Swans on Saturday was a reminder of the gap between top and bottom of the ladder. 

"It's right for us, not right for everyone. Some clubs come at it a different way and do a great job in staying competitive all the way through. But for us at that time, I think it was the right call," he said. 

O'Rourke, who took over the Richmond presidency in 2022, steered the decision along with the club's leaders. The Tigers look headed for their third-straight bottom-two finish. 

Judging the club's progress, O'Rourke admits, has been made "frustrating" by the extreme injury list featuring a stack of their early picks – like Sam Lalor, Josh Gibcus, Taj Hotton, Tom Sims, Josh Smillie, Jonty Faull and Harry Armstrong.

He said the club would continue to review why it has had so many serious injuries, particularly to its younger crop of players who are shouldering its long-term rebuild hopes.  

"The diversity of the injuries is quite remarkable. I would say there's no wholesale review at the end of the year. We're just constantly looking at it and we'll go deep into it again prior to next pre-season as well," he said. 

"A key part of what we wanted to achieve was just getting games into those young players and for all sorts of reasons that hasn't happened as quickly as we'd like." 

In an exclusive interview with AFL.com.au, O'Rourke also discussed the Tigers' redevelopment of Punt Road Oval, whether the club plans on selling more home games, its hope to be at the forefront of the League's expansion into the Indian market, and why the AFL should be less restrictive on clubs. 

INTERIM HOME NOT FAR AWAY

RICHMOND is weeks away from settling on its interim home base, with the Tigers now waiting on Melbourne's decision on Waverley Park before confirming their short-term move.

Melbourne has been given until the end of June to make its call whether it takes up the AFL's offer to move to the League-owned Waverley or whether it stays with its current split home base and focuses on building its Caulfield Racecourse facility.

O'Rourke said the club was close to finalising where it would be located for a period from the end of this season and into 2027 while its mega redevelopment of its Punt Road headquarters gathers pace. 

"For us it’s a temporary situation, we're talking about six or seven months of disruption. But we will want to be in a position to be prepared for that move over the next five or six weeks where we'd want to have that sorted out," he said.

"It's getting closer but I'm sure between us, the AFL and Melbourne coming to views on what they want to do, we'll sort it out."

The upshot essentially is if Melbourne chooses to relocate to Waverley then the Tigers can take on Gosch's Paddock and the Dees facilities for the short-term, but if the Demons opt against Waverley, then the Tigers would take that venue. 

"Both those options are on the table. They're not the only options if we had to think about others or they didn't come up to speed. But yeah, I think they're the most logical things for us and we're probably 50-50 on those two options. We'll work with it and make it work for our club."

Richmond's redevelopment of its home base is expected to be completed in the middle of 2027 and will include state of the art facilities, a new Jack Dyer Stand, resizing the training venue to MCG dimensions and a three-level underground car park. Before the recent Dreamtime at the 'G match, O'Rourke led a 'topping out' ceremony where the building had reached its maximum height in an important marker for the build. 

"It's on time and it's on budget. It's fabulous for our players and staff and coaches and all of our community programs as well," he said. "For us it's about the location to have that on the doorstep of the MCG." 

TIGERS WANT TO LEAD AFL'S INDIA STRATEGY

RICHMOND wants to be a central part of the AFL's plans on attracting more Indian fans to the game.

AFL boss Andrew Dillon travelled to India earlier this year as the League pushed to establish a foothold in one of the world's fastest-growing sporting markets and the Tigers are on board as being key allies in that strategy. 

O'Rourke said discussions were already underway with the AFL to spearhead the code's hopes to build more of an imprint in the growing Indian community in Australia, particularly given the tiger is India's national animal. 

"If you project forward and you look at some of our key catchment areas around, for example, the southeast of Melbourne, the Indian community is huge and growing strongly. We've been thinking about that and thinking about how do we get that community engaged in AFL and supporting AFL?" O'Rourke said. 

"We need that to happen because the numbers are pretty stark. If you go beyond 2030 and you go to 2040, the percentage of the population that hasn't come from a typical AFL background is huge. We've got to be embracing that. We're onto the view that India could be important for us.

"Our thinking is about how we engage our domestic community. If the AFL's got interest in how we can expand the code in India as well that could be part of that, and how we work with them to both leverage off what we think are the opportunities there. Our focus is local but we're happy for the AFL to be investing and happy to be trying to help where we can to build that out as well."

Tigers CEO Shane Dunne and executive Simon Matthews have been in discussions with the AFL about building the Indian market in Australia, with Richmond keen to lean on its Aligned Leisure facilities to access kids in the region as a starting link to the game. 

"What are the touchpoints that we can just get them engaged, even from a social, health and fitness point of view initially? There's some plans around that that we've shared with the AFL," he said.

"There might be some opportunities for joint investment in those initiatives. It's still early days but we've got a plan through to 2030. We're going to have a crack at it." 

TASMANIAN TIGERS

IN ROUND 14 the Tigers will host Brisbane at Ninja Stadium in Tasmania, in the first of two home games the club sold to the state for the 2026-27 seasons before the Devils enter the competition.

It will bring in a $1 million windfall for the Tigers, which comes at a critical time during their Punt Road redevelopment, but there are no plans yet to continue to sell off home games beyond next year.

O'Rourke said the club had not discussed sending a home game to Darwin as Gold Coast looks to wind back its agreement there. 

"The Tasmanian opportunity presented itself at the right time. It's a two-year arrangement. Our priority, though, remains home games at the MCG. That's what our Tiger army want and our membership's important to us so we don't want to compromise that. This year we effectively transferred a Marvel home game to Tassie," he said.

"It was opportunistic in that they wanted more content in Hobart with North Melbourne's exit ahead of the Tassie team and it was a good commercial arrangement. 

"It commercially looks like it's going to be very successful. Everything has sold out. It works for us financially in the situation we're in while we're going through a big redevelopment. But I wouldn't want to put out there that we've got games for sale. We need to be playing 10, 11 home games at the MCG. That's our number one priority." 

The Devils have targeted Richmond's No.1 pick Sam Lalor and close friend Finn O'Sullivan at North Melbourne as a package deal, but the Tigers have no concerns around Lalor's future. 

O'Rourke said he still speaks with former Tigers chief executive and new boss of the Devils, Brendon Gale, but hadn't raised the Lalor pursuit yet. 

"I haven't addressed that particular topic [with Gale]. I think we'll be fine with Sam and it's up to us to make our environment a thriving one," he said.

"I talk to Brendon at a higher level on occasion and want to be supportive because we do support the Devils coming in, we supported it quite strongly when it was being debated in the AFL.

"I actually think it'll be a success and it'll be good for Victorian fans as well to have that as another option to round out your sort of social enjoyment of the fixture." 

'THE BALANCE SHEET IS REALLY STRETCHED' 

WHAT is the biggest concern Richmond has about the competition right now?

O'Rourke says it is the tightening regulations around the game's financial models that are proving difficult to navigate, even as one of the AFL's powerhouse clubs. 

"If I had to pick one issue that we worry about as a club, it is a highly regulated competition and it's built that way to try and make it as even as possible for 18, soon to be 19, clubs to be competitive week in, week out," he said.

"But the regulations that come with that that are controlled by the AFL means from a club perspective, it's a pretty tough business. Financially it's difficult, even for a very strong club, from Richmond's point of view. Our key revenue streams are highly regulated. 

"We're working really hard to find alternative revenue streams and growing businesses and we're probably ahead of the game in that. But it's hard work and big investment.

"One of our key discussion points with the AFL is we accept the whole spirit of the regulated environment and club distributions that need to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of clubs.

"But we've just got to be careful that we also allow clubs to grow and flourish and innovate themselves and have an investment capacity to be able to do it."

Richmond's investment in Aligned Leisure and the Richmond Institute of Sport have been financial rocks for the club as it goes through the downswing of time at the bottom of the ladder after their flag era. 

"Our member numbers are still strong, but the yield is down. And our fixturing is such that when you're not playing those marquee games and your crowds are down a bit, that impacts another key revenue stream out of the MCG and that's match receipts," he said. 

"Those two things are down a bit. They're holding up well in the circumstances, but we have to lean on those other businesses to be in a breakeven position. When you're trying to do that as well as finance a big capital redevelopment – a $100 million project – the balance sheet is really stretched."