Round 11, 1996 - Richmond vs St Kilda

Richmond are back on the winners list, after methodically taking down St Kilda at the MCG by 34 points.

The Tigers were largely in control for the entire game, and while they were never able to fully blow the Saints away, the strong performance meant they recorded a solid 21.13 (139) to 15.15 (105) victory.

Nick Daffy celebrates one of his five goals.

Coming off the back of three straight losses, Richmond were desperate to record a win to stay within reach of the eight, as were an improved St Kilda.

The Richmond faithful were loud and boisterous, understanding the importance of the occasion and the need for their side to get a victory.

With the Tigers struggling for form, Coach Robert Walls had been experimenting with the structure of the side, with one of those experiments being to deploy Brendon Gale into defence.

The move proved to be a good one, and on Stewart Loewe he won more contests than not, giving Richmond a potential edge in future games to spread their talented talls across the ground rather than just having them all up forward.

Another interesting move was that of Wayne Campbell spending more time across half-back, which proved to be a great move as he set up many of Richmond's run and gun plays throughout the game.

A player who had been out of form in recent weeks was Nick Daffy, but he quickly turned that around with a stunning start to the contest that would just get better as the day wore on.

Richmond's first six goals of the contest were all from individual goal kickers, and broke out to a decent lead early in the second term with a string of goals, before the Saints hit back hard with four in a row of their own.

One of the players giving Richmond trouble was Aussie Jones who booted four goals in the first half, and then bled into the third term also when the Saints pulled the margin back to just nine.

Richmond soon answered with Daffy kicking his third goal, and then just before three-quarter time, the goal sneak kicked two in immediate succession after being dumped after he kicked the first of those two goals.

This would prove to be the backbreaker for the Saints, who besides a late push to pull it back to 16 late in the final term, just couldn't push any further into Richmond's lead before the final siren.

While Daffy was excellent with his five goals, his forward half counterpart Chris Naish was every bit as electric, particularly in the first half.

There weren't many Tiger goals in the first half that didn't involve him in some way, shape or form, and he buzzed around the packs to find his teammates with a nice neat kick or handball, and was as dangerous around goals as ever in his own right.

Campbell was brilliant in the 'quarterback' role in setting up his teammates from the back half, while the aforementioned Daffy has a huge day statistically with 27 disposals and five goals.

In interesting tidbits, a familiar face welcomed the Tigers in this one, with Jamie Elliott lining up against his former side for the first time.

The game was also the AFL debut of Ben Moore for Richmond, although he was used very rarely and would have been lucky to have seen more than five minutes of gametime.

The match was also veteran ruckman Greg Dear's 50th in the yellow and black, since crossing from Hawthorn.

Stats for the game courtesy of AFL Tables

A Fighting Fury player ratings - click here for explanation

Chris Naish	11
Wayne Campbell	11
Nick Daffy	9
Paul Broderick	9
Ashley Prescott	8
Justin Charles	7
Matthew Richardson	7
David Bourke	6
Darren Gaspar	6
Brendon Gale	5
Ben Holland	5
Jamie Tape	4
Chris Bond	3
Damien Ryan	3
Matthew Rogers	2
Greg Dear	2
Ben Harrison	2
Michael Gale	1
Ben Moore	0
Paul Bulluss	0
Mark Merenda	0