The Richmond hierarchy have praised West Coast's defensive systems after going down to the Eagles at the MCG on Friday night.
The Tigers went into the match as favourites, with the home side coming in fresh off a two-week break, while their opponents were lining up for their third game in three states in a 12-day period.
But West Coast bettered the Tigers with a defensive system that Richmond coach Damien Hardwick says was too much for the Tigers to handle.
"To give up 23 marks to the opposition from our boot is credit to West Coast," Hardwick said.
"They're doing some unbelievable stuff behind the ball.
"Their zoning behind the ball is as good as we've seen this year and we struggled to get through at times."
His sentiments were echoed by Brett Deledio who said the Eagles’ team work down back led to Tiger errors.
“They guard areas and handover,” Deledio told The Sunday Footy Show.
“They’re not afraid to put a [Sharrod] Wellingham on Ben Griffiths to create a contest and that’s exactly what they did.
“We just kicked it straight to them all night, Jeremy McGovern is really good at reading the play, he took seven or eight marks, was probably one of the better players on the ground.”
Despite the terrific start to the year, Eagles coach Adam Simpson says his team's ambitions are the same as they were when the season started.
Team defence beats tall defence
“We just want to improve on last year to be honest,” he said.
“We won 11 games, so that’s our goal, to get past that.
“We’ve finished off a good block; we’re still developing, still got some improvement to go. We’re going to get exposed at some stage and we’re going to learn some valuable lessons as we go.
“But we just want to improve and keep developing our list.
“Once we get past those 11 games, I’ll start to worry about finals once we qualify.”
