Richmond coach Adem Yze has confirmed that Rhyan Mansell's substitution was due to a corked thigh suffered in the first half of the Tigers' loss to Sydney on Saturday.
Mansell had played underwhelmingly to the halftime break, recording just two disposals, and following halftime, the corky the young forward had suffered tightened up despite Richmond's best efforts to keep Mansell warm to avoid such a fate.
While Mansell hoped to continue playing, the Tigers took a conservative approach and utilised veteran Kamdyn McIntosh as the sub early in the third term.
"He copped a corky and tried to keep it warm during the halftime break, and then the first five minutes it sort of seized up, so it probably bled into his thigh a bit more," Yze said.
"We just wanted to take no risk. He just wanted to keep going, but the risk of injury just outweighs bringing on our sub.
"So we pulled the lever pretty early just to protect him, but it was just a corky on the hip."
It was a dismal display in the second and third quarters from the Tigers, with the men in yellow and black kept goalless for the entirety of both periods, and struggling to even make a break into the forward half.
Yze said that a well-structured and well-coached Sydney unit, plus a disconnect amongst the players in that period, is what impacted the contest so negatively against Richmond's favour.
"It just felt like we got a bit scattered," Yze said.
"We were trying different things with the ball to get out of that back end, rather than just doing the basics, so we just looked disconnected on offence in that middle part of the game.
"Then, when we did look like we were connected, some of their players were just too good, like their key defenders marked the ball when we did send it down the line, and their midfielders won a lot of contests.
"We tried different things in the middle part, but we just got disjointed as a group. But as I said all along, I'd be more worried if we didn't know how to respond in the last quarter, but we responded in the right way.
"We started evening up the clearance, even up the inside 50s and and we looked like we could get the ball out of our back end, which was nice."
The Tigers now head into the bye with a 3-10 record, with games against the Bulldogs, Crows, and Cats to follow.
