Most of the football related news was about the traditional Anzac Day battle between Essendon and Collingwood. What there was about the Hawthorn V Richmond clash focused on the fact that Richmond had to come up after only five days and the speculation that Hawthorn were the stiffest competition we had yet faced. There were also some churlish comments from St Kilda coach Grant Thomas that they should have beaten us and did in every department that counted. Hmmmm…I always thought the scoreboard counted for a fair bit Grant. I could have understood it if we had fallen in by a point, but we won by more than 4 goals. There was a little bit about Justin Blumfield's leg injury, which turned out to be a lot worse than originally believed and he was going to be out for the next two months. Andy Krakouer had been selected as his replacement. There was a very brief line in the Saturday paper about Rodan being equal top goal kicker at Richmond with Leon Cameron, 8 goals so far this season. Not bad when you remember he spent the first game wasted in the backline. Richmond had the worst start imaginable to the game. Hawthorn had three goals on the board before we even scored and only late goals to Chaffey and Campbell saved the quarter from being a complete and total embarrassment. Things got worse in the second quarter as the Hawks powered to a 51 point lead, then Peter Everitt left the ground due to a knock from Stafford and the tide turned. We kicked the last four goals of the quarter to be a manageable 27 points adrift at the long break. The third quarter will go down in history as one of Richmond's greatest ever. We reeled in a 51 point deficit, kicked 14 unanswered goals and walked into the last quarter with a 15 point lead. At one point in the last quarter the lead blew out to 31 points as a totally demoralized Hawthorn imploded in front of a bewildered crowd. They kicked a couple of late goals to go down by 20 points and hand Richmond it's greatest ever come from behind win, top spot on the ladder (briefly) and some long sought after credibility. On the Rodan front it was not the little fellow's greatest game, he only had a handful of touches, but he made them count. I saw him set up two goals, one with a fantastically tenacious tackle, and the goal he kicked himself was classic D-Rod, sharked the ball from a tap out and went on the run. Most claim he ran 27 metres without bouncing the ball once before running into an open goal and popping it through. If you see the goal from behind all you see is Rodan, little legs pumping down the field, from in front he does actually bounce it once, personally I still think he ran a few metres too far after that bounce before kicking the goal, but it's still great to watch.

We'll go into the game against Port Adelaide as rank outsiders, no Richardson (hamstring injury), maybe no Stafford (possible video report for the Everitt incident) and with the unwanted statistic of never having beaten the power in Adelaide, but after seeing the heart and guts shown against Hawthorn anything is possible if you want it bad enough.