James Hird's concern for Richmond as 'sickening' injury list balloons to a near-starting 18

Richmond's horror season on the injury front only got worse on Sunday, losing defender Tom Brown to a broken arm that may end his season.

Pending any further blows from their loss to Adelaide, the Tigers will enter round 10 with 17 players unavailable.

The dire situation mirrors Essendon's disastrous 2025 run, with none of the 17 currently listed to return within the next fortnight, outside of depth defender Kaleb Smith.

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On the lesser range, captain Toby Nankervis is two weeks away with a hamstring, veteran midfielder Dion Prestia three weeks for a calf and defender Sam Banks the same with his injured collarbone.

Richmond has well and truly entered a rebuild under coach Adem Yze, coming off their triple-premiership run, and have used a dozen first round picks in the last three drafts to do so.

The frustration for them will be the fact that most of them are now missing most of this season with injuries.

Last year's No.1 pick Sam Lalor is out long term with an Achilles injury, key forwards Harry Armstrong and Tom Sims remain a month away, exciting midfielder Taj Hotton will miss another few months with a hip issue and Josh Gibcus will miss the season with an ACL strain.

Then there's 2025 top 10 pick Josh Smilie, who missed all of his debut season with hamstring issues and is now sidelined indefinitely with a quad problem.

For the Tigers, all of these injuries compounded with their overall lack of experience sees them languishing 18th on the ladder with one win and a percentage of 60.

Geelong champion Jimmy Bartel believes the Tiges have reached a breaking point, despite beating the Eagles last week and competing hard against the Crows on Sunday.

"I think they're going to have to start handing out name tags because they're going to have to find some players somewhere," Bartel told Nine's Footy Furnace.

"I know teams are always conservative with how long players are out for, there's almost no one under three weeks. Like, they're long term injuries.

"There's some sickening collision injuries. I know people will look at the strength and conditioning staff, but not many of these are soft tissue injuries. It's a lot of stuff you can't do much about."

Former Essendon coach James Hird added that it becomes incredibly difficult to teach a young team when you have 40 per cent of your list unavailable.

"Seventeen injuries. Six to guys who would be a walk-up start, the others are guys who are on the fringe," Hird said.

"You almost think if they played (the team of injured players) against the team that is out there, who would win the game? There's some quality players out.

"It's hard to coach a team with 17 injuries, some this significant.

"We've said it before and it's boring, but injuries lead to more injuries because you have to put more stress on other parts of the list as people get injured and I just think they've got to have a long term view of some of these players.

"A lot of them are high draft picks, high quality players who you need long term and it's affecting their young careers."

Richmond will have the chance to replenish somewhat come the mid-season draft at the end of May. They currently have one pick in it with Gibcus ruled out for the season. They could create a second if they moved Smilie to the inactive list or someone else out long term like Brown, Lalor or Rhyan Mansell.

Richmond's starting 18 from the Adelaide game:

FB: N. Balta, N. Broad, B. Miller

HB: J. Short, N. Vlastuin, S. Cumming

C: P. Retschko, T. Taranto, K. McAuliffe

HF: S. Green, M. Lefau, T. Sonsie

FF: S. Campbell, J. Faull, T. Lynch

Fol: O. Hayes-Brown, J. Ross, J. Hopper

Richmond's hypothetical injured 18 team (including Sam Grlj who was a late out managed):

FB: K. Smith, J. Gibcus, S. Grlj

HB: S. Banks, T. Brown, H. Ralphsmith

C: J. Clarke, S. Lalor, T. Hotton

HF: R. Mansell, H. Armstrong, J. Alger

FF: M. Rioli, T. Sims, Z. Peucker

Fol: T. Nankervis, D. Prestia, J. Smilie