As director of coaching and strategy, he works alongside senior coach Ken Hinkley to deliver support and guidance to the entire senior coaching panel.
It is a new dawn at Alberton and the club is looking forward to a year of fresh opportunity with Ken Hinkley - a former assistant coach at Geelong, Gold Coast and St Kilda - at the helm.
But the addition of Richardson to the senior coaching ranks has added another layer of experience to the club’s football program.
Richardson, 47, played in the VFL and AFL with Collingwood from 1987 to 1996 – retiring at the end of the season before Port Adelaide played its inaugural match in the national competition.
He has since coached at four AFL clubs in assistant and senior assistant roles and achieved premiership success at local level with East Burwood in Melbourne’s Eastern Football League.
Richardson’s is a newly-created role at Port Adelaide and an adaptation on an emerging trend across the competition.
In his role, Richardson works to ensure the support and resource structures built around the senior coaching panel are at an elite standard and collaborates closely with all coaches to guarantee their work meets the expectations of the club.
He spoke to portadelaidefc.com.au about his new role and expectations heading into his first season with the club.
“The greatest priority is to ensure that I am supporting all the coaches – not just Ken [Hinkley] – with whatever it is they need to be elite coaches,” says Richardson.
“That could be providing them with access to professional development opportunities or mentoring them with respect to their design of training drills, their presentation to players and the content and delivery of that presentation.”
The Power’s assistant coaching ranks, like many AFL clubs, consist of a range of experience levels.
Be it men like midfield principal Shaun Rehn who has headed senior teams in his own right to first-year line coaches like Matthew Nicks (defence), Richardson must be across the needs of each member of the coaching panel.
He explains his “football” role as ensuring the transfer of off-field tutelage to the match day arena.
In essence, that means working with the other eight coaches to ensure players have a complete understanding of the elements that dictate on-field success.
“It [the role] is about working with the coaches to design training practices that give us the greatest opportunity to transfer [our off-field work] into the game ... to make sure our players have a really complete understanding of what it is Ken’s looking for,” explains Richardson.
“That means keeping everyone across the way Ken wants the game played, to make sure that we as a coaching group can be delivering training methodology that ensures a complete understanding of the game plan, the strategies, the set-ups.”
His is a role that strives to maximise quality-control for the club’s football program, but Richardson’s word is by no means the be-all and end-all.
Rather, he works to challenge and push the coaching group towards the lofty standards expected by the club’s hierarchy, supporters and, importantly, themselves.
“It’s far from the case that it will always be my idea that gets used in our program, more likely it will be me challenging the coaches to make sure we reaching best practice levels of delivery,” says Richardson.
“My job is to oversee and facilitate that process - not necessarily to be the initiator behind every idea - and to make sure we’re questioning and challenging so that we can be the best we can possibly be.”
There is no room for error in a game where single actions on the field can dictate a team’s win-loss ratio at the end of the year.
And Richardson is up to the challenge of fostering an environment that provides a comprehensive education for coaches and players alike.
Already senior players have spoken about the impact his experience and knowledge has had on a group thirsty to repent for the disappointment of last year.
Working closely with the club’s <em> communication and feedback group </em>(the moniker given to the player leadership team during the pre-season), Richardson has helped to craft the players’ own football brand for the upcoming year.
Simply put, it means asking those leaders to think about how they want Port Adelaide to play football.
“At this stage of the year I have worked very closely with our <em>C & F</em> group to make sure we set high standards.”
“These standards have been designed and driven by the players in particular around our ‘trademark.’
“What do we want to stand for? How do we want to play the game and how do we want to be perceived by our fans, in particular with respect to issues such as effort and physicality?
“These are the sorts of questions we discuss together.”
Those words will be music to the ears of the die-hards who long to see Port Adelaide return to the unrelenting, take-no-prisoners game play that characterised the club in its AFL and SANFL heyday.
But there is so much work behind-the-scenes that goes into crafting a match-winning football club in the modern AFL competition – it is not something that just happens overnight, or with the appointment of a new football leadership.
Richardson’s role will morph to include new challenges and responsibilities come the season proper when he will work closely with the club’s erstwhile defensive coach-turned-opposition analyst Bradley Gotch to find areas the club can use to get the edge on its opposition.
He will continue to work closely with Ken Hinkley in the delivery of the football program on and off the field.
And he will carry on work with the core element of Port Adelaide’s hope for future prosperity - its playing group.
Educating the players in such a meticulous way that there will be no question of second-guessing themselves on the field is part of the coaching panel’s mantra.
Having players who play football instinctively because they know the team’s game plan thoroughly is a goal that Richardson is helping to achieve and he is encouraged by what he has seen so far.
Undaunted by change in the coaching ranks, the players have worked diligently to achieve the goals set for them on the track, in the gym and in the classroom this summer.
That, Richardson says, is a good thing and he hopes with a thorough educative process instructing them, the players will act on instinct when in game-mode.
“Have I noticed much of a change since October? No,” Richardson said.
“I’m sure if you asked someone that had been here last year, they’d say there had been significant change – there’s different coaching, different messages about the way we’re going to play, different messages about what it means to be elite.
“Whilst there is going to be some significant change in the way we play I am confident that we can educate the boys well enough so they aren’t going out and second-guessing themselves.
“We really want and need them to play on instinct within the guidelines of our preferred options on the field. This can only be achieved through coaching that ensures and tests for a high level of understanding of the way we want to do things.
“I’ve been incredibly enthused by this playing group, they’re a fantastic group that has been disappointed with their performance and they want to do something about it.
“They are committed to regain respect that has been lost over recent years.
“At the moment that seems to mean working their butts off!”
It is a nice early reward for Richardson, who strikes as a man so passionate about his football, and for whom the pursuit of success with this group of players is what makes him get out of bed in the morning.
To be taking on this role at a club like Port Adelaide is a bonus and he is itching to see what the players produce this year.
“It’s just been outstanding and I’m just loving doing what I’m doing,” says Richardson of his role.
“To have such an influence in a program in a club that is so used to success in its history and to then have that responsibility bestowed upon you is so incredibly humbling.
“I’m just looking forward to seeing the boys play footy after working so hard to this stage.
“We’ve put so much into the boys with respect to the load that we’ve asked them to do in not only fitness but football.
“We’ve decided that philosophically we’re going to run a fairly physical, hard training program and we’re very confident in terms of building the next premiership team that we are taking the steps we need to take.”
