Richmond were never going to beat Essendon, or indeed anyone, on Friday night.

And no one understood that more than Adem Yze.

With Toby Nankervis succumbing to soreness, Tom Lynch to a concussion and Noah Balta to his court-imposed bedtime, a team already scraping the bottom of the barrel for experience, particularly in key positions, found itself more or less bereft.

It explains some of Yze’s experimental approach to the Tigers’ Dreamtime at the ‘G performance.

Sam Lalor effectively played out his 11th AFL match on managed minutes, almost exclusively featuring as the deepest Tiger forward and then iced up with a hamstring complaint well before full time.

Good enough to still kick two goals from the opportunities that came his way – one after comprehensively outbodying the experience Jayden Laverde one on one – it would nevertheless have been a relief for Brad Scott to not have to worry about arguably the Tigers’ biggest X-factor around the ball.

In a similar vein, Luke Trainor, whose safe ball use and excellent reading of the play have seen him slot seamlessly into the Richmond backline, was trialled as a forward in Lynch’s absence, a move unlikely to be repeated given his limited influence on proceedings. Worth a try, undoubtedly, but an Aaron Naughton-style transformation seems unlikely, and he’s good enough to hold down the backline for the next decade and a half at Punt Road.

Without Nankervis, Samson Ryan was forced to battle against the older, wiser, stronger Todd Goldstein with only Tom Sims as ruck support. A fine player Ryan may turn out to be, but a sloppy ruck craft that saw him concede four free kicks suggests the captain will need to shoulder the load for many years to come yet – and the absence of any other options manifested in a horror third-quarter moment when Peter Wright went up unopposed at a forward-50 ruck contest and snapped through a crucial, simple Bombers goal.

To accommodate another on-ball run for Kane McAuliffe, Kamdyn McIntosh wasn’t deployed in the tagging role he has tackled gamely at times this season, leaving Sam Durham, Zach Merrett and especially Nic Martin to do as they pleased all evening.

Amid an unexpected, inspiring start to the year from the raging wooden spoon favourites, this was the first time it has seemed obvious Yze had put development, and the future, ahead of the result.

That they came within 23 points, fought to the literal last second and gained, lost, and gained again the lead in a frenetically see-sawing first three quarters that made up for an ordinary evening skill-wise, is to their infinite credit.

The Tigers’ build from ground zero – and about as close to zero as any team in recent memory has started from – has begun with total focus on fundamentals: pressure and press.

It’s a whole-team buy in that makes it tick: up until the final quarter when tired bodies began to wilt – not helped by Lalor’s injury leaving them a rotation down – the Bombers were seldom given an easy disposal anywhere dangerous.

For all the Dons’ domination of stoppages – a 35-18 clearance lead at three quarter time is a pasting in anyone’s measure – such was the pressure on the Bomber ball-carriers, and their refusal to allow any unimpeded overlap run to force their opponents to regularly retreat by hand, that the Dons couldn’t even control the territory battle, never mind hit the scoreboard.

It’s perhaps best summed up by this chase from Tom Brown on a runaway Martin: seemingly streaming inside 50 after a brilliant flick-up to himself, Martin finds himself with no one to kick to, with the Tigers having scrambled to effectively set up defensively, and Brown’s arrival corrals him to the boundary line, forcing him to try and bite off an inboard that doesn’t come off.

Brown is 30 games into a fledgling career, yet we already know just how committed he is to defensive running – remember that game-saving chasedown tackle against West Coast? It’s players like him who this Richmond rebuild sets its foundations.

Sometimes that desperation goes too far: Trainor in particular would love a key final-quarter moment back when he reacted to being dragged down by Martin and given a gobful by throwing him to the ground and giving a free kick back. He’s not the first young man whose passion has given way to hot-headedness, and it won’t be the last.

But it’s that desperation, plus underrated strength behind the ball in the form of Nick Vlastuin and Nathan Broad in particular forming a wall a kick ahead of the play, plus the rapid development of Ben Miller as the team’s resident monster-stopper, that has made the Tigers a remarkably consistent team defensively.

In their last seven games, only once – against Hawthorn – have Richmond conceded a score higher than 83. In their last three weeks, they’ve given up 79 (to West Coast), 78 (to North Melbourne) and now 81 to Essendon.

It’s baby steps, to be sure, and nothing earth-shattering given none of those three teams are what you would consider ‘good’; but considering that famous stat that has been floating around in the past fortnight, where the Tigers are 0-26 under Yze when conceding more than 80 points but 4-2, and until recently 4-1, when not, it’s an encouraging sign to be reducing scores against to around that magical mark that makes winning possible for them.

Remarkably, despite starting the third quarter 6-1 in clearances, it was the Tigers with the only goal from that source in that time. That’s a testament to their ability to lock down the Bombers’ stoppage dominance, prevent it from hurting them on the scoreboard, and take the limited chances that came the other way with both hands.

Which brings us nicely to the most refreshing thing about the Tigers: their willingness to take the game on despite the limitations of the team.

Whatever the score on Friday night says, the Tigers never went into their shells, consistently put the ball in dangerous positions on the counterattack, and were only let down by their regular inability to find a killer blow with that crucial last kick inside 50.

Part of that, and the mere six marks inside 50 for the night, stems from not having an above-average tall to kick to with Lynch out. Jonty Faull did his best and had the occasional eye-catching moment, but the closest thing the Tigers had to a spearhead was Lalor. Ben McKay can rarely have had an easier night in his career.

That lack left the Tigers searching for other, riskier, avenues to goal: primarily that manifested in taking long pot-shots from outside 50: some of them worked …

… but plenty more trickled out on the full, or into no man’s land for the Bombers to mop up.

And that’s okay: with no other alternative, it’s refreshing to see a team empowered to have a crack, rather than slowing play down, allowing numbers to get back behind the ball, and kicking into a packed inside 50 where their chances of scoring are actually significantly reduced.

Richmond had 100 fewer disposals than the Bombers on Friday night. They had 22 fewer clearances. They were thumped for contested possessions, behind on marks, and had just two tackles inside 50 to 15 – all stats developing teams often have to break even in merely to avoid being pasted.

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And yet despite that, with their weakest team of the year, a side minus a ruckman, shorn of their best key forward and defender, and with minimal influence from their No.1 pick and earmarked next superstar … it took until deep in the final quarter for the Tigers to at last run out of puff.

There’s plenty here to get excited about: rubbish they may be now, but these Tigers are going places. And, probably, faster than you might think.