Richmond coach Damien Hardwick confident the Tigers will bounce back Richmond coach, Damien Hardwick, says 'it's pure disappointment at this stage'. Richmond coach Damien Hardwick in action during the three-quarter time break. RICHMOND has set an expectation it will play finals every year despite falling at the first hurdle of its drought-breaking September campaign yesterday. Tigers coach Damien Hardwick last night said the "pure disappointment" of losing yesterday from 32 points up would hopefully drive the team to sustained success having only "scratched the surface" of what the team was capable of. While Hardwick was confident the emerging squad had blue skies ahead, he admitted it will do little to soothe the initial pain of watching others race for the premiership after only narrowly missing out on a top-four spot. "It's a hard question to ask a coach after an elimination final loss whether there is a bright future but there is, we know there is," Hardwick said. It's just disappointing because the chance we had this year - it is a long six months to sit on and dwell on the what ifs and that's the disappointing thing for myself, our coaching group and our playing group. You put in an enormous amount of work and it seems to come to nothing. After waiting 12 years since its last final, Hardwick said the club must expect to participate in September every year, having turned a vital corner in the club's history. "It's an expectation of this footy club now, September," Hardwick said. Under Gary (president Gary March) and Brendon (Brendon Gale CEO) we have set an agenda and blue print. We've just started to scratch the surface which is really important for our fans. While we are disappointed today we will go away and work on some things that are going to make us better for the next 12 months. Hardwick lamented the team's wasteful first term and a failure to win crucial contests, particularly in defence, as Carlton stormed home to win by 20 points at the MCG. Hardwick said the team's ability to win hard balls in defence turned from a strength all season into a weakness in the cut-throat final. "We spoke about being harder for longer and we just weren't prepared to put our hand up and do that today," he said. The fact of the matter is we had two strengths that we came into the game with, one being defensive 50m contested ball and we went down by minus 18 in that area. The other one was scores from stoppage versus opposition and I think we were AFL No.2 and we gave up 30 goals for the year and I think we gave up 11 today. Two normal strengths ... cost us the game.