ONCE it was called a hospital handball, but now it is a Shane Edwards special.

The old fashioned forward handpass to a teammate has been a recipe for 000 calls for most of football’s history. But under the guidance of Damien Hardwick, Richmond has developed a method that has rivals scrambling for a solution.

Edwards is the longest serving Tiger on the club’s list. He’s a 225-game veteran who has never played fewer than 15 senior matches in a season.

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Finals Week 1

As far as public profile goes, he’s just your clichéd ‘role player’ — or so typically understated external messaging suggests.

But with a nod and wink, those inside Punt Road’s four walls understand he’s far more than a generic nuts and bolts player. So does Champion Data, which rates Edwards the 11th best player in the AFL in 2018.

Boasting razor sharp hands and the fifth-best kicking efficiency for any midfielder in the competition, the 29 year-old has found a happy niche and is flourishing among Hardwick’s system.

How? By handballing the Sherrin forwards at every opportunity, not backwards or sideways as has been the league-wide default setting for years.

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Shane Edwards of the Tigers. Source: AAP

Edwards has gained 1290m via hand in 2018, significantly more than the second-placed Adam Saad (735m). On average, that is 72m per game the popular Tiger flicks the ball forward without kicking it.

To further illustrate Hardwick’s take-territory mentality, Kane Lambert and Trent Cotchin are third and fourth in the AFL for this underrated statistic.

The old fashioned hospital pass is now an approach foxfooty.com.au understands at least two other clubs have tried to emulate mid-season, but failed and reverted back to traditional styles. One of these clubs attempted to copy the Tiger method for less than a month to no avail.

It is Edwards, not Martin, who epitomises the tactical revolution which dual premiership Kangaroo and Fox Footy expert David King believes will become commonplace in 2019 and beyond, in true follow the leader fashion.

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“Richmond takes territory in everything they do,” King, an unabashed Tiger convert, told foxfooty.com.au.

“They take yards and go down the line long, taking 50m with a kick. Coming out of stoppages, they take 5m or 10m with a handball. They never concede or go backwards. They never allow the momentum of the pack to get on top of them.

“It’s very hard to implement those changes in-season. During the off-season, every club will be looking at how Richmond do what they do.”

Earlier this season, King referred to Edwards as a “silent assassin”, this week he said he was “the most dangerous handballer in the competition”.

Richmond's Shane Edwards. Picture: Michael Klein Source: News Corp Australia

The rolling maul of modern day footy means the game has never been more about field position than it is now. Hardwick, blessed with elite top end talent but a largely underachieving mid-range, flicked the switch at the start of 2017 and told his players to simply get it forward.

Of the many reasons they won last year’s flag, this adjustment was one of the most pivotal.

If they won the footy at the contest and burrowed it towards goal, they would do so with numbers pushing it like an All Blacks scrum. If they lost the Sherrin at the contest or after handballing it forward, at least players were behind the ball to defend.

And on that note, no team since Champion Data was created in 1999 has averaged more intercept marks per game than this year’s Richmond (18).

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Imagine playing against a team that swarms you when they win the ball and is always perfectly set up when you manage to win it.

“The first handball is always trying to get 5m forward and then they explode,” King continued.

“If they lose it, there are six players in the area and automatically pressure.

“It’s almost like a rugby run to goal and there is no one man that can stop that. It’s so pure and so aggressive. It’s become a scoring blitz.”

Hardwick’s system is hardly genius in the traditional sense of the word — it’s how Under 11s footy is played — but it’s worked wonders and has seen Richmond kick over 100 points 11 times in 18 games this season. For Hardwick, simplicity has become his greatest attribute.

Shane Edwards of the Tigers. Source: AAP

It’s a far cry from Terry Wallace’s days in charge of Richmond, when skilful defender Joel Bowden would play a quarterback role to perfection and often collect 30 disposals, but with little or no forward drive.

In fairness, that was a different era and Wallace, who drafted the North Adelaide product with Pick 26 in 2006, is as much of a fan of Edwards as King.

“He (Edwards) does things inside packs that people just don’t see, particularly with his hands which are so sharp,” Wallace told the Herald Sun in June.

“What he does is release other people into open space and he’s incredibly quick with his movements and incredibly lateral with his ability to see something other people just don’t see … He’s a gun player.”

On Friday night, you can bank on Edwards playing his role against Geelong. He won’t receive a tag like Dustin Martin and he is unlikely to be at the centre of a post-match highlights reel like Jack Riewoldt might be, but to the Tigers, he is no less significant.

“Edwards can flick it around at different angles and has that Indigenous magic, for want of a better term,” King said.

“He’s got that ability to see things others can’t see and to use angles others don’t even know exist. Every now and then it blows up, but numbers around the area means it doesn’t matter.

“He puts lesser ranked players in space.”