Brisbane Lions ruckman Jamie Charman says he would hate to see superstar forward Jonathan Brown leave the club.
Brown comes out of contract with Brisbane at the end of the season and doesn't appear any closer to re-signing with the Lions while it remains no secret that clubs from Victoria are stepping up attempts to woo the 26-year-old back to his home state.
"We'd love him staying in Brisbane but ultimately that's Browny's decision and whatever he wants to do is up to him but certainly we'd love to have him," said Charman.
However, Charman denies the conjecture over Brown's playing future has affected the team and he believes that residing in the less AFL-crazed state of Queensland will ease the pressure on Brown in making a decision.
"It's surprising, nothing comes up too much in Brisbane about it (Brown's contractual negotiations). I think you hear it more down here (in Melbourne) than anything and it's probably a good thing for Browny that he's away from it," Charman explained.
"In the media in Brisbane it hasn't been brought up so as a playing group we haven't heard too much about it, it's only when you get down here you start to hear things."
Of more immediate concern to Charman and the Lions is their assignment against a rejuvenated Richmond outfit on Saturday night at Telstra Dome.
Brisbane will be fighting to maintain breathing space between itself and other prospective finals aspirants while the Tigers will be looking to continue to build on their momentum that has seen them win four of their past five encounters and now sit just four points outside the top eight.
"It's (playing finals) certainly touch and go, if we lose the next couple of games we're out of the eight," said Charman.
"So we're very conscious of it and coming into these next couple of weeks we've really got to step it up and start playing some better football than we have been."
The Lions have only won one match from five attempts in Melbourne this season, a trend that Charman revealed had been brought up during the week and the 26-year-old says his team is desperate to arrest it.
"It's something, coming down this week, we've been pretty conscious of. We're gonna have a fairly reasonable training session today at Junction Oval and just sort of change it up a little bit to what we have been doing in the past ... we need to get a bit better with our away games," he said.
While the Lions may be feeling a little uneasy about the encounter, as it kicks off a tough month of fixtures which sees them also face the Kangaroos, Hawks and Bulldogs, Richmond heads into Saturday night's clash just happy to still be in the fight for a spot in the top eight so close to September - a refreshing change according to vice-captain Chris Newman.
"It's good to be alive at this time of year, I personally haven't had that and a lot of the other boys haven't had it either so it's really exciting," said Newman.
"Every game gets harder as the weeks go on and (we're) just really looking forward to the challenge."
Meanwhile, Newman reported that coach Terry Wallace has improved significantly just over a week after admitting himself to hospital with a nasty respiratory infection.
"He's really come back, he's in good spirits now," he said. "Even in the game last week he was fine, he addressed us at all (breaks in between) terms of the game and didn't really hold back so it's good to see him up and going again."