The heat is on young Richmond forward Ty Vickery after coach Damien Hardwick labelled his round one AFL performance as poor as he has seen him play.

Hardwick said there were plenty of areas from last week’s 44-point loss to Carlton in which the Tigers could greatly improve when they face another big challenge against Collingwood on Saturday night.

Vickery’s performance is one.

The 21-year-old had a breakout season in 2011, providing an excellent foil to star forward Jack Riewoldt as he kicked 36 goals and averaged more than four marks per match in his 22 games.

But the 200cm youngster, who also pinch-hits in the ruck, managed just three disposals, one mark and one goal against the Blues.

“He probably played as poor as I’ve seen him play,” Hardwick told reporters on Thursday.

“That was really disappointing for him, he’s put in an enormous pre-season.

“He probably had his hands on five or six balls, they just didn’t drop.

“We spoke to him about the positives, at least he was in a position to take the marks.

“It would just be nice if he did take the bloody marks.

“He’s a player we think has an enormous future at our footy club. We’ll be backing him in.”

From a team-wide perspective, Hardwick said the Tigers had to lift in winning contested possessions to be any chance against the Magpies.

They were in touch with the Blues for much of last week’s game before being thrashed in contested ball-winning in the final term, to which Hardwick attributed Carlton’s runaway win.

He said that was an area in which Collingwood generally excelled and had performed well in against Hawthorn last Friday night, despite losing.

Hardwick said restricting midfield guns Dane Swan and Scott Pendlebury would be pivotal.

And he backed young key defensive pair Alex Rance and nine-gamer Dylan Grimes to curb the influence of Collingwood key forwards Travis Cloke and Chris Dawes.

“Rancey’s a guy that we felt stepped forward enormously last year, we expect he’ll make the same progression again this year, so we think we’ve got the guys there to curtail those blokes,” Hardwick said.

“But they’ll obviously need a hell of a lot of help from up the field, to bring some dirty ball inside 50, but (we need to) bring in third-in players as much as we can.”