The former Tigers defender, who announced his immediate retirement from football last week, blames a lack of mid-tier talent for holding the club back from success.

Chaplin put noses out of joint at Alberton with a farewell missive after crossing to the Tigers as a free agent.

“You have so much work to do… it will take time and unfortunately I don’t think in my career I will be around to enjoy that,” he reportedly wrote.

“You are a great bunch of guys but please put your issues aside… there are too many and this is one of the reasons why as a group you have stagnated.”

He told his former Port teammates the “vibe and professionalism” was superior at Richmond, with a “real strong culture of wanting to play finals… training like a finals team and doing all the right little things”.

Richmond have made the finals for the past three seasons but failed to win a major round game.

@Neroli_M_FOX sounds familiar

— . (@domcassisi) May 11, 2015

Port made a swift return to finals action after Chaplin’s departure, but missed out on September action last year and face an uphill battle to qualify this season.

Chaplin told SEN yesterday there was frustration within a Tigers’ playing group that had claimed the scalps of the league’s best teams in recent years, but failed to fire in the finals.

“Obviously you can’t keep going back to the well if you can’t get over the line, so we’ve got to try something different, add some new players too – so that’s what they’ll be looking at this year,” he said.

Richmond triumphed over a previously undefeated Fremantle side in round 10 last year as well as eventual premiers Hawthorn in round 18, only to lose for a third straight year in the first week of the finals.

“I think that’s where the frustration lies, especially internally as players…it’s exactly the same group and the same 22 that took us to those spots, it’s just that we couldn’t get over the line,” he said.

“Our top five are really great players, we need that middle tier coming through.”

Chaplin said Richmond, who won’t make the finals in 2016, are lacking players in their mid to late twenties.

“Between 23 and 29, we don’t really have many players in that age group and that’s what is probably going to help us going forward,” he said.

“You don’t want to go full rebuild, we’ve got some younger guys coming through, we just lack a little bit of class.”

Richmond will play GWS in Canberra this Saturday.

-with AAP