Riewoldt had 11 disposals and kicked a goal in his first game of the year as the Tigers trounced Port Adelaide by 66 points in Lavington. But the sharpshooter wasn't without further chances, failing twice to hit teammates with passes when within range himself.

Hardwick was pleased with the 26-year-old's game, but acknowledged that at times Riewoldt should be more goal-hungry.

"At stages he can be [too unselfish]," Hardwick said. "We spoke about that at various stages, but then he shepherds two balls across the line, which just goes to show his value to the side."

Hardwick was particularly impressed with Riewoldt's four tackles, and admitted that it was difficult to know where to draw the line in terms of selflessness.

"The ball use inside 50 wasn't great at stages. He probably gave off a couple and tried to give off a couple too much. He's very unselfish in that area, but his work rate was enormous."

"We were pleased. He had a great defensive chase-down tackle and set the scene early. He's going to have a good year."

With the Power heavily undermanned, Hardwick said his team had been entirely focused on  their own goals.

"Like we said before we came, the opposition's faceless and they were probably a bit like us in our game against the Bulldogs. They took an inexperienced squad and we just worry about what we can control, and regardless of who shows up we've just got to look at our offensive and defensive pattern and see how they work, but we were pretty happy with the majority of stuff."

"Obviously [for] a lot of our guys, it was their first real hit out so they were a little bit rusty. We wasted some ball use inside 50, but overall I thought their endeavour and work rate and intensity was pretty good."

Hardwick said Richmond were set to regain captain Trent Cotchin, forward Ben Griffiths and key backman David Astbury for their final pre-season hitout against North Melbourne at Etihad Stadium next weekend.

The sixth-year coach said that both Cotchin (hamstring soreness) and Astbury had been close to playing in Lavington. Hardwick revealed  that Astbury had played part of a VFL intraclub match on Saturday after being a late omission from the team that lost to the Western Bulldogs a fortnight ago.

"He missed last week, which was unfortunate. We did toy about bringing him up but he was only going to play a quarter so he played an intraclub today with our VFL squad, so we thought we'd give Todd Elton another quarter today just to show us what he's got."

"Dave will be thereabouts next week, we've just got to make sure we get good game time into him."