"Primarily funnily enough our focus has been on our defence," coach Hardwick replied when quizzed about the club's new tactical priorities in the wake of their impressive 43-point win over Carlton.

"From good defence comes good offence, and that's what we saw.

"A pressure rating* of 1.91 which our footy club hasn't seen for a long time. To get the 11 goals that I spoke of, you get 66 points from forward half turnovers, you're going to be hard to beat. If we get that right, we're going to be in games."

Footy pundits may not immediately understand the language of pressure ratings, but they do understand turnovers.

Martin, for one, capitalised on them and shone brightly at the MCG. Already rated a big Brownlow Medal chance, there were no off-season cobwebs to clear for Dusty. The bustling Tigers midfielder pulled in a near-certain three votes with a highly effective four-goal return.

Hardwick was similarly enthused about Martin's output, but more so because the addition of new midfielders Josh Caddy and Dion Prestia to the club has allowed Dusty to spend more time up forward - with obvious benefits.

"Look, he's a very good player," the coach said. "He kicked - what, four [goals]? - and gave off two so it was a pretty special sort of game. The addition of Caddy and Prestia, it helps with Dusty being able to play more forward.

"Sometimes one player is going to get the benefit of others' good work. Not to say that Dusty doesn't do a lot of good work, but we were happy with that."

It wasn't just Martin who had Hardwick smiling. Nick Vlastuin managed a team-high 12 tackles and Jack Riewoldt also applied seven tackles on opponents. "Vlastuin, I think for example, had 10 tackles at half-time," Hardwick said. "People will say his possession rate wasn't high but his influence on the game was massive for mine."

Richmond were happy with their lot after the convincing triumph, notwithstanding a third-quarter slump when the Blues moved to within striking distance as well as some squandered opportunities in the forward half.

"We've still got a fair bit of work to do. There's some parts of a game that as a coach you're probably never happy with, so we'll endeavour to work on those," Hardwick said. "We had a number of opportunities where we probably could have scored goals and we sort of fluffed them up.

"Our conversion inside 50 is probably a little bit disappointing at stages, but I couldn't fault the guys' intensity and effort, and that's all I want, that's all our fans want and to see the effort they gave today was outstanding.

"The key for us is the consistency we're looking for with that effort. We'll get a great test against round two versus Collingwood next week."

The new-look Tigers had a range of scoring sources aside from Martin and a quiet Riewoldt. Dan Butler, Jason Castagna and Toby Nankervis all snagged two goals.

* Damien Hardwick was raving about his team's pressure rating of 1.91. But just what does that mean?

Champion Data measure how much pressure each team applies to their opponent's disposals. It formulates that date into a number, which in this instance pleased Hardwick.

Champion Data confirmed that the Tigers' tackle differential of +21 against the Blues was their third highest of the Hardwick era, which began in 2010. Their best was +37 against the Brisbane Lions in round 5, 2014, followed by +26 against Port Adelaide in round 10, 2010, which was Hardwick's first win as a senior coach.

- With Daniel Cherny