Richmond is gearing itself up for a dramatic change in tempo and temperature against Gold Coast this Saturday.

From mid-winter weather and a fire-breathing Essendon to the mid 20s of Cairns and a less challenging young Suns side, the Tigers are changing their preparation accordingly.

They were set to fly out of Melbourne on Thursday to give themselves plenty of time to acclimatise to the humidity and the Cairns Stadium after learning from their experience in Darwin in round 10.

Coach Damien Hardwick says the team will tweak their lead-up this week to give themselves a better chance of matching the Suns.

"The things we probably learnt from Darwin was that the humidity was the thing we didn't handle overly well with our use of the ball," Hardwick said.

"We've put a few things in place this week to rectify that.

"We're going up a day earlier to hopefully help with our preparation and give us a better training facility."

While Darwin was more humid than Melbourne it was at least played in the cooler nighttime conditions whereas Saturday's match will be played under the sun.

"It's hotter, there's no doubt about that, but there's not much we can do about that.

"We just pick the fittest team we can and hope to run out the game at full strength."

Hardwick said the Tigers were also trying to learn from their 39-point loss to Essendon last week.

"The main thing is we just couldn't get our hands on the ball in that last quarter.

"At one stage the possession count was 32 to two and the game was done and dusted from then on in. They kicked nine out of the last 10 goals."

While he suggested it was vital to move the ball forward, work had to be done once it was in their zone.

"One of the key indicators of the game at the moment is time in the forward half," Hardwick said.

"The funny thing about it (is) in that last quarter we actually won that key indicator stat but a number of their goals came over the back because of our poor defensive setup."

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