One-Eyed Richmond Forum
Football => Richmond Rant => Topic started by: one-eyed on August 08, 2009, 02:49:16 PM
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Man for the job? Sheeds gives them the Hardwick
Stephen Rielly | August 08, 2009
IN late 2004, Kevin Sheedy did what he did many times over the course of his legendary career at Essendon; he gave a player with a troubled past a second chance.
On this occasion, the beneficiary of this oft-questioned generosity was Ty Zantuck, the roguish former Richmond defender with off-field habits so interesting that the Tigers cut him loose at the age of 22.
It didn't work out. Zantuck's locker at Windy Hill was empty 12 months and nine games later but, as Sheedy put it at the time, he was worth pursuing because "we haven't had anyone with real poo in him since Hardwick".
Damien Hardwick, the man, it seems, who is likely to be the next coach of either Richmond or North Melbourne, unquestionably possessed merde.
It was what made him a shrewd, self-fashioned survivor of a player; the footballer cut by North Melbourne in his teens, for the unheard of Paul Van Horn, went on to play 207 games as a defender with a reputation for being a particularly artful exponent of the accidental-on-purpose mugging.
"As a player, he was like 'Sheeds' himself. Perhaps that's why he (Sheedy) liked him so much. Smart and hard, with an edge," one former Essendon insider suggested.
"When you think about it, they both took their time to develop, but it was as if the time enabled them to become smart players, players very good at adapting and making themselves useful."
Useful was exactly what he was for Mark Williams. At the end of 2001, when Williams decided he needed a hardened pro to stiffen up his emerging Port Adelaide team, he came after Hardwick, or "Dimma" as he is more commonly known.
He wasn't to be disappointed, least of all on grand final day, 2004. Hardwick was physically all but spent by the time of the match, his last, but he put what he had left into a frenetic first-quarter assault that roared back at Leigh Matthews' Brisbane Lions, who were ultimately denied their fourth consecutive flag.
Richmond and North, though, aren't after a crafty enforcer but a coach, although the two things are not mutually exclusive.
Former Essendon teammate and current Melbourne assistant coach Sean Wellman believes that the interest in Hardwick is belated acknowledgement of the fact that there was always so much more to his game and his career than the obvious.
Alastair Clarkson was quick to invite Hardwick to join him as an assistant coach at Hawthorn in 2005, according to Wellman, because after being by Williams' side at Port, he had been able to witness exactly the sorts of things that Hardwick's reputation otherwise obscured.
"He was always more valuable than the kicks, marks and handballs he collected," Wellman says.
"We missed him at Essendon when he left for Port. There are players who leave and it's only their playing ability you miss. Others bring a lot more and Damien was one those. It was what he brought to the environment of the club. He was always looking at the wider perspective so that when anything happened, where some players immediately thought about how it would affect them, he could think about what it meant for the team or the club.
"He was extremely important for the culture of the club in that way."
This analysis makes a certain sense. How does a footballer who didn't get his start until he was almost 22 survive in the game until he was 32 without thinking deeply about the game and what he must do to stay in it? About what works and doesn't, for footballers and football clubs alike?
Hardwick didn't just hold on, either. He won premiership medals with Essendon and Port, a best-and-fairest with the Dons and All-Australian selection. He was important to teams that won more than two-thirds of their matches in his time and, between them, finished on top of the ladder every season from 1999-2004.
His career simply could not have been as one dimensional as it is popularly remembered, which is not to overlook the poo, as Sheedy called it, that he dished out.
Should Hardwick win the nod from Richmond, for instance, his first conversation with Tiger assistant and former club champion Wayne Campbell is likely to lead them both back to the particularly feisty relationship they shared and occasionally took to the AFL tribunal as players.
He is not always as diplomatic as he might be, either. Although it would be wrong to portray Hardwick as outspoken or bullish, it is accepted that he lost what chance he had of succeeding Sheedy at Essendon in 2007 by informing the board of things it did not want to hear. Matthew Knights won the position.
Wellman remembers, though, Hardwick improving by the season once he broke into the Dons line-up in 1994.
"He never accepted where he was at. I think that is something that has served him well for a long time. It did as a player and I suspect it is now, as a coach," Wellman says.
"I'm sure, because of the way things started for him and because of the person he is, he asked himself the questions 'How do I fit in?', 'How do I contribute?' A lot of people saw that expressed through his hardness as a player but I don't think that accurately captures what he was able to do."
Which, more than anything else, Wellman says, was to foster solidarity and sacrifice, traits that have sustained North for decades but scarcely defined the Tigers over the last 25-odd years.
"If you talk to all of the Essendon guys, they will tell you they loved playing with him because there was no selfishness in his game. Blokes playing for themselves really irked him. Damien will forgive someone for a lot of things, but not selfishness. The team is all."
The question now, of course, is which team?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25898205-5012432,00.html
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Thats the next Richmond coach right there. Hardwicks the man for our coaching job. As a candidate this guy has everything we need. What a great article. :cheers
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I guess it would be seen as a great article if youre a supporter of Hardwicks but im really over the coaching crap!
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Thats the next Richmond coach right there. Hardwicks the man for our coaching job. As a candidate this guy has everything we need. What a great article. :cheers
Ah yes Ramps, but there is going to be alot that wont be able to find the wood because of the trees.