Is Dimma delusional? Damian Barrett
AFL.com.au
5 August 2016POSITIVITY is a good football quality. Delusion isn't.
In trying to be forever positive in a season of football which has been anything but, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has become delusional.
It started early April with a reference to the Tigers needing to take a few steps back in order to go forward. It continued in the same month with a pledge that his side would work its way out of an early season slump.
Then came the doozy in late May. "We feel in the footy club now has good a list as I think we've had at my disposal since I've been there,'' Hardwick said.
As late as yesterday, the delusion continued. "We feel we're a finals-calibre side."
At that point, someone at Richmond needed to take Hardwick by the hand, place him in front of a very large widescreen TV and force him to watch last Saturday's 88-point loss to GWS, followed by the previous week's final 30 minutes of football against Hawthorn.
And then make him watch the carnage package again. And again. And then one more time to remove whatever delusion might still be left inside his workings.
The backward steps Richmond did take in the opening rounds have not been followed by movement forward. The early season slump has not been corrected, simply worsened.
Hardwick can coach. But he is terrible with public messaging.
Hardwick took Richmond to three consecutive finals series from 2013.
That he has had a significant say in list composition and yet has failed to win a final is a problem and possibly an insurmountable burden.
The unknown for him and the nine-person board which will determine his future is whether, like his team, his high point will forever be simply making an elimination final.
Coaching the one AFL team for seven years is usually long enough to determine one's abilities. Contractually, Hardwick will be coach of the Tigers for two more seasons.
Comparisons are being made of Hardwick's current situation with that of Geelong's hardline review and near-dismissal of Mark Thompson in 2006.
Like Hardwick, Thompson at that stage had coached for seven years. He had made the finals twice, winning finals in 2004 and 2005. There's the difference. Thompson had won finals, reached a preliminary final.
There should be no comparison with Hardwick and certainly no historically referenced safety net for Hardwick when the Tigers board properly analyses his tenure in the coming weeks.
The board itself needs to be bold enough to look inside. Regardless of the merits and credentials of the board challengers, the Tigers need a revamp of directors. Four of the nine directors have served 10 or more years. Six of the nine have served six-plus years.
For decades, all Richmond Football Club wanted was stability at coaching and board level. Having, from the start of 1977 through to the end of 1999, churned through 10 coaches and endured 11 changes of coach (Tony Jewell had two stints), the Tigers steadied with long stints by Danny Frawley, Terry Wallace and Hardwick.
So too at board level. Leon Daphne was followed by Clinton Casey, Gary March and Peggy O'Neal.
Yet for all the stability, the only results that matter haven't come.
Maybe the stability has created a suffocating inertia. Maybe a 2016 version of the old-fashioned Tiger bloodletting could positively shake things up.
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-08-05/comment-is-dimma-delusional
