Richmond coach Damien Hardwick opens up on cannabis, Alastair Clarkson, Dustin Martin and much moreIt was a different looking pre-season for Damien Hardwick. The three-time premiership coach speaks to DANIEL CHERNY about his summer and the Tigers’ goals in 2023.
Daniel Cherny
Code Sports
February 20, 2023 Q: Thanks for having a chat Damien. You spent some time in the US over the pre-season. How did it go?A: It was good. It was a mixture of some work stuff but also some personal stuff. One of the things we consistently ask players to do over the off-season is improve some facet of the game or work on themselves. It’s something I think as coaches we tend to neglect from time to time. As a by-product of that I like to go away, reflect first and foremost but then look at other ideas, from any other sports, or business or people in general. That’s one of the exciting things about my job, and the great thing about the Richmond Football Club is they openly encourage people to do that. I was fortunate to spend some time over in the US talking to a fair few people, reconnecting to a fair few people. My sister lives over there as well, so it was good to catch up with her. It was a good trip.
Q: And you got to a couple of sporting clubs?I went over with a pretty strong remit of what I was after. Not necessarily to hang around with coaching staff or to have stadium tours, but generally to see how organisations work and what they’re strengths are. And professionally what I can bring back from those organisations to ours. So I was very fortunate to spend some time with the Detroit Lions, Pistons and the Dallas Mavericks. It was a very worthwhile trip, and if you go over and bring back a couple of nuggets of gold it’s certainly worthwhile.
Q: Were there any particular things that caught your eye or had special significance for you?There was. And I’ll probably keep the majority of those in-house. There’s a lot of things you learn but there’s also a lot of reinforcement about the things that you do well or may do better than other organisations. I think that’s maybe more important at times, to realise that we do this really well. Then there’s also those areas that you also look at where you can bring back some important information about another organisation that does that incredibly well. I was really fortunate to spend some time with some quality people over there, and it reinvigorates myself, bring back something I think can help not only myself but our organisation also.
Q: That need to be refreshed and have some side projects, how important is that for you?I’m very fortunate that we’ve got a pretty experienced coaching staff. We’ve got a relatively stable game plan, it’s certainly evolving but we do the majority of our stuff knowing that if we do it consistently well we’ll be OK. So the benefit of having that experienced coaching staff is I can sort of step back and let other step up. Also some time away from the club reinvigorates myself and also the players. When you’ve got guys that have coached their own clubs in Ben Rutten and David Teague, and you’ve got up and coming coaches such as Andrew McQualter, Xavier Clarke and these type of people, I’m very fortunate to be able to step away and things basically run exactly the same. The other part of the equation is I do get to spend some time spreading the message of Levin Health and trying to break the stigma of medicinal cannabis and what that looks like for everyday people.
Q: Clearly you’re a big believer in medicinal cannabis. How is spreading that message going? Lauren Jackson seems to be an extraordinary example of its power.It’s been for lack of a better term a bit life-changing. You think of most footballers or sporting people that go through a relatively long career, the toll on the body can be debilitating at various stages. There’s only so much your body can tolerate of anti-inflammatories. When I was made aware of the benefits of medicinal cannabis it was something I wanted to explore further. The biggest thing for mine is trying to break the stigma of what that looks like. I take a mill (milligram) a day, When the players first heard that I was on the medicinal cannabis they thought I was up the back of the coach’s box smoking bongs. Myself, Lauren Jackson, Andrew Johns, Clarko’s [Alastair Clarkson is] involved and Damien Oliver, we’re trying to break that stigma because this could be really beneficial to not only sportspeople but people in general.
Q: How is the push going for AFL players to be exempt to use it?That’s the big one. The company’s currently in discussions and research with regard to that being on the exemptions list. Lauren Jackson’s an incredible case that shows the benefits of that. I think it’s going to become more and more prevalent moving forward. Once again it’s a problem from the ground, it’s generally for the body and it’s got an incredible impact on the inflammatory nature of the pain relief we can get. We’re consistently doing research in that space, looking for clinical trials to further enhance what that looks like and hopefully in the not too distant future players can take the CBD component of medicinal cannabis in-season, which will certainly help their careers long-term.
Q: Pardon my ignorance, but what does CBD stand for?There’s two elements in the marijuana: CBD which is the anti-inflammatory component and THC which is the hallucinogenic type. The CBD is the one that I use and makes my life a hell of a lot better. From my personal experience I liken it to when you get older you get into warmer climates and it feels a lot better. That’s what it’s like for me. I have acute back pain that from time to time can be quite debilitating, not only physically but mentally as well.
Q: You touched on Clarko there and his involvement with this. As a close mate, how’s he going through the investigation and how have you viewed the way this process has unfolded? You were quite forthright in your comments back in September.The reality is an AFL coach, regardless of race, effectively as a coach you are akin to a father figure. You are going to have conversations with players and partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever it may be. These conversations happen all the time. This happens at footy clubs on a weekly basis, those sort of conversations, we want them to remain a part of our existence if that makes sense. That’s what footy clubs do, outside parents, sporting clubs are a great source of knowledge and information and help people along their journey, whatever that may be.
Q: And as an extension of that, how is Clarko going?As far as I know, I caught up with him not last week but the week before, he’s fine. I can only comment on what I see. Obviously there’s a bit of water to go under the bridge but Clarko’s one of those people that doesn’t let a lot of things get him down. From the feedback I’ve had from North, they absolutely love him there. I know him personally and professionally. He’s only going to be a very good thing for North Melbourne moving forward.
Q: How are you feeling with the season on the horizon? What’s your mood like around this time of year and how optimistic are you around the club’s prospects this year?The players are ready to start playing opposition. We play North Melbourne this weekend. We’ve had a number of practice matches and the aggression and the assertiveness of the players is probably to the level where I’ve got to get them to tone it down, because they’re itching to get out there and play. We’re tired of playing each other. Our system versus our system can be quite frustrating at times. We’re looking forward to playing an opposition side. Most other sides I assume would be exactly the same. The challenge for all clubs at this stage is to get the amount of work into them without pushing too far. That’s the real challenging part about the January-February period. We’re looking forward to the season, we’re really excited about our prospects this year, as will be 17 other clubs. When we look at our off-season, not only this year but also the year previously we brought in five talented kids, and then this year we were fortunate enough to bring in some established talent with [Tim] Taranto and [Jacob] Hopper as well as some draft picks we’re also very excited with. Talent-wise, it’s probably as strong a list as I’ve had, we’ve had at our disposal. We’ve got to capitalise on that, make sure we play our best footy. There’s going to be some ups and downs along the way but we’re really excited about the season moving forward.
Q: From the outside it seems as though the additions of Taranto and Hopper keep you in premiership contention while your current core is also in that age profile, would that be a fair assessment?Yeah it would be. We want to give ourselves a chance to perform and present for top eight, top four every year. What we sort of realised though is sometimes you’ve got to trade for needs. We looked at our midfield, the size of the modern midfield, they’re a lot bigger. We probably didn’t have that type of profile of player on our list. Blair Hartley and his list management team went to work on that space. These deals don’t just happen overnight, they’ve been working for a number of years and we’ve probably targeted these guys a little way out. Had a couple of cracks at them a couple of years previously that didn’t come to fruition but once again we’re really happy that we’ve targeted these two players that, one, will improve that part of the ground for us but, two, will allow us to move a couple of pieces that we already have in there to other parts of the ground.
Q: In terms of the talls and how they fit together, how’s it all looking? How do you see that structure working come round one?It’s probably a work in progress for us. Obviously we’ve got the two down there, the stables ones will be Jack [Riewoldt] and Tom [Lynch] but then with Toby [Nankervis] as our main ruckman and then what that tall on the bench looks like? We’re more of the opinion we’d prefer that taller second ruck/second key forward type player to come through the bench. We’ve been really impressed with (how) [Ben] Miller last year stepped up and showed us he’s capable of playing the role. Ivan Soldo, he can definitely play it. What we’ve got to realise is he’s come off a significant injury, missed around 18 months of footy, he was a little bit inconsistent last year, but he’s had a really good pre-season. And then we’ve got a couple of young players emerging. Samson Ryan’s around 200-odd centimetres and is more of a forward-ruck that we’re really happy with as well. We’ve got some options. How they work we’re not too sure. We’ll probably go in with an idea for round one but things change in the AFL really quickly so by round four it could be a different look completely. Obviously Xavier Clarke and David Teague have got a big influence on that area so they’re working through some solutions.
Q: Dustin Martin. Richmond fans, everyone really, wants to know how he’s going. What should we expect from him this year at this stage of his career after a couple of turbulent seasons?His training form has been really good. He’s had a really good off-season. With grief, sometimes people handle it differently, sometimes people can move on pretty quickly and other times it takes a little bit of time and they’ve got to work through some things. Each and every person is different. But what I do know is that when Dustin’s on the park it’s great for not only our footy club but AFL in general. It might be a little bit of a different role this year as compared to what it has been years previously but once again forward of the ball we’re still working through some options, what that looks like. What we do know is if Dustin’s on the field for us we’re certainly in a good place.
Q: What would that different look be?We’re sort of looking at a number of options. Dustin’s a matchwinner as a forward, when he plays forward. We’re looking at whether we stabilise that a little bit, does he play more forward as to compared to midfield? Do we keep him fresher? We’re just working through some things that allow us to get the best football out of Dustin Martin for longer if that makes sense. I look at Leigh Matthews and the way he played the game early doors in his career is more midfield, towards the back end of his career he was one of the most damaging forwards ever to play the game. Is that something we look at? Because Dustin is very capable of kicking a lot of goals in a short period of time.
Q: Broadly on the league and where it’s at. There’s a few hot button topics, CBA, Tassie. What are your views on what are the big issues in footy going forward and are there some changes you’d like to see either on or off the field?Probably the biggest one from a club viewpoint and a coaching viewpoint is concussion and CTE injuries moving forward. How we work with that. I think clubs are getting a lot better. We’re very cautious with how that goes. Probably the thing we’ve got to be mindful of, and this is a challenge for junior competitions, it’s incumbent on coaches to make sure we coach first and foremost the correct technique in picking up the ball, but also discourage players leading with their head, not only getting the ball but also when they have the ball. It’s a big challenge with umpiring also, because at the moment the head is protected as it should be – the challenge is, are we rewarding players for leading with the head? I think it’s incumbent on coaches to set the right example. I’m going to have players that do it but we’ll be strong in our messaging that we don’t think it’s the right thing to do, it sets a bad example and puts the umpires in a difficult situation as well. We’ve just got to make sure we look after the health and wellbeing of our players. It’s of paramount importance and we’re seeing the repercussions of that from years gone by.
Q: On that, are you concerned about your own long-term health? You were a teammate of John Barnes, given what he’s been through. Is donating your brain to science something you’d consider?I’ve never even thought of that to be honest. But when I’m gone they can do with me what they want! As you get older, and I’ve just turned 50, it’s amazing, you can start to see things in your own body start to deteriorate. Obviously the long-term health of your own health is of the utmost importance. It’s something I will continue to work through. As men we’re not great at maintaining our regular doctor’s appointments, and to be fair I’m in the vast majority.
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