Hardwick on why he left Tigers, feeling reinvigorated and the Sun with potential to be ‘special’After more than a decade as Richmond coach, Damien Hardwick has begun a new chapter at Gold Coast. He talks to Michael Gleeson about being reinvigorated by his new club, the young Sun with a licence to do a “Dusty” and why he doesn’t regret being open about his family life to build connections.
Michael Gleeson
The Age
February 26, 2024 In his last years at Richmond, Damien Hardwick now recognises he was simultaneously over-coaching and barely coaching at all.
The two seemingly contradictory observations help explain the fugue the former Tigers coach got into when he left midway through last season. The team had come to know his game so well he managed people but barely instructed them how to play. He can see now that as he strived to find that extra edge, he added more layers to their game when fewer would have been better. He overloaded them.
His first senior AFL game as coach of the Suns will be against Richmond, a team that knows the game he is trying to instil in the Suns better than the Suns players do.
Ahead of that clash, this masthead spent two days embedded with the Suns in team and recruiting meetings, at training, and interviewing staff and the triple-premiership coach.
The clear impression now is of a club being moulded in Hardwick’s image. The Suns are looking like Richmond II. Which is a good thing.
In a candid assessment of the last year and the job ahead, Hardwick:
* Dismisses the idea that his new job at the Suns was a done deal when he left Richmond, saying “that’s society. I think we always look at the conspiracy theory, whether it’s COVID, JFK (the US president’s assassination) or whether it’s landing on the moon, there’s always going to be people that lend itself to that side.”
* Has been re-invigorated on the Gold Coast by being “back on the tools” actually coaching a game plan.
The TigersAfter his long stint at Richmond, Hardwick is able to see what happened towards the end of his time as senior coach.
“I think when you’ve been in an organisation for like 13 or 14 years, you become more of a man manager. So you’re allowing other people to step up. What is happening now is I’m more on the tools,” Hardwick said.
“Where you play a style of game over a number of years the majority of your coaching staff and your playing group have got a really good understanding about role execution and system. Right now, it’s more hands on.
“You’ve coached for a long time and you start trying to add layers and layers and layers, and yes, you end up probably making the game harder than what it has to actually be sometimes.
“The game is incredibly complex so let’s simplify that. Let’s not over-coach during the week. And I think, if I’m being completely honest with myself, that’s probably the way I tended to go towards the back stages [of my time at Richmond]. I tried to over coach a little bit, which I think happens from time to time because if things aren’t going too well you feel like you’ve got to step in.
“I think I’ve become a little bit more relaxed and I’ve got a greater understanding about the players. Give them a framework, give them a system and then just let them play the game.”
Mrs Hardwick
Hardwick was the coach who most embraced the trend of being open and vulnerable to build connections with and between his players. An emotional man, he is a “giver” who would often personalise stories and invoke his wife Danielle – “Mrs Hardwick”. It was jarring then for some – former captain Trent Cotchin spoke of this in his recently published book – when Hardwick subsequently split with Danielle and began a new relationship with a then Richmond employee.
With time and space for reflection, Hardwick says he does not regret the narrative he created from personal stories and references and will not change his style.
“No, I don’t [regret the family references] because, Danielle and my kids have been an enormous part of my life for 25-30 years. And Danielle will always be a part of my life. She’s a mother to my three wonderful kids, and we’ve still got a reasonably solid relationship, but things change and that’s the reality.
“Could things be done a bit better along the way and not played out in public? Yeah probably, but you can’t go back, you can only forge your way forward. The way I coach and the way I approach things I’ll always be open, I’ll always be honest, and I might be too much of a sharer but I’d rather be that than the opposite way.
“I want the players to know that I’m emotional and that I’m vulnerable at stages and I am struggling because the fact of the matter is, we all do it.
“One thing I’ve learnt, and I’ve learnt a lot of great lessons from a lot of great people, Trent being one of those and Dustin and these type of people, is that you’ve got to have conversations where you do feel uncomfortable, and you do share things that are going to put you a little bit not at ease, but that’s helped people and clubs and organisations.”
Full article: https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/hardwick-on-why-he-left-tigers-feeling-reinvigorated-and-the-sun-with-potential-to-be-special-20240220-p5f6ak.html?js-chunk-not-found-refresh=true
