Damien Hardwick’s coaching career to be defined by Richmond’s 2017 finals runDwayne Russell,
The Advertiser
16 July 2017DAMIEN Hardwick has a good reason to be a little frightened.
He knows that the ghost that haunts him is coming.
Not today. The Tigers will smash Brisbane at the MCG today and surge back into contention for a top-four ladder position entering the finals. And the open, affable, likeable, Hardwick will be in full flight at his post-game media conference tonight.
But Hardwick’s occasionally aggressive and recent defensive demeanour is an obvious indicator that he knows he has a fight on the horizon that he can’t run from.
And like a doomsday prepper, he stands at the gates of Richmond, armed and ready to shoot down even the slightest threat before it escalates.
His response to Kane Cornes’ relatively harmless and almost comically-timed tweet — which most successful and self-confident coaches would have simply ignored — was the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on a boy scout with a pea shooter.
But that’s what happens when you have not won a final in seven seasons as a coach, and have embarrassingly blown your chances in all of your previous three finals appearances.
That’s what happens when the hashtag #sorichmond, and the jokes about the Tigers’ recent tradition of big stage failure and supporter heartbreak, get annoying. And Cornes hit that raw nerve.
No-one at Richmond wants to be reminded about the never-to-be-equalled humiliation of 2013, when the fifth-placed Tigers lost to the ninth-placed Blues, who only made the finals because Essendon was disqualified.
Or the infamous stage fright elimination-final defeat in 2014, when the Tigers essentially handed over the game at the coin toss by kicking into the wind against Port Adelaide which blasted them off Adelaide Oval by quarter time.
Or the humiliating choke in 2015 — the last time the Tigers made the finals — when they finished fifth and lost their elimination final to the eighth-placed underdog North Melbourne.
For the record, Richmond has not won a final for 16 years. And now everything Hardwick has ever done in almost eight seasons as a coach is being parlayed into this September.
What his Tigers do to finish this season could define Hardwick and his coaching era.
If he has finals success, he becomes the genius who escaped death row after fans were calling for him to be sacked after Richmond finished 13th last year.
Because, despite all the great work this year, Hardwick still needs to win a final or two to escape the reaches of Richmond’s own cannibalistic supporters who chew coaches up and spit them out for sport.
If Richmond finishes fifth and gets eliminated in its first final, or finish fourth and get dumped from September in straight sets, life for Hardwick and every Tigers fan who knows no other way than to be all-in emotionally will be unbearable for another summer.
So the aggressive defensiveness is no surprise. It was Hardwick’s trademark as a two-time premiership player.
He took forwards down, beat them and humiliated them for a living. He was brilliant at it, and an All-Australian at it. And Cornes was not his first victim this year, and will not be his last.
When a journalist dared to ask at a Press conference last month if Richmond had an advantage over Carlton because the Bachar Houli hit on Jed Lamb in the opening minutes left Carlton a man down for the whole game, Hardwick — who claimed he hadn’t seen the Houli hit — laughed off the question.
“I wouldn’t have thought, mate,” Hardwick chuckled. “I don’t think you can say we won the game on having an extra man, give me a spell.”
Richmond’s defiant attacking defensiveness continued when they produced character evidence from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a television show host, and a conflicted AFL employee, in an attempt to try to downplay the violent nature of the Houli hit. The tactic contrasted the way Melbourne handled the Thomas Bugg hit on Callum Mills, when Bugg and the club simply admitted guilt immediately after the game and did not try to explain it away and sneak him a low sentence with smoke and mirrors.
The Tigers will demolish Brisbane today. But for Richmond and Hardwick it’s not about today. It’s all about D-Day. The first weekend of this year’s finals.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/damien-hardwicks-coaching-career-to-be-defined-by-richmonds-2017-finals-run/news-story/1b9455dbd56caac277dbca6d03d016bd
