'What have I got myself in for?' ROHAN CONNOLLY
June 19, 2010
THE SATURDAY REPORTDAMIEN Hardwick found early on in his debut season as an AFL senior coach that he was becoming too emotionally involved in games. So he resolved, when it came to his own reactions, to "take the scoreboard out of it a little bit".
Last Sunday, as his exuberant young Richmond team won a crushing victory over West Coast and his spearhead Jack Riewoldt went on an extraordinary goalkicking spree, came the definitive proof the strategy had worked.
Hardwick was coaching the Tigers, as he has nearly all season, from the interchange bench. After just 20 minutes and a rush of Riewoldt goals, he spoke to his assistant, Danny Daly, up in the box.
"I said: 'Jeez, Jack's been good, how many has he kicked?''' Hardwick recalled this week. Told he already had five, Hardwick was startled. And again, midway through the last quarter, when an already vocal home crowd started roaring even louder. "I asked them: 'Why is the crowd going nuts? … Oh, right, he's going for 10'."
Hardwick wasn't so detached from the result he couldn't work out the Tigers were about to record their second win of the season, the immediate future far brighter than it had seemed five or so weeks previously.
But he's got his own ladder, too. The official AFL version has Richmond at two wins and 10 losses. On the Hardwick measure, the Tiges are 2-2, the result of a decision taken immediately his team had done all but win the game against Hawthorn in round eight.
"It was a game our numbers suggested we should have won, but being a young side, we just couldn't get over the line. But the belief the players got out of it was enormous," he explains.
"As we were walking from the field that day, we stood together as a group, players and coaches, and we said: 'Listen, our season starts from round nine onwards. We've set ourselves a standard, now we understand what's required to play at a certain level. We took a stand there that our season was beginning now'.''
Hardwick is also into winning behaviours, even if the team isn't winning. "We celebrate every goal as if we're in front, we help our guys get up off the ground, all that sort of stuff," he explains. "It's the chicken or the egg, what comes first? We're saying that we might not be winning on the scoreboard, but we can at least set our winning behaviours up nice and early."
The beautiful irony in all this for the long-suffering Richmond hordes is that in being freed from the potentially deflating pressures of the scoreboard and the win-loss tally, the victories are coming.
The first, two weeks later on a rain-soaked AAMI Stadium against Port Adelaide, preceded one of the most passionate renditions of a theme song ever belted out by a playing group, one which almost moved Hardwick to tears.
"I've been fortunate enough to win premierships, but I still maintain that was the best song I've sung. I nearly teared up. It was just so emotional for the players, they'd put in so much hard work, I was so happy for them and to actually get to sing that song … jeez it's a great song, it really does get the passion stirring … I'll remember that till the day I finish."
Suddenly the positive signs for Richmond seem everywhere. There's the emerging superstar Riewoldt. One of the most composed and consistent rookies of recent times, Dustin Martin. A surprise packet in Ben Nason. Trent Cotchin hitting his straps. Vast improvements from the likes of Matt White, Shane Edwards and Jake King. And the recent renaissance of even a couple of old-timers in Ben Cousins and Shane Tuck.
Hardwick landed at Punt Road last August with a clear, long-term vision. They've had a few of those over the years at Richmond. But the results are already becoming apparent.
Certainly more so than when the 2010 campaign kicked off with a shattering loss to Hawthorn in the first round of the NAB Cup. Richmond was jumped, never in the contest, and already trailing by more than 100 points come three-quarter-time.
A ruder welcome to the world of AFL senior coaching is hard to imagine, and Hardwick felt it keenly.
"I must admit, after that first loss I felt like the loneliest bloke on the face of the earth," he recalls. "I remember going to bed that night and I actually felt crook, thinking: 'What have I got myself in for?' It was probably the eye-opener for me. The first thing you do is doubt yourself, think have I not done this or that right.
"But the great thing was, though I didn't want to watch the tape, I made myself, and when I watched it, I thought we had some areas that we could improve really, really quickly. And for the rest of the NAB Challenge, we were actually pretty competitive. It's all been a thoroughly enjoyable process, I've learnt a lot about the caper in a short period of time, and some do's and don'ts as well.
There was a "don't" as recently as last Sunday, when Hardwick sent out a message telling Riewoldt not to talk to the Fox TV crew out on the ground immediately after the siren. But when Riewoldt started copping a public whack for following his coach's instructions, the mea culpa was immediate.
"It was my stuff-up," Hardwick says, "and the reason I came out and apologised was that people were into Jack, and it wasn't his choice, it was mine. People are very quick to whack Jack, but he's an outstanding kid."
Hardwick has had far more serious issues to deal with, though. Like the aftermath of the round-three match in Sydney, when youngster Daniel Connors was suspended by the club for eight matches after alcohol-fuelled high jinks in the team hotel, and more senior teammates Cousins, Luke McGuane and Dean Polo were suspended for a game for failing to do enough to stop their teammate's rampage.
"We learnt a lesson about the parameters we had to have in place for such a young group. And we probably didn't have enough in place to knock it on the head," Hardwick admits. A chastened Connors played his first game back in senior company last weekend. So have the lessons sunk in?
"I think so. Dan had a number of issues prior to that, and we just wanted to make sure he understood perfectly where he was at, and that any further instances down that track were going to cost him his career. It's been a massive eye-opener for him about what you have to be prepared to give up in order to have a good time for one night."
Hardwick says he's enjoying developing his relationships with the playing group, and it's certainly not all one-way traffic. "The kids of today are very different to when I came through. They'll always ask why something happens, which, to be honest, I quite enjoy. I actually want them to challenge me, to ask why they're in or out of the side, and I say to them the day I don't respond to that is the day I shouldn't be coaching any more.
"I'm happy to give them some home truths, but I'm also very happy for them to give me some home truths, because as the relationship gets stronger, they know I'm not going to rubbish to them, and it creates that open-door policy that I think good footy clubs are founded on."
That, and balance. Hardwick is big on family.
"To me that's first, and football a long way second, and that's a club mantra as well. If anyone has got family issues, they take care of that first, then worry about the footy." Married to Danielle, Hardwick has three children - Benjamin, or "BJ" as his dad calls him, 13, Isabelle, 10, and Imogen, seven. They've been actively involved wherever he has been. Hardwick recalled that, on the day of his appointment to the Richmond job, how his daughters had asked if he could take Cyril Rioli along with him. Now they're converts, too.
"We try to do as much as we can together," he says. "BJ comes to games with me now and scouts, like, 'OK, BJ, who's in the centre bounce now?' The girls watch the footy with me on the couch. They love it, and they'll give me advice, too, like, 'That guy didn't find the body, Dad.' I'll still go and watch them play sport. I was scoring at the basketball the other night."
Which presents its own set of problems, given close friend but now rival coach Alastair Clarkson's daughter is playing for the same team.
"Our daughters play in the same side twice a week," he says with a laugh.
"It was very funny the week we played Hawthorn. On the Tuesday, it was a little bit frosty, then on the night before the game we're both sitting there like this [he strikes a rigid pose, eyes straight ahead, arms crossed defensively]. We're good mates, our families are very close. At the end of the day, footy's a small part of our lives considering we're going to be lifelong friends."
Hardwick has plenty of other football mentors, including Chris Fagan, head of coaching and development at Hawthorn, and former Port Adelaide assistant Geoff Morris. There's his own dad, Noel, who coached him in his junior playing days with Upwey-Tecoma.
But there's a new, even more meaningful relationship being formed with the Richmond Football Club. They're a good fit, Hardwick and the Tigers, a former no-nonsense, hard-as-nails defender, with a club whose origins and character remain distinctly blue collar.
"Just getting back to that workmanlike outfit is something our boys have taken stock of," he says. "I think over the last six weeks, we've started to see some of those traits coming back into it, which will help link us with our past."
And then there's that famous Punt Road passion. "At the weekend, we had 31,000 there for a game between 16th and 14th, staggering, then to hear the passion in the crowd walking on to the ground afterwards," Hardwick says. "Honestly, I just can't wait till we get a crowd of 70,000, and they get to sing that song, to hear that many of our supporters roaring would be amazing."
Indeed it would. And given Hardwick's aversion to taking note of the scoreboard, also some pretty compelling evidence that his young and emerging Tigers had won again.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/what-have-i-got-myself-in-for-20100618-ymv8.html
