Tigers, Hawks in joint training runrichmondfc.com.au
By Nat Edwards
5:00 PM Thu 03 Feb, 2011RICHMOND and Hawthorn have joined forces during the pre-season in a bid to jump-start the careers of their younger players.
In an unprecedented move, coaches Damien Hardwick and Alastair Clarkson decided to bring their least experienced players together for a couple of training sessions.
Richmond coach Hardwick said the sessions had been very beneficial in giving his young list a chance to test themselves against another side.
"We obviously had a couple of scrimmage sessions with our young guys just to see how our set-ups went against theirs," Hardwick said on Thursday.
"Anything we can do as a club to be innovative and take our game to the next level I think is beneficial."
"As a coach you need to get those guys up. If you can get those players playing at a higher standard, it improves your list overall. So we thought it was really beneficial for those guys to test where they are at."
Before he scored the top job at Richmond, Hardwick was an assistant coach under Clarkson at Hawthorn for five years and was a key member of their 2008 premiership.
"Obviously myself and Clarko are mates," Hardwick said.
"We've talked about it for a number of years about how we think it could work and we gave it a trial and it actually worked really really well."
"Sides throughout the world do it and it's something we both looked at and thought it'd be worth having a go."
Given the success of the trial, Hardwick did not rule out the possibility of the two clubs joining forces again in the near future.
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