Secret pact that could have seen Tigers coach head to BrisbaneMay 23, 2020
Max Laughton
FOX SPORTSRichmond coach Damien Hardwick made a secret pact with then-Brisbane coach Justin Leppitsch in 2016 that could have seen the dual premiership Tigers coach head north.
The deal came in the midst of arguably the worst patch of Hardwick’s coaching career. The Tigers had played finals for three straight years, but failed to win any of them, and then started the 2016 season losing six of seven games.
Richmond ended up finishing 13th, dropping their last game of the season to Sydney by 113 points, days later seeing the infamous ‘Focus on Footy’ group unsuccessfully challenge the board.
Leppitsch, who revealed the pact on the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast, was already under fire heading into his third season as Lions coach.
Heading into 2016, he had received a surprising one-year contract extension that should have seen him stay in charge until the end of 2017. But overseeing an extremely young side ravaged by the exits of the ‘go-home five’, he looked in real trouble.
In the middle of the season, with both sides languishing in the bottom four, Leppitsch - who had worked as an assistant under Hardwick at Tigerland before taking the Brisbane job - made a call to his former boss.
The plan was simple: whichever one of the pair wasn’t sacked would give the other a job.
“We did have a chat mid-year,” Leppitsch said.
“He (Hardwick) said ‘If you hang on, I’m coming to Brisbane and if I hang on, you can come to Richmond’.
“Then I said to him: ‘What if we both get the boot?’”
In the end, Hardwick was retained while Leppitsch was kept on until the end of a 3-19 season, before being sacked via a secret ballot at a Monday morning Lions board meeting.
Two months later, Leppitsch rejoined the Tigers as an assistant coach, where he has helped them win the 2017 and 2019 premierships.
The champion defender had previously told Brisbane he would never quit as coach.
“They (the board) were angling for me to quit,” Leppitsch recounted.
“The only reason I didn’t is you can’t go three years telling people ‘we are in it for the long haul’, playing the kids and meeting the parents and then say ‘by the way, I’m out’. I didn’t want those people to think I had given up on them.
“I thought ‘You sack me. I won’t resign’.”
In the end Leppitsch was at his daughter’s primary school athletics carnival when he got the call he had been dumped. The Lions had won 14 of his 66 games in charge.
“When you look back in hindsight … I probably should have been sacked if they were your results,” he admitted.
“Common sense tells you can’t keep losing games by 70 points.”
https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2020-damien-hardwick-to-brisbane-lions-justin-leppitsch-sacked-podcast-secret-pact-to-become-assistant-coach/news-story/7e99616b4b9755669d39a5c4f30ab9f8
