THE MOMENT RIVAL COACH FELT HARDWICK’S TIGERS HAD A SERIOUS GAME PLAN ON THEIR HANDSAndrew Slevison
SEN
25 May 2023Leon Cameron locked horns with Damien Hardwick multiple times throughout their respective coaching careers.
The former GWS coach and the recently-departed Richmond mentor Hardwick met on 15 occasions over the years, with the latter holding a 9-6 record over his rival.
Among those nine Hardwick wins were two finals triumphs - the 2017 preliminary final and the 2019 Grand Final - but prior to that, the Giants took care of the Tigers in Round 9, 2017.
Cameron remembers the game vividly, which his side won by three points courtesy of a late Jeremy Cameron goal.
Despite winning, he says it was the moment he realised that Hardwick had a serious game plan on his hands.
“We probably won our first game against them in 2017 by default,” Cameron recalled on SEN Breakfast.
“It was one of those freakish moments where Jeremy Cameron got the ball out the back after a Nathan Wilson kick in.
“Richmond dominated all day, they deserved to win by three or four goals. We came really late and scored (late). Richmond lost two close ones in a row and that was the second one.
“We walked away from that game, our coaching staff, and said that was really hard to combat, and what was it? Because that was really early, it was only about Round 9.
“We said, ‘What was that?’
“It was just this scramble play, sort of down one side, extra numbers on that side, they love a loose ground ball, their leg speed is hurting us. We were setting up in the middle, but it’s not coming through the middle.
“Just that scramble play really hurt us and caught us off guard.”
Cameron explained how the Tigers were able to assert their dominance over the Giants in pressure-cooker finals, through a game plan that was borne out of necessity given the personnel available to Hardwick.
“Then we got them later on in the year in the prelim final, clearly they were really humming and they got us by about five or six goals. We just couldn’t combat.
“We were trying to come up with a different strategy to beat that. We probably did later on in ‘18 and ‘19 in home and away games, but when it came to finals they seemed to always have the wood on us.
“It was a unique situation because it was one of those summers when they probably just said, ‘This is what we’ve got, this is our list, we have to play exactly to this list. We mightn’t have the best kickers, we mightn’t have the best decision makers’, I don’t know what was discussed at Richmond.
“But what they came up with was this unbelievable, fast, scramble play down one side, outnumber, get it in, doesn’t matter if you’ve got a tall forward or a medium forward, bring it to ground, enormous amount of pressure the footy and then score.”
That chaotic style of play was the bedrock of Richmond’s three premierships in four years (2017, 2019 and 2020) under Hardwick.
It is a style that many other clubs have since attempted to emulate. A style that changed the modern game and that Hardwick will forever be remembered for.
https://www.sen.com.au/news/2023/05/25/the-moment-rival-coach-felt-hardwicks-tigers-had-a-serious-game-plan-on/
