Hard man now the head manMark Robinson | August 27, 2009
THE Essendon half-back line of 2000 was Hardwick, Wallis, Solomon. Tough, uncompromising, snipey, all of them.
The first bloke particularly was thought to have white line fever.
As for him being an AFL coach, Dean Wallis, assistant coach of Fremantle, thinks it bizarre.
"Amazing and bizarre," Wallis said yesterday. "For someone who hated training, who hated meetings, who hated all things other than playing the game, gone a full circle to be now a senior AFL coach, and all my teammates and anyone who knows Damien Hardwick would've thought, 'S..t'.
"He was bizarre when it came to training, he hated hot and colds, hated recovery, 'this is bulls..t, why are we doing this for, bloody hell, this is crap, what are we doing'.
"He just wanted to play the game, he was anal. He crossed that white line and all he worried about was playing footy - just give me a jumper, give me a footy and let me go and beat up the opposition."
He was good at that, Hardwick, the beating up and the aggression, but that undersells him as a player.
He played 207 games, kicked 14 goals, is a two-time premiership player with Essendon (2000) and Port Adelaide (2004) and was an assistant coach when Hawthorn won last year's flag.
He is an Essendon best-and-fairest winner ('98) and All-Australian (2000).
In the Bombers' premiership campaign, Hardwick was an inspirational, fearless competitor.
"I don't know what Dimma was on but as soon as he stepped over that white line, he was a different cookie. I suppose we all knew what each of us was doing, we just looked at each other gave a wink and a nod, and our philosophy back there was junkyard dogs," Wallis said.
"Anyone who came into our backyard, we'd attack them, and we did it better than most."
Wallis said Hardwick was a smiling assassin. "He'd punch you in the gob with a smile on his face," he laughed.
As a footballer, Wallis was in awe.
"We got a DVD of us about that time, around '99 and 2000, and some of the amazing work he did, just putting his body on the line, the great chase and tackles, going back with the flight of the ball and getting crunched," Wallis said.
"I remember one day in the showers after the game, Jason Johnson and Dimma were standing side by side and comparing battle scars and bruises," Wallis said. "That's how they got off on footy, seeing how beat up they could get."
Hardwick was always a "tough" footballer but he also could play.
As a youngster at Upwey-Tecoma in the Dandenongs, he used to play in the centre.
"I was coached by my old man, who was a good coach but he was very harsh," Hardwick said yesterday. "I don't think he ever gave me a best-and-fairest vote throughout my whole career.
"I think when I first started I was a centreman but I was just a bit ... the skills weren't up to it, so you always went down back if you didn't have great skills.
"Then obviously I went and learned under Denis Pagan and spent a couple of years there, got delisted at North Melbourne, went to Springvale, had my jaw broken in my first game there in three places.
"Then I was very fortunate that Denis took me across to Essendon with him, at the highly-regarded pick of 87, I was that year in the draft."
His old man and Pagan were influential figures in his career.
He told his dad on Tuesday night he had won the Richmond job. "(Dad said) "I think 'you bloody ripper' was his first one."
Pagan yesterday said he was surprised Hardwick wasn't a senior coach already.
"He was very hard and tough, uncompromising the way he played his football," he said.
"In 1992, I got the tip-toe, there were no under-19s then and I think Damien did, too.
"I went to Essendon and I rang Damien up - there were supplementary lists then.
"There wasn't a lot of interest at the start, but he played a few games in the reserves and he was outstanding, he won everyone over with his approach and desire."
After Pagan returned home to North Melbourne to start his dynasty, Hardwick was one of the foundations of which Kevin Sheedy built his.
Sheedy simplified his approach: To beat the best, you had to be tougher than the best and the best and toughest was North Melbourne. Sheedy used Hardwick, Solomon, Long, Wallis, the Johnsons, Barnard and others as, as one person put it, natural born killers.
Hardwick ended with the Bombers in 2001 and said at the time to being "disillisioned" with his transfer to Port Adelaide.
The Bombers were in salary cap strife but, later in the same year, broke with tradition and awarded Hardwick life membership after nine years service and not 10.
Hardwick said he loved the Bombers, but playing against them in a final in 2002, he got fined $8000 for starting a blue before the siren.
No one would've expected any different.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25986824-19742,00.html
