Damien Hardwick changing his ways has played a part in Richmond’s revival in 2017SAM EDMUND,
Herald Sun
23 September 2017WEDNESDAY night is movie night. Damien Hardwick and wife Danielle make the short drive from their south eastern suburbs home to a Brighton cinema.
The oft-referenced “Mrs Hardwick” has a thing for foreign films, which at times has tested the patience of Mr Hardwick.
“Nothing better than reading a film,” he has said.
But this is much more than a husband and wife sharing a bucket of popcorn in front of the big screen for a couple of hours a week.
This is the yin to the Richmond coach’s yang — the family side of a working man whose father Noel said “could do 120 hours a week” if he wanted.
A year after an eight-win season had his head on the block last year, Hardwick now has the Tigers one win away from their first Grand Final since 1982.
It is a plot twist bigger than any movie he has watched on a Wednesday night and it is largely because he has changed as much as his side.
The former bank teller and accountant who last year bogged his players down with confusing tactics has turned entrusting pied piper during a successful 2017 campaign only he saw coming.
If people scoffed last season at Hardwick’s claim the Richmond list was the best he’d had, they laughed when he followed up with predictions of a “quick bounce” in 2017.
But after an embarrassing board challenge that failed and a club review he survived, Hardwick, 45, faced up to his mistakes and set about rectifying them.
He went to Harvard University to complete a leadership course and, for the first time, took leave early in the pre-season for a family holiday.
He returned a refreshed coach with a refreshing outlook and a game plan that liberated his players.
The Punt Rd house of horrors was about to become revival ground zero.
SPEAK to enough people who worked in Richmond’s football department last year and you hear the word “confusing” quite a bit.
“I’d say if you were a young guy, it (game plan) was definitely confusing,” one said.
“Other teams try and take away your offence and what happened was that when those options were taken away guys weren’t sure what to do next.
“Was it complicated? Yeah, there were certain parts that were complicating.”
Another said: “The analysis and the intricacies of the game plan were confusing. If you get into every player’s head, they pick up the ball and they’re not sure what they’re going to do.”
Hardwick the player was a see-ball, get-ball hard man who didn’t give a rats about numbers. As a coach he had became infatuated by them.
“He became obsessed with statistics and process to the point where he couldn’t see the forest for the trees,” one insider said.
“If he went overseas and saw a US college team or NFL team and they had a particular thing he was like, ‘We have to get that’ and more is better because that means we’ve got an advantage on someone.
“The ability to pick the eyes out of things is where he’s got to now. There’s less analysis, less opposition review and less feedback directly to players. All that has contributed to a happier list.”
A source close to the players said: “Last year there were lots of rules in place around moving the footy, but this year they’ve simplified everything. There’s no chipping around, they’re just taking the ball quickly because their biggest strength is their speed and pressure forward of the ball.”
RADIO is long way from confessional, but in June this year Hardwick used it to give the most honest picture yet of his 2016 torment.
“I learnt a big lesson last year and sometimes you learn most when you’re in your darkest places,” he told SEN.
“The funny thing about when you’re losing (is) you tend to work harder and you tend to shut yourself away from everyone. You’re thinking you’re the solution to the problem, but in fact half the time you are the problem.
“I was probably working too hard, not listening to enough people, not getting enough advice and I was at my worst.
“I should have been around my players, getting around my staff and absorbing their opinions and getting some advice from people who’d been in a similar position.”
Yet the players say Hardwick never “lost them”.
“The thing with ‘Dimma’ is he is a relationship coach,” one player said.
“You almost feel like you’re his son in a way and as a player you don’t want to let him down.
“The players wanted him as the guy to coach them. The list itself, even though we were playing poorly, still had some bloody good players on it.”
Richmond had won 15, 12 and 15 games in the three seasons prior to 2016 and, while falling short, had played finals in each of those years. It turns out the cake was there, it just needed some icing.
The Tigers added Josh Caddy, Dion Prestia and Toby Nankervis, witnessed the growth of Dan Butler, Jason Castagna and Kane Lambert, and Daniel Rioli got another pre-season under the belt.
Off-field, the arrival of veteran football manager Neil Balme has meant Hardwick has less to worry about.
Respected assistant Blake Caracella crossed from Geelong to take charge of ball movement and sacked Brisbane Lions coach Justin Leppitsch returned to Richmond as forwards coach.
SOME of the best ideas happen by accident. The Richmond mosquito fleet that has taken the competition by storm had its origins in a NAB Challenge experiment, but evolved through necessity as much as anything.
It was Leppitsch who wanted to go small, but Hardwick couldn’t be convinced of doing away with a second key forward.
So Ben Griffiths played the opening two rounds before concussion, described by Jack Riewoldt as “extremely scary”, put him on the sidelines. Todd Elton was tried in six games between Rounds 3-10, but form and a shoulder injury put him out, as well.
When Jack Riewoldt was consistently surrounded by a bunch of quick, desperate smalls inside 50m, it clicked with and without the ball.
Without it, the Tigers have gone from the worst pressuring side in the competition last year to fourth while creating the second most forward half turnovers.
With it, the rules of 2016 were ditched so the players could play on instinct, freedom and flair.
“Damien was one that was very ABC. I’m not saying he’s military in his approach, but he’s very much like an American football coach in a lot of ways, the way he goes about it,” Leppitsch told SEN in July.
“Something he has done (this year) is be able to give the players back some of their head in what they do and really trusted in them and in our leaders.
“The freedom in how the boys play, particularly offensively and with the ball, the players tend to like nowadays and that’s the one thing they tend to enjoy and thrive off.
“I think that’s the main thing to take the stress away from the game, because it is stressful enough as it is. I think the young guys today get it from every angle, they don’t need it also from their senior coach.”
THE RELATIONSHIP between father and son is tight. Noel Hardwick still speaks to his son after every game.
“He’s got a tremendous sense of humour, but that outer shell, you’ll never crack it,” Hardwick Sr said.
“There’s lots of stresses, but he deals with it well. The end is inevitable — there’s only way to go from here and that’s him not coaching Richmond. He knows that, but he also knew he was on the right path.”
Hardwick Sr said his son’s home life with Danielle and children Ben (“BJ”), Isabelle and Imogen was the source of his strength.
“Home is home and work is work. That really gives him the strength to deal with the outer pressures,” Hardwick Sr said.
“His strength is that relationship. He puts the work in, but (Danielle) picks him up and brings him back to the real world and she does it beautifully.”
Rioli moving in has also reinforced the importance of family for the Richmond coach.
“He gets on well with my kids and my wife loves him and he actually brought our family closer together, to be honest,” Hardwick said earlier this year.
“I feel I’ve got to do more with my own family; the connection and how close you are and that’s something that I’ve learned, and my family has learned, as a result of having Daniel live with us.”
Rioli said: “Finding out I was living with him was nerve-racking at the start.
“I thought he’d be talking footy so much in the house, but he’s a pretty funny character.
“When he’s coaching he’s full-on serious and when he’s at home he’s a family man, which is good.”
Hardwick also talks regularly with Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson and the pair run together at least once a week.
Hardwick’s wife Danielle and Clarkson’s wife Caryn are good friends and there would be no better confidant for a coach entering uncharted waters than Hawthorn’s four-time premiership tactician.
HARDWICK has always had a dry sense of humour, but he has turned uber serious, even emotional, when it comes to footy.
A man who said he would be a “mild mannered accountant” if it wasn’t for football, has a simmering temper that occasionally bubbles over.
And occasionally he has been moved to use explicit language in public.
Despite Richmond’s exciting 2017 season, Hardwick has lashed premiership teammate Kane Cornes and former Tigers coach Danny Frawley for comments many were surprised he bothered responding to.
Hardwick also called the Herald Sun last week, ropeable the newspaper had contacted his father.
Seething after an elimination final loss two years ago, he called AFL media manager Patrick Keane a “f---ing moron” in a post-match press conference after Keane’s phone rang.
Speaking after this year’s Round 16 thrashing from St Kilda, Hardwick savaged Cornes, who had tweeted his belief that the Tigers had got ahead of themselves.
“Seriously, I would love to see Kane, I would love to see Kane,” Hardwick said.
“Don’t get me wrong, that’s his job, he’s there to write s---comments.”
Hardwick took aim at Frawley a month earlier after the commentator spoke about the Tigers’ “mental disintegration” late in close games, accusing Frawley of creating “noise” to stay “relevant”.
A former player said Hardwick’s fierce defence of his charges was appreciated inside the club.
“He gets very defensive and that’s what you love about your coach — that he sticks up for you,” he said.
“It’s not just about football. He’s a life coach as well. When you’ve got someone like that you can always trust them. He had an open door policy and you could talk to him about anything.
“That’s what they love about him.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/how-damien-hardwick-changed-his-ways-to-turn-richmond-into-a-premiership-contender/news-story/465d87c04020fb69b979c76bf34d4962
