This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.
So said TS Eliot – but the manner of Damien Hardwick’s shock, sudden departure as Richmond coach after three premierships and the resurrection of a football club can only be described as the mother of all bangs.
17 other coaches will be looking over their shoulders a little more nervously than they were last week; journalists and reporters around the country will be breathing a little easier knowing they won’t be subject to a Hardwick drive-by at this week’s press conferences; and above all, Tigers fans will be looking back with fondness at a 13-year tenure with plenty of lows but even more highs.
It has been 5,018 days since the Tigers, once famous for going through coaches like Pringles, last needed to search for a new man at the helm. Here are five defining moments from Damien Hardwick’s celebrated time as Richmond coach.
Damien Hardwick. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Hardwick did not take over a happy and healthy club – few new coaches do. But the Tigers he inherited weren’t just floundering on-field, having missed finals for eight successive seasons and finished 2009 in 15th; drowning in off-field debt and with a new CEO in Brendon Gale at the helm, this was ground zero for the club in its entirety.
Things began ominously, with the Tigers losing the first nine games of Hardwick’s tenure – a then equal-AFL record for a first time coach only since beaten by Adelaide’s Matthew Nicks. Last on the ladder with a percentage of just 56.2 – if you’re after a comparison, West Coast right now are only 0.8 per cent worse – and with six of their defeats by 50 points or more, there were murmurings of discontent even given the near-universally held view the side could hardly be expected to do too much better.
The turning point came, as it often does, with heart. On a trip to AAMI Stadium to take on a Port Adelaide outfit sitting in the eight, the Tigers, in miserable conditions, laid a then-record 142 tackles, and in the rain and the mud drew the Power back to their level. And as they say about arguing with an idiot, they then beat them with experience.
Two weeks later, a precocious 21-year old named Jack Riewoldt kicked 10 goals in a win over West Coast, beginning a run of four straight victories that all but ensured the Tigers would avoid the wooden spoon. The Damien Hardwick era was away.
This is less a moment and more a culmination of three years of treading water at Tigerland from 2013-15, an era that Richmond fans can now look upon and chuckle – but certainly weren’t at the time.
There were highs aplenty – the Tigers of the early ’10s were good enough to twice beat eventual premiers Hawthorn in emphatic style, while in 2014 a poor start to the season precipitated a remarkable nine-game winning streak that saw them, from nowhere, September bound.
But in all three seasons, embarrassment, often in ironic fashion, would be waiting for them. In 2013, the Tigers, having endured two decades of jokes about constantly finishing ninth, broke the glass ceiling, headed into the finals as a premiership dark horse in fifth… and promptly lost to Carlton, who thanks to Essendon’s finals expulsion due to the ongoing supplements saga became the first ever team to qualify for finals from, you guessed it, ninth.
2014, of course, was the year Trent Cotchin won the toss at the Adelaide Oval, and chose to kick against a stiff breeze in the first quarter. Port Adelaide had seven goals on the board to no score by the 17 minute mark, and thousands of fans who had made the trip across, many in specially chartered Tiger Army buses, were treated to an afternoon of misery.
2015 might have been the most painful of the lot: after another excellent home-and-away season, the Tigers faced North Melbourne, who the week prior had rested a score of their best players (these were the days before the pre-finals bye) with a home final out of reach, and lost by 41 to their elimination final rivals.
You guessed it: the Roos, with a little help from a suspect non-holding the ball call against Ben Cunnington late, stormed home to win by 17 points, end Chris Newman’s stoic but unfulfilling career, and hand the Tigers a reputation for choking in finals that, it seemed, would be tough to shake.
After three years of disappointment, Richmond’s commitment to eschew the trigger-happy Tigers of old and keep the faith in Hardwick and co. was beginning to wear thin.
Things came to a head at the end of 2016: heading into the season among the flag favourites, the bottom would fall out, the Tigers slumping to 13th with just eight wins. The excrement hadn’t hit the fan just yet – but if their history had any idea, it might have been on its way to the Punt Road carpark.
The most infamous story of that summer was the ill-fated ‘Focus on Footy’ board challenge, where a contingent of characters led by cardiologist Dr Martin Hiscock campaigned to overthrow the Richmond board, throw the club into chaos, and achieve… well, they never really thought that far ahead.
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The footy world laughed, but behind the scenes, Hardwick’s job was quietly guaranteed for 2017. Plenty of other clubs would have – and have in the past – swung the axe in similar circumstances, but the Tigers, to the criticism of some, stuck fat. One poor season wasn’t going to have the baby fly out along with the bathwater.
As it turned out, it would be the best decision the club had made in nearly 40 years. Within four years of those fateful spring days, the Tigers would have three premierships – fulfilling Brendon Gale’s famous promise at the start of his tenure.
Trent Cotchin (Photo by Ryan Pierse/AFL Media/via Getty Images )
After three years of dominance, save for one fateful night at the MCG when Mason Cox decided to become a superhuman, cracks were beginning to appear in the Tigers’ all-conquering set-up in 2020.
On-field, the club was struggling to a degree it hadn’t since 2016 – four losses and a draw after 11 rounds hardly the scoreline of a premiership contender.
But it was off-field where the more worrying signs were to be found, with rumours of an angry Hardwick struggling to cope with the new COVID-enforced restriction on AFL life, to allegations Tigers players had groped teammate Mabior Chol while singing their theme song after the match – a fire Hardwick only stoked further with a huffy and quickly aborted press conference days later – and the piece de resistance, Callum Coleman-Jones and Sydney Stack’s fight outside a Gold Coast strip club that cost the club a $100,000 fine, and the two players a kebab each.
Add to that growing public discontent about the Tiger style, chiefly aimed at Tom Lynch after he escaped suspension for a series of minor cheap shots, and a story broken about Trent Cotchin’s wife Brooke visiting a spa in violation of strict COVID protocols, and there was barely a week in which the club wasn’t mired in negative publicity.
Coming on the eve of the finals series, the latest development could have been the straw that broke the mighty camel’s back. But all throughout that year, the Tigers had prided themselves on using the time away to forge stronger bonds, improve their internal culture, and prove they weren’t just great – they were one of the greats.
For Tigers fans, 2017 will always be the popular choice for their favourite premiership of the three. But internally, 2020 is celebrated as the club’s crowning jewel. Overcoming adversity at every turn, both forced upon them by the circumstances of that most challenging years and that which was self-inflicted, the Tigers once again ruled the roost against the defining foe of their era, Geelong, in a second-half masterclass in an unforgettable grand final.
Dustin Martin, the defining face of that period, claimed his third Norm Smith Medal. Cotchin and Hardwick, four years earlier scorned and derided, hoisted the cup aloft for the third time in four years.
Good things, they say, come in threes: and with a hat-trick of flags, Hardwick’s Tigers were officially AFL immortals.
It’s a brutal business, coaching in the AFL: even the best rarely go out on their own terms.
The most-capped coach in competition history, Mick Malthouse, had his career end in ignominy with an aborted stint at Carlton; even Clarkson, for many the greatest of the 21st century, was forced out before he was ready by Hawthorn. Legends of the game, from Michael Voss to Nathan Buckley to James Hird, have had celebrated stints at their former clubs end in varying degrees of disgrace; Brett Ratten even got shafted twice.
Of modern-era coaches, probably only Paul Roos – first at Sydney, then after his brief fixer-upper mission at Melbourne – leaves by so clearly his own hand as Hardwick does now. Under contract, with three premierships worth of credits in the bank and overseeing a team still competitive despite key injuries, and which could have and really should have saluted in Dreamtime at the ‘G for a second win in a row, this is clearly not a case of Hardwick jumping before he was pushed.
Damien Hardwick (Photo by Graham Denholm/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Nevertheless, a sudden, clean exit might be preferable for the Tigers, and Hardwick, to a long, protracted slide and weeks upon months of growing media speculation. Saying goodbye to a club icon, especially one responsible for taking a club from laughing stock to legendary, was never going to be easy for any party. Full credit to Hardwick for not mucking around, and especially for eschewing a long farewell lap that he’s damn well entitled to.
There have been better coaches in the AFL era – though not many. But surely none have had such a profound impact on their club as Damien Hardwick has had on Richmond.
He took over a club not just at rock bottom, but one that had spent the best part of three decades there. He overcame a 0-9 start, finals humiliation, a rapid fall from grace, and even COVID.
Along the way, he changed the way the game is played: every team you see now has a little bit of the Tiger in them, be it the frenetic tackling pressure of Port Adelaide, the rapid, chaotic ball movement of Collingwood, or the intercept-marking impassability of St Kilda.
It has been a journey of ups and downs, highs and lows: but far, far, far more good times than bad. No Tiger fan who lived through it all, especially if they had a taste of what preceded it, will ever forget it.
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