Damien Hardwick’s off-season changes have Richmond humming, writes Matthew Lloyd
CHANGE doesn’t always come easily but a long overdue shake-up and rejuvenated Richmond make Damien Hardwick my coach of the year, writes MATTHEW LLOYD.
Matthew Lloyd
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THE older we get, the more set in our ways we become.
After seven years as Richmond senior coach and no finals success, Damien Hardwick had to confront change at the end of last year and it didn’t come easy.
At the halfway point of the season, who could have predicted that the Tigers would be fourth on the ladder and Hardwick would be the Coach of the Year in many people’s eyes, including mine.
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President Peggy O’Neal and chief executive Brendon Gale threw their full support behind Hardwick, even after a thorough review of the football department that followed the Tigers winning just three of their last 10 games.
Hardwick’s game plan of previous years had to change as the lack of direct play was never going to win the Tigers three or four finals in September.
The transformation from a short kicking side that looked to play safe and possess the ball to a longer kicking and more direct, attacking side was evident from the first JLT game.
Hardwick has implemented a simple but effective game plan this year. Once the Tigers get the ball inside 50, they have an ability to apply significant pressure in the forward half and then score off the back of forward-half turnovers.
The Tigers have created the most forward-half turnovers in a season (since Champion Data started taking records) after ranking 16th in 2016. They hold the ball in their forward half for seven minutes more than their opposition every week — yet they were -7 minutes last year.
I’m sure Hardwick would love a second-tall target to assist Jack Riewoldt but not having Tyrone Vickery, Ben Griffith and Todd Elton in the side has been a blessing in disguise.
The pressure Daniel Rioli, Jason Castagna and Dan Butler continue to apply as well as the recruitment of Toby Nankervis in the ruck have been the key to the Tigers’ rise.
Dustin Martin, Trent Cotchin, Alex Rance and Riewoldt have been sensational but they have been for a long time. The key difference is that the new and improved game style has allowed them to hurt the opposition more forward of centre rather than getting ineffective possessions in the defensive 50.
David Astbury’s ability and confidence this year to take the opposition’s No.1 key forward to free up Rance has seen the Tigers concede just 79 points per game on average, which ranks their defence as the second best in the league.
Coupled with the Tigers’ forward-half pressure, this makes Richmond extremely difficult to score against.
Hardwick is as loyal and genuine a person as they come and it is most likely the reason he never lost his players through a miserable 2016 season.
He did admit last week that through the pressure of senior coaching and losing games, he had become distant and wasn’t communicating with his players and staff like he should have been.
Being fortunate enough to be a premiership teammate of Hardwick’s, his mental toughness and resilience would have seen him saying, “I’ll fight my way out of this myself”. That didn’t happen and he admitted it was a mistake not being inclusive of others in his time of need.
Letting go Mark Williams and Brendon Lade, his coach and teammate in the 2004 Port Adelaide premiership side, would have been excruciating decisions for Hardwick.
Some would say that Dimma, as he is affectionately known, is too loyal. He has real empathy for his players and staff, so to not renew the contracts of two men he had been through so much success with, would have been extremely difficult for him. But that is the nature of the industry.
In came Justin Leppitsch after three years coaching the Brisbane Lions and Blake Caracella, a smart tactician who had seven years as an assistant at Geelong. Bringing in experienced men with fresh ideas from other clubs was exactly what Hardwick needed.
Caracella has a great eye for team ball movement, which he has seen Geelong play with for many years and he played with himself. Hardwick would have benefited so much from the intellectual property he would have brought from his seven years at the Cattery.
Knowing what you are going to get from one week to the next from Richmond has never been easy to predict. The good has been great, but the bad has been awful in recent years.
The Tigers sit in the top four because their whole game plan revolves around giving maximum effort in 2017 to lock the ball in their front half of the ground and that effort has rarely wavered for eleven weeks.
What a test awaits against Sydney, who have found their mojo again and cannot afford another slip up.
Dimma and his Tigers are ready for the fight.
Originally published as Damien Hardwick’s off-season changes have Richmond humming, writes Matthew Lloyd
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