Gold Coast Titans coach Des Hasler and Suns coach Damien ‘Dimma’ Hardwick on stage
The joint appearance on stage of NRL and AFL coaching greats Des Hasler and Damien ‘Dimma’ Hardwick raised eyebrows - watch the fun and inspiration that unfolded
Future Gold Coast
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Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick and Gold Coast Titans coach Des Hasler have held court together for the first time, offering a call to arms for both teams.
The pair, who have both won multiple AFL and NRL premierships as players and coaches, took over the head coaching jobs at the respective clubs at the end of 2023.
The pair regaled a 300-strong Future Gold Coast breakfast with insights and interesting stories from their careers, - with Hardwick delivering a reality check on the status of sports in the city and what needs to be done to succeed.
“I’ve got no doubt we’ve got a lot of (AFL) players wanting to come up here (from the sport’s heartland of Victoria) because they can see the success the Gold Coast Suns is starting to build with fan base, getting more people to games and it’s going to happen,” he said.
“We’ve go to fulfil our end of the bargain. The fans are tired, enough is enough.
“We’re both on the brink of finals and we’re hoping to get there. We’re trying our butts off to get there and then all of a sudden I think it’s going to pop,” Hardwick said.
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“So very much like the Olympic Games, great things are going to happen but It’s just a matter of time.
“Let’s make sure we win some bloody flags. That’s what we’re here for.”
The Suns have been in and out of the top eight under Hardwick’s leadership and are battling to secure a maiden finals berth. The Titans have struggled, having won six of 17 games this year but went on a three-game win streak ahead of a gutting loss to Manly last weekend.
Hasler, who led Manly to two premierships said few players remembered the halftime pep talk speech when asked if he had a grab-bag of go-to lines for players depending on the halftime score.
“No one remembers halftime speeches at all,” he said, adding with a smirk: “There’s plenty of full-time speeches (they remember).” He added: “Lots of events can happen near the full time but that’s another story for another day.”
Hasler said he enjoyed working with his players towards their goal of finals.
“My vision is to basically lift people’s capability.” he said.
“There’s a tremendous amount of knowledge involved in development of the players and it’s that absorption, that transference of that knowledge is a continual excitement cycle.
“A grand final will take care of itself. You build that unit and you really connect to people’s capabilities and then you maintain that. You’ll get that quality and that consistency of performance we get to keep our jobs.”
Asked about his halftime speech grab-bag, Hardwick said: “You’ve only got a short period of time, you got to be pretty methodical about what you’re trying to change and the adjustments you got to make within the game so it’s pretty much, you know, couple of analysis, whether it’s offensively, defensively.
“But, you know, I love storytelling, so one of the big things I generally use is a story of sorts, like this week, for example, one of our motivations would be the Boston Red Sox, 2004 the ‘Why Not Us?’ series, they were down three zip to the New York Yankees and eventually won that series four to three, so that sort of build up will form part of my storytelling for the game, and I’ll generally refer to that at various stages throughout but, but primarily it’s just about adjustments at halftime and there’s not a lot of rah, rah stuff that happens these days, but we do like the old storytelling aspect.”
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