Sacked: Justin Leppitsch opens up about his time at Brisbane, his secret pact with Dimma and the phone call he knew was coming
Justin Leppitsch and Damien Hardwick were both under-siege AFL coaches siege in 2016. Having worked together previously, the pair made a secret agreement that year. Leppitsch opens up on that and his downfall.
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It was the secret pact made by under-siege AFL coaches Justin Leppitsch and Damien Hardwick as they clung desperately onto their jobs in mid-2016.
Leppitsch had won a contentious pre-season contract extension, but knew the wolves were circling as his third season as Brisbane coach derailed amid a series of heavy losses, internal ructions and a lack of support from those who elevated him to the job.
Hardwick seemed set to join the long line of sacked Richmond coaches after a disastrous season threatened yet another Tigers revolution.
Their deal was simple. Whoever survived the guillotine at season’s end promised to provide the other with an assistant coaching role.
“We did have a chat mid-year,” Leppitsch told the Sacked podcast.
“He (Hardwick) said ‘If you hang on, I’m coming to Brisbane and if I hang on, you can come to Richmond’.
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“Then I said to him: ‘What if we both get the boot?’.”
Leppitsch had taken on one of footy’s most arduous jobs in late 2013 after Brisbane sacked his three-time premiership teammate Michael Voss.
He had to try and reconnect a fractured club as well as rebuild an ailing list that was about to lose five of its most promising young players (which had nothing to do with his appointment).
Seven wins came in Leppitsch’s first season of 2014; four in his second.
Told by the Lions’ board to invest more heavily in the future than the present, Leppitsch rigidly stuck to the script, even when others started changing the goalposts.
He secured a one-year contract extension in early 2016 – which was questioned at AFL headquarters – but he felt in coaching terms he was a dead man walking.
“I felt after two years, it (wasn’t) going to be enough – one (more) year,” he said.
“Sh**, I am really standing there with a gun to my head the whole time, which ended up happening.”
Injuries bit deep into his team’s ability to compete, increasing Leppitsch’s frustrations, and with only one win – and plenty of heavy losses – from the club’s first 16 games of 2016, time was running out.
BLUE LIGHT DISCO
It was meant to be the game that solidified Leppitsch’s claim to see out the final year of his contract. Instead, it displayed the chasm existing between the coach and the board.
Brisbane’s Round 21 four-point win over Carlton was only the club’s third of the season.
It came after a fortnight of thrashings from Port Adelaide (94 points) and Adelaide (138), and following a frank conversation with his manager Craig Kelly that had him fearing for the future.
“I got a call from Craig Kelly (before the Carlton game) and it was the first inkling where I went from … ‘We are all in it together’ to ‘No, that’s going to turn (bad)’.
“I didn’t have a lot of communication from the club – only from Craig.
“That week was really upsetting for me and my wife. I had to coach through that game against Carlton and funnily enough, we won.
“We were at the Gabba and everyone is celebrating (in the rooms).
“I am in one corner on my own and the board is in one corner on their own. That was the first real sign of awkwardness.
“It was like being at a Blue Light Disco when you are a kid – girls on one side and boys on the other.”
‘YOU SACK ME, I WON’T RESIGN’
One of Leppitsch’s few allies was his premiership coach and then Brisbane football director Leigh Matthews.
The pair spoke extensively, leading into the final round clash with St Kilda.
“They (the board) were angling for me to quit,” Leppitsch recounted.
“The only reason I didn’t is you can’t go three years telling people ‘we are in it for the long haul’, playing the kids and meeting the parents and then say ‘By the way I’m out’. I didn’t want those people to think I had given up on them.
“I thought ‘You sack me. I won’t resign’.”
Leppitsch addressed the board about the Lions football program late in the season, all but knowing his fate.
“A lot of it was already decided, but at least (it) gave me an opportunity to talk about where the club needed to go and the people they needed around.”
The most bizarre moment came when one board member clapped him after his presentation.
“It showed there was still some support in the room,” he said.
But it wasn’t enough.
“I knew three weeks out how it was going to get rolled out … I knew I wasn’t going to be a part of it, and you can only control who you are and how you behave.”
He didn’t like the way the pressures of the job impacted on him and his relationships.
“You get to the end of your time and have lots of conversations with people and try to do the right thing, but it often doesn’t go the way you want it to,” he said.
“I found it really difficult to keep people happy … maybe I did it wrong and you always have to reflect on … what you could have done better.
“There were relationships you think ‘I could have worked on better’ and (with) others, you think ‘That’s it.”
THE PHONE CALL
Leppitsch and wife Christie were basking in one of their daughter’s sporting achievements when a phone call rudely interrupted the moment. He knew the call to sack him was coming.
“I was out at my daughter’s athletics carnival, she was in Grade 1 or 2 at the time, and she had just won the 100m,” Leppitsch said.
“So we were pretty up and about.
“I was standing next to my wife. (I got) the call (telling him he was sacked) and knew what the result would be. We got the result and we walked home.
“I spent the whole time consoling my wife more than myself.
“She was really upset. Then people started to call. Craig Lambert came around and Danny Daly, and we had a beer and that’s it.”
Leppitsch wasn’t angry, but was disappointed with the mixed messaging and lack of communication from the board.
Still, he knows his record of only 14 wins from 66 games wasn’t good enough.
“When you look back in hindsight … I probably should have been sacked if they were your results.
“Common sense tells you can’t keep losing games by 70 points.
“If I ever got a job again there is no way I would ever put so much faith in just growing talent.
“Supporters have to see more results. Your sponsors need to see something more than what we dished up.
“By cutting too deep and playing too many kids … that was the biggest thing in the end.”
He’s not bitter. But the lack of support the Lions received from the AFL at the time rankles, given how much league headquarters invested in Gold Coast in terms of money and assistance.
“After 2014 when I got there, the attitude of the AFL was ‘No, Brisbane, fix your own mess, you don’t need assistance’. Then it wasn’t until I left (in late 2016) that it was maybe ‘You do need a bit of assistance’.”
Still, he takes pride in watching some of the players he helped blood – including All-Australian Harris Andrews and Eric Hipwood – play a role in the Lions’ recent revival.
BUILDING A TIGERS’ FORWARD LINE
Damien Hardwick survived 2016 and made good on a promise to re-employ Leppitsch as a Tigers assistant.
Leppitsch had only one stipulation – he just wanted to be a part of a competitive team again.
“I got upset with three years of being non-competitive … all I wanted was a group that tackled and pressured and made it hard for the opposition,” he said.
“I said to ‘Dimma’, if I am going to fight for anyone (at selection), I will fight for Dan Butler, I will fight for Jason Castagna, I am even going to get Jack (Riewoldt) to tackle somehow.”
His meeting in late 2016 with Riewoldt was pointed.
“I will never forget the first time with Jack,” he said.
“He said, ‘We are no good, I’m just here for the kids, I want to help bring them through and leave a legacy’.
“He changed his focus and guess what happens, you become a better team.
“It became an amazing lesson for him. Now … everything he does is for the team. He realised success is when he focuses on the guys around him and not himself.”
With a desperate, blue-collar forward line unlike any other in the AFL, partly crafted by Leppitsch, Richmond went on to win the 2017 flag – the club’s first in 37 years – before securing another one two years later.
That means Leppitsch has played a role in five AFL flags – three as a player and two as an assistant coach.
THE ARNIE CONNECTION
Leppitsch had three thoughts when Leigh Matthews went into his ‘If it bleeds you can kill it’ Predator spiel ahead of the Round 10 clash with Essendon in 2001.
The first was that Matthews couldn’t pronounce Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The second was the coach wouldn’t have known the Leppitsch family connection to the Schwarzeneggers.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger grew in the same Austrian town of Graz as my grandfather,” Leppitsch said.
“My grandfather and (Arnold’s) father were in the police force together.”
The third was that a Predator analogy wasn’t going to impact on the Brisbane side 14 years after the movie.
He was wrong on that front, at least.
“It’s possibly a terrible analogy to use anything off Predator, but it did work,” he said.
“It shows we are all human. It shows we are all fallible.
“We had a great win against Essendon who were perceived to be unbeatable. I think it helped us later in the year when we hit that Grand Final.”
Brisbane defeated Essendon in the 2001 Grand Final, the first of three successive flags.
LION CHARACTERS
Leppitsch played 227 games across 14 seasons from 1993 to 2006, and worked alongside some of the biggest characters in the game. Matthews was one.
“I like to stir Leigh up a bit, if you ever dented his ego, he would get a bit narky,” he said.
There was the famous lift ride when Leppitsch questioned what Matthews would be without the three-peat Lions, to which the coach replied: “You’re right Leppa, without you guys, I’d only be the player of the century.”
“There is a great story about Leigh where all the coaches were talking about possessions one day.
“It happened to be Matthew Armstrong, Gary O’Donnell and Craig Lambert … they had all had over 45 (possessions) in a game.
“Leigh goes, ‘Yeah I had (41) … but kicked 11 goals.”
Leppitsch had a special bond with teammate Martin Pike – who won four flags as a player – and only just missed out on seeing Pike headbutt chief executive Michael Bowers at the 2004 Grand Final wake.
“I was there that night, talking to Bowers and Pikey,” he said.
“Pikey was like a dog with a bone, and he was going on about his contract … Michael was trying to explain it away (as) ‘everyone has to take a bit less’.
“After about 45 minutes, I’d had enough and walked away. Then I wake up the next day and see what’s happened.”
Leppitsch has always had great respect for Jonathon Brown.
As a teammate, he admired Brown’s courage. As his coach, he feared for his star forward after a series of concussion incidents.
“He had taken so many hits … there were times on the ground when I saw him fall over and think ‘Did someone put a trip-wire in the middle of nowhere?’
“He made the right call (to retire) in the end.”
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NEVER SAY NEVER
Leppitsch hasn’t ruled out a return AFL senior coaching ranks one day, but it would have to be the perfect fit to pry him away from Richmond, a club he has come to love.
“I’m only 44, (but) I have kids and I really enjoy being in a successful culture because I am learning a lot.
“It would take a lot to get me out of Richmond. It’s like someone who wants to get married, you’ve got to want to do it, but you also have to find someone else.
“You have to go through the journey together.”
For the moment, though, he is happily wedded to Richmond – and to winning again.
