Brendon Gale’s phone pinged on Sunday. It was Damien Hardwick.
“Feel like a beer and a chat?”
Of course. So Gale dropped around the corner to Hardwick’s place in Elwood. Post-mortems like this are not uncommon between the coach and his CEO, especially after tough losses. But this one was different.
They opened a beer and Hardwick opened up. “I’ve been doing some thinking. I’m done. I’m cooked,” the coach said.
Gale was blindsided. He had had no real inkling of the shift in thinking of the coach and only on later reflection would small moments take on a different complexion, like the tetchiness and irritability in media conferences.
They discussed if this was just the exhaustion of loss that had left him flat and burnt out, but the more they talked, the more they were both convinced this was not just the disappointment of another defeat.
Hardwick felt he had lost penetration with his message. The team was giving up 140 marks a game - 100 of them in the Richmond half of the ground. It was so un-Richmond, and he felt, no matter what he said, he could not shake the team out of it. He had thought for some time the group was ready for a new voice after this season, now he realised they needed a new voice during this season.
Gale listened but didn’t try to talk him out of it as they chatted over a couple of hours. The decision was made in Hardwick’s mind, but further, Gale understood why.
Hardwick’s style of coaching and style of play demands a selflessness of his players. He is as selfless as he asks the players to be, for it would never work for a selfish person to demand a selfless game. His thoughts are always with his players first, it is why he is loved by them.
Damien Hardwick and Richmond CEO Brendon Gale.Credit: Getty Images
There was a moment in the hub in 2020 that typified the Hardwick seen inside and hard outside the club. There was mounting criticism of Tom Lynch’s form and Hardwick was asked about it at a media conference. Hardwick quickly became testy and stoutly defended his player. It was all quite reasonable, and then he doubled down and attacked one of the Lynch critics, David Schwarz. He was broadly castigated for overstepping a line with comments seen as unnecessarily personal. But in his mind Hardwick hadn’t been speaking to the media, the public or even to Schwarz, he was talking through the media to his players and saying not only will I back you, I will throw punches when I do. A month later Richmond won the flag.
Hardwick said he had watched The Last Dance, the series about the end of basketball great Michael Jordan’s last championship season, over summer and the film sowed the seed of his own final turn around the floor with the Tigers.
The Gold Coast loss was the first moment he felt that making it to the end of the season might be too much time dancing. That was the game that stung, for it was the moment the finals seemed to be drifting. He didn’t immediately spend the time he normally would at home reviewing the game, but later felt guilty and got up at 2am and started doing his work.
The Dreamtime loss last Saturday night was the moment his decision to quit now really crystallised in his mind. Whether Alastair Clarkson’s decision to step away from coaching played a part in his thinking and expedited his decision is doubtful. Hardwick’s mind was made up and didn’t need Clarkson’s decision to convince him. The pair are close and talked over the days after Clarkson took leave, but Hardwick had his own plans in mind.
“As soon as I started asking the question, the more I started to understand what the answer was going to be. So, the best thing for myself was to step aside if I couldn’t give 100 per cent,” Hardwick said at his media conference.
Gale left Hardwick’s and called the club’s still relatively new president John O’Rourke in the car on the drive home.
“I hope you are sitting down, and you have a beer in your hand,” Gale said.
Suffice to say this was probably not the season O’Rourke would have envisaged for his first as president.
After Gale left Hardwick then picked up the phone to his football heads Tim Livingstone and Blair Hartley. He wanted to be the one to break the news to them, but he wanted to do it in person. He asked if they could meet him at his place first thing Monday morning.
Livingstone thought there had been something up with Hardwick on Saturday night. He wasn’t himself after the game. Always unhappy after a loss, this was different. So, when Hardwick told him the news he was surprised, but not shocked.
Later Monday at the club more people were gradually brought inside the tent and then, once it was clear the news was going to break, Hardwick got on the phone to some of his most senior players. Others, he hadn’t had time to reach, so when the news broke Nathan Broad was doing a television interview. The news was broken to him after the interview. He had no idea.
On Tuesday at the club Hardwick gathered the players and football staff in the room and explained his decision. He didn’t single out many people in the room, but there was one he dwelt on: Giuseppe Mamone, the boot-studder. Many players were a bit misty-eyed before then, but seeing Giuseppe get emotional, a few tears were shed. Giuseppe is popular among the players and the coach spoke of his unaffected love for Giuseppe as emblematic of his love of the club.
The decision could be seen as selfish to go now with so much of the season to play and the finals still not out of reach, but Hardwick’s unconventional timing is not unlike Jason Castagna’s shock season-eve retirement. Both thought the idea of going through the motions for the rest of the year would have been unfair to the team.
A selfish person also does not take the decision to quit in the knowledge they were potentially walking away from $1.5 million. Hardwick was contracted for next year on a seven-figure sum, and he was prepared to forego a sizeable amount of this year’s salary given he is not coaching the team for half the year. Whether that ends up being the case is still open to negotiation. But there is extreme goodwill towards the man who not only delivered the club three premierships but as much as any other reshaped and redefined the club.
“While his three premierships will be the headline, he’s given our club so much more. He’s taught about genuine care, connection and genuine storytelling,” O’Rourke said at the media conference.
The shock of the decision prompts the question if there was something else behind the decision. (And forget silly internet rumours that sprout like weeds). If there is another narrative at play it was not apparent from speaking to the many people around the club and Hardwick on Tuesday.
That is not to say it would be surprising if Hardwick were to coach next year. He probably will. His burnout, if that is what it is, was with this group of players whom he felt needed to hear a new message and voice. It was not that he had tired of coaching. After a few months of sun in Europe, it would be entirely unsurprising if he developed a fondness for the Suns, an accommodating place to be.
That is a decision for later. For now, the moment is for Richmond to appreciate what they have had and to contemplate what they need next. In the immediate sense it is to install the popular and respected Andrew McQualter.
The Tigers have two recent senior AFL coaches among their ranks in Ben Rutten and David Teague, but it was felt it was all too recent for them, especially Rutten, to be asked to jump back in and take the helm once more.
The likelihood is also that McQualter has been there a long time. He understands the essence of the team and the game. He represents a change of voice without a significant change of message. Hardwick is not there but perhaps not hearing Hardwick’s voice will make Hardwick’s words easier to hear.
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