Trent Cotchin has revealed the toll of the Damien Hardwick scandal

Trent Cotchin and his wife put Damien Hardwick on a huge pedestal before it all came crashing down around them.

Damien Hardwick and girlfriend Alexandra Crow. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Former Richmond skipper Trent Cotchin has delved deeper into the impact Damien Hardwick’s relationship scandal had on him and his young family.

Cotchin’s autobiography, From the Heart, is being released on Wednesday and it has some startling revelations about his 16-year career at Punt Road.

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Perhaps the biggest scandal to rock his time at the club was the revelation in 2020 then-coach Hardwick was leaving his wife of 30 years Danielle for a new relationship with former Richmond staff member Alexandra Crow.

Cotchin, who has three children with wife Brooke Kennedy, had previously put Damien and Danielle Hardwick’s relationship on an almighty pedestal and viewed them as a model of the perfect family.

Damien Hardwick and girlfriend Alexandra Crow. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Trent Cotchin’s book cover.

So their marriage breakdown had a profound influence on Cotchin after Hardwick had built the club’s success around the ethos of family and loyalty.

“I think it just created some challenges,” Cotchin said on the Rush Hour with Billy Brownless & Dale Thomas.

“Obviously I love “Dimma” and still have a great relationship with Dimma, along with Danielle and the kids as well.

“I suppose for me it was more just seeing the challenges it created for the family.

“Both Brooke and I looked up to them as, you know, the pinnacle of what the ultimate family looked like.

“That obviously broke down and it’s not like I go into a whole great bit of depth about their relationship and why it broke down or anything like that in the book, because that’s their business, not mine.

Damien Hardwick’s three children, his mother Pat and girlfriend Alexandra Crow at the press conference when he quit as Richmond coach. Photo: Michael Klein

“But when you build a footy club based around family and the pinnacle of that is different, it can cause some differences.

“And that was definitely a process that we worked through together and shared a lot of conversations across our time as captain and coach, but also just as mates.”

The 33-year-old played 306 games all with the Tigers, captaining them to breakthrough success with three flags between 2017 and 2020.

Named captain at the age of just 22 in 2013, Cotchin admitted he wasn’t ready.

“You look at all the successful teams and captains around you and most of them are a lot more mature than you are.

“You think you have to be this perfect captain for all the hopes and dreams of the Richmond faithful and I did a s**t job of it to start with, to be completely honest with you.

“But it was an amazing learning curve for me and I woudn’t change it for the world, although I think 22 probably is too young to take on that responsibility.”

The club was also in a terrible state around that time.

Trent Cotchin with his wife Brooke and their children Parker, Harper and Mackenzie after he announced his retirement. (Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

“We had lots of possums infesting the club rooms and a sheet separated our gym to our changerooms,” he says.

“Massage and ice baths were all open-air and the rollerdoor was always open so you’d have a cold for the majority of the year because our property steward wouldn’t shut the door.”

The Tigers were rightly feted for their efforts in finally breaking a 37-year premiership drought with that 2017 flag.

But the season prior the club was in disarray, with loud, public calls for Cotchin to be removed as captain.

A group was trying to overthrow the board and Hardwick was under immense pressure to retain his position, with the club finishing a lowly 13th in 2016.

Cotchin said he was in “a pretty dark place” that year and considered quitting.

Trent Cotchin had put Damien Hardwick on an almighty pedestal. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

“The end of 2016 for me was a moment where I genuinely questioned whether I should be the captain of the footy club, whether I wanted to play footy anymore,” he said.

“So I got to a pretty dark place and probably hadn’t shared it with a lot of people other than my wife Brooke and maybe two or three others that were in my circle.

“As captain I thought I didn’t want to burden anyone with the challenges I was going through.

“(The talk was) I was the worst captain, Dimma was a crap coach, he should be sacked, we had a board coup going on at the end of 2016.

“To think about the transformation that happened from ‘16 to ‘17, the enjoyment we had across the year, not just on the basis of winning games of footy but the every day stuff.

“That’s what we talk about today when we get together as a premiership team.”

Originally published as Trent Cotchin has revealed the toll of the Damien Hardwick scandal