LASTING Hardwicks ’ LEGACY

Damien Hardwick has called it a day as Richmond coach, citing he was starting to have self-doubts. He leaves as a three-time premiership oach and an all-time great of the Tigers.

here have been plenty of occasions when a coach has departed his football club in the middle of the season where those glumly facing the cameras have made it clear that they would rather be anywhere else.

Not at Punt Rd last Tuesday where it looked as though the entire Richmond Football Club had crammed into the Maurice Rioli Room to watch Damien Hardwick explain his sudden decision to finish as coach of the club after more than 13 seasons in charge.

That’s not to say there wasn’t surprise and disappointment.

Hardwick was contracted until the end of 2024 and news that he was finishing up was broken the evening before by SEN journalist Tom Morris before many at the club were made aware what was about to happen.

But that was all forgotten during an emotional 30-minute conversation in which the club and Hardwick detailed not just their gratitude, but their love for each other as they reached the end of their journey together.

There were a few hiccups and bumps along the way, but after three flags in four years, the first of which in 2017 ended 37 years of misery and heartbreak for the Tiger faithful, they depart on the best of terms.

ASHLEY BROWNE

“I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a lot of footy clubs, but the Richmond Football Club has been the love of my life,” said Hardwick, who won flags as a player at both Essendon and Port Adelaide and as an assistant coach at Hawthorn. Hardwick, 50, had been weighing up his future and resolved at the start of the year that 2023 would be his final season.

He confessed that watching the Michael Jordan ESPN docuseries The Last Dance over the summer might have nudged him down that path.

He was also mindful of overstaying his welcome. Hardwick has seen first-hand how the relationship between his close friend Alastair Clarkson and Hawthorn has crumbled, partly because Clarkson stayed on as coach of the Hawks for too long.

“In all honesty, I’d rather leave too early than too late,” he said.

“The club means so much to me and I want to make sure that I leave the game loving the game, not resenting the game.

“Also, I want to make sure that I leave this place just with the best feelings.”

Hardwick was enthused at the start of the season, believing the high-stakes move of bringing established GWS Giants midfield pair Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper to the Tigers would keep them in premiership contention.

But a long injury list and a winless April weakened his resolve to see out the season and the decision to resign was made a fortnight ago.

His last game in charge was a shattering one-point loss to Essendon in the Dreamtime Game last Saturday night.

The Tigers have won three games and drawn another through the first 10 rounds of the season.

“I started to ask myself the question about, ‘Well, am I the right man for the job?’” he said.

“I kept asking myself the question more and more and if you keep asking yourself the question, you know the answer.

“I had some conversations with some really key people around me just to make sure that I was in the right frame of mind to make that decision.

“It became apparent about two weeks ago that the time was about right.”

Hardwick lost his first 10 games as coach in 2010, but by 2013 had the Tigers in the finals.

They lost three successive elimination finals and then stumbled in 2016, only just keeping his job after a searching internal review at the end of that season.

But after some time away, he returned in 2017 a changed man.

With champions such as Trent Cotchin, Dustin Martin, Alex Rance and Jack Riewoldt at the top of their games, he instituted a game-plan based on chaos, incessant forward movement and relentless pressure around the ball.

Off the field, he bared his soul and the players followed suit.

The weekly talkfests created around the three ‘H’s’ – hardship, highlight and hero – created an impenetrable bond among the players and coaches and propelled them to the premiership, which was

u FACT FILE

Born: August 18, 1972

Playing record: 207 games, 14 goals

(Essendon 1994-2001: 153 games, 13 goals; Port Adelaide 2002-04: 54 games, 1 goal)

Premierships: 2000 (Essendon), 2004 (Port Adelaide)

Coaching record: 307 games (170 wins, 6 draws, 131 losses)

Premierships: 2017, 2019, 2020 greeted by scenes of unbridled joy throughout Richmond that night and from Tiger fans after the game and for weeks afterwards.

With Hardwick as coach, Neil Balme as his head of football, Brendon Gale as chief executive and Peggy O’Neal as president, the Tigers were every bit as impressive off the field as on it.

Hardwick’s newly-patented warm and fuzzy approach became a benchmark for others to follow, especially Craig McRae, his former assistant at the Tigers and now successful Collingwood coach.

Richmond people would never have believed they would live in a time where Tom Hafey’s standing as the club’s greatest coach would be debated.

But with 307 games, Hardwick has held the job the longest and three flags in the exceedingly difficult national league could well be the equal of Hafey’s four in a fundamentally different Victorian suburban competition.

“History was created under his watch and for that we will be forever indebted,” Tiger president John O’Rourke said.

Assistant coach and former St Kilda and Gold Coast midfielder Andrew McQualter will take charge for the rest of the season.

Hardwick rejected the opportunity for a farewell game against Port Adelaide at the MCG on Sunday and is looking forward to going to the football with his family, something he has rarely had the opportunity to do.

“Once I’d committed to stepping aside, it would be not the right thing to do,” he said. “I couldn’t quite possibly give as much as I’d like to. It’s time for a different voice. I’ve tried to cook the sausage 1000 ways and I couldn’t find 1001.”

@hashbrowne

Steele Sidebottom is the Forrest Gump of Collingwood – he just loves to run.

It’s what makes him so durable and has helped him to a well-deserved 300-game milestone.

ASHLEY BROWNE

It is the running. So much running. And it is what endears Steele Sidebottom to so many at Collingwood. Running with the ball, often extracted from a contest or a stoppage, and then he inflicts maximum damage by hand and by foot.

And all that unrewarded running, sometimes 200m at a time to create forward line contests, or a similar distance the other way to stop the opposition kicking a goal.

Add to the mix his durability, leadership, reliability in big games and that infectious smile and bubbly personality and you begin to understand why Sunday afternoon’s 300-game milestone is a really big deal for everyone at Collingwood.

Only Scott Pendlebury (367), Tony Shaw (313) and Gordon Coventry (306) have played more.

“The thing about Steele is that he just enjoys what he does and the way he goes about his footy is infectious,” said Taylor Adams, his long-time midfield comrade and one of his best mates at the club.

“He brings other people along with him.

“He demands a lot, but in a caring way, and he’s become an unbelievable leader of our football club.”

Ask Sidebottom about playing well in big games, a trait of his since he kicked 10 goals in the 2008 TAC Cup under-18 Grand Final, and he tells you that, to his mind, every game is a big game.

“I tend not to overthink anything. I don’t get fazed by a lot of things,” he told the AFL Record this week.

“And yeah, I try not to change too much from week to week and, as long as I’ve done my job during the week and trained well and prepared well, then whatever sort of game it is, round two or three, or Anzac Day, I feel confident and comfortable in my ability to go out there and perform.”

Apart from a broken thumb in 2015 that kept him out of six games and a COVID-derailed 2020 campaign, Sidebottom has featured nearly every week for Collingwood since joining the club.

“I wouldn’t say I’m the most professional bloke at our footy club,” he said.

“But I’ve found something that works for me. I sort of like to keep active and not have too much downtime, just keep the body going a little bit.”

It helps explain his tremendous running power. He has made the wing his own pretty much from the moment he joined Collingwood in 2009.

“I guess probably I’ve played my best footy out on the wing,” he said. “And I think something that’s probably held me in good stead, just being able to read the play and react a little bit quicker than my opponents.

“I’ve obviously got good endurance, which allows me to run games out and at times to try and work over my opponent, but I feel like I’ve got a pretty good read on the game and just being able to put myself in the right position at the right time. I’m out there to get the footy in my hands.”

Also, as Adams noted, Sidebottom is out there to work his backside off when he doesn’t have the ball.

“At times out there you can feel like you are probably starved of the ball, but then you look at it the other way,” Sidebottom said.

“I feel like I’m putting myself in positions that don’t allow the opposition to come out my side or whatever.

“And my ability to get back and help out my teammates is something that I love to do and it’s rewarding to be able to help someone else do their job and make their life a little bit easier.”

Sidebottom still pinches himself at his good fortune to have been drafted by Collingwood.

He had a meteoric draft year in 2008 capped by that 10-goal Grand Final for the Murray Bushrangers, that all these years later he still gets asked about seemingly every day.

He arrived at the Magpies just as Mick Malthouse was putting the finishing touches on the side that won the flag in 2010.

“I just thought that playing in finals and being on the higher end of the ladder was a normal thing when I first rocked up to Collingwood,” Sidebottom said.

“And obviously since, I’ve learned that that’s not how the competition’s designed to work.”

Collingwood’s form line dipped the next few years, but rose again in 2018, the year of the heartbreaking, last-gasp Grand Final loss to West Coast.

Adams reckons that the best game he has seen Sidebottom play – a 43-possession, 12-clearance outing in an eight-goal win over Adelaide on the road –kick-started the Magpies’ march to the finals that season.

Sidebottom embraced the ride in 2018 – the year he finished second in the Brownlow Medal – having learned that finals and Grand Finals appearances aren’t just given away, even at Collingwood.

And he is feeling similar vibes about this season, loving life –like everyone at the club – under Craig McRae, who has created an environment, he says, “where everyone can be themselves”.

His first coach was Malthouse.

For a teenager walking into Collingwood, there were a few harsh realities about footy and life that Sidebottom needed to learn. There may have been a few verbal clips directed his way in the beginning.

“Having someone like Mick at the club was perfect for me at that time in my life,” he said.

“And obviously being able to win a premiership, we’ll be mates forever and I still love seeing him.”

Then came Nathan Buckley, first his coach and now his close friend.

“You realise who the ones that you want in your corner, the ones that’ll wrap your arms around you and ‘Bucks’ always has been that one for me,” he said.

It was Buckley who recently made the observation that Sidebottom forever seems to be smiling on the field.

“No doubt that I’m out there having a good time and I feel like I’m so fortunate to be in the position I am and I love the game of footy and, to be honest, it’s all