Former Richmond captain Trent Cotchin has given a rare insight into what happened behind closed doors when three-time premiership coach Damien Hardwick shocked the AFL world by quitting the Tigers half way through the 2023 season.
With 18 months left to run on his lucrative contract at Richmond — the club he had built from the pits of the AFL ladder at the end of 2009 to become a juggernaut, winning three flags between 2017-2020 — Hardwick handed in his resignation, effectively immediately, on May 22.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: AFL coach Damien Hardwick confirms he’s quitting Richmond.
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The bombshell news came in the days after Richmond’s agonising Dreamtime at the ‘G loss to Essendon in Round 10.
On the Saturday, Richmond coughed up an 18-point last-quarter lead to fall victim to a Sam Durham match-winning goal in the dying minutes of the game, losing by one point.
By the Monday, Hardwick was gone.
In an excerpt from his autobiography, posted by News Corp, Cotchin explained the moment he knew something was awry with his longtime coach.
“We had blown it,” Cotchin said of the Dreamtime epic.
“Which led to one of the most unusual post-matches we had ever seen from Dimma. His response was different to any other game I played in.
“He was filthy and cutting with his comments to the group and about the opposition. In an angry meeting in the rooms after the game, he referred to us as ‘putrid’ and said the way some of us had played meant he would just get ‘another c*** to replace us’.
“He pointed to the Essendon team that was displayed on the white board and said, ‘To be honest with you, I reckon this team is a bunch of spuds, and you aren’t even as good as they are’.
“His spray had much more to do with us than his assessment of the Bombers. Upon reflection I’m not even sure he knew what he had said.
“He was quite rattled. I was thinking, ‘Well, this is different’.”
Cotchin went on to give a first-hand account of his perspective of Hardwick’s next steps in the aftermath of the post-match tirade, where the former coach let those closest to him in on his secret.
“He sent me a text message early on Monday morning but I didn’t notice it at first. I was going to Parker’s (Cotchin’s daughter) sport,” Cotchin writes.
“The text message said: ‘Hey mate, do you have time to catch up today?’ I eventually got back to him, saying: ‘Do you mean on the phone or in person?’ He told me he would prefer to do it in person. I sensed straight away that it was about him. Not me!
“He must have wondered if I was reading his message the wrong way, as he quickly sent another text saying: ‘It’s about me’.
“He had spoken to Jack Riewoldt on the phone earlier. Jack was on the golf course and he thought the coach was finishing him up as a player. But this was about Dimma, not about us.
“Dimma asked me to grab Dusty on my way to his house but I couldn’t get hold of him. In the car, I sensed what was coming.”
The three-time premiership captain said he was in the Hardwick residence for a total of 14 minutes, during which time his mentor sat him down on the couch and explained why he needed to leave Tigerland.
“The one thing I will always remember was how much pressure seemed to have been released by him making that decision to leave. I can vividly remember how blue his eyes looked. He looked like he had more life back in his face,” Cotchin said.
Former assistant coach Andrew McQualter took the reigns as interim coach for the remainder of the season.
McQualter applied for the senior coaching role, but was pipped at the post by former Melbourne assistant, Adem Yze.
In a roundabout turn of events, McQualter then replaced Yze at the Demons.
Hardwick, after a four-month break from the game and a couple of overseas trips in Europe and the US, was appointed as Gold Coast’s new senior coach, taking over from the sacked Stuart Dew.
And a mouth-watering matchup between Hardwick and his old side looms in a potential Round 1 fixture shakeup for 2024, when the Tigers could be heading north as part of an all Queensland-New South Wales opening round.
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