Damien Hardwick has shed light on the tense scenes inside his coaches’ box as Richmond forged a gallant second-half comeback attempt against his Suns.
Gold Coast ultimately emerged victorious against the Tigers in ‘Dimma’s Carrara debut — downing his former club by 39 points at People First Stadium — but it didn’t come without a late scare by Adem Yze’s undermanned brigade.
Despite leading by as many as 67 points late in the second term, Richmond clawed its way back to trail by as little as four goals midway through the final quarter.
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Ultimately, the Tigers’ resurgence proved futile, though there was no shortage of stress in Hardwick’s box as Gold Coast’s lead diminished.
“Yeah, it’s a good start,” began Hardwick to Fox Footy post-game.
“Obviously, as a new coach, (I’m) looking at the third quarter going ‘bloody hell, three D-50 goals’, so ‘Grigga’ (midfield assistant Shaun Grigg) copped an earful in the box after that.
“It’s just a process of winning. At the end of the day, we were happy with a lot of the stuff – time in forward half we spoke about before the game, forward-half defence was pretty good, D-50 stoppage – ‘Grigga’ will cop it tonight, I tell you what, but other than that we were reasonably happy with the game that we played.”
Grigg — a 2017 Richmond premiership player under Hardwick — joined the Carrara fray in the off-season following four seasons at Geelong as a development and assistant coach.
Hardwick noted his surprise at Richmond’s strategic approach to getting back into the contest, with the Tigers opting to remain level-headed with their ball movement as opposed to an all-guns-blazing mindset.
“It was a little bit different, actually. I thought they’d run the gauntlet a little bit coming from the back half, but they probably composed it and then went long, and it caught our defence off-guard a little bit,” Hardwick said.
“So, we learnt some things in regard to that, but (Richmond have) some players out as we know, some really important players, so they’re going to get a lot better as well.”
The Tigers are expected to regain star trio Dustin Martin (corky), Tom Lynch (foot) and Toby Nankervis (foot) for their traditional early-season meeting with Carlton after losing Jack Graham (quad) and Rhyan Mansell (syndesmosis) late in the pre-season.
“It’s a great club, it’s young — I’ve got to remind myself we’re 13 years old in our history and it’s just exciting,” Hardwick continued, struggling to suppress his joy.
“We speak about the journey – you’ve been there, I’ve been there, we’ve all been there, really. (We know) how important the families are and (we’re) working our way through that. So, we’re excited to just get started and hopefully we can start to build on the momentum that we’ve captured today.”
Gold Coast was buoyed by fifth-year midfielder Matt Rowell, who came breathtakingly close to breaking the all-time AFL record for clearances in a game — his whopping tally of 20 fell a pair short of Paul Salmon’s 22 against North Melbourne in 1998.
“He is an absolute grunt,” Fox Footy’s Jack Riewoldt said of Rowell during the game. “He’s clearly been the dominant player on the ground.”
Hardwick’s Suns will aim for a 2-0 start to the season when they host the Adelaide Crows next Saturday night.
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