The making of Damien Hardwick

It was a close-run thing defeating Adelaide's Don Pyke for the coaches' award, which Hardwick said he cherished and which led to him again breaking new barriers of brutal self-assessment. But what placed the Richmond man over the line in the eyes of his peers was his resurrection from the adversity of 2016, when he looked close to finished.

The Tigers hierarchy, including some directors, believe the coach has been far too tough on himself publicly this year, and yet Hardwick continues to embrace his imperfections.

"I was probably the worst thing for us at that stage," admitted the coach when he accepted the award this week as he prepared to take Richmond into its first grand final in 35 years. This after a horror season that saw him close his door to his players and led his wife Danielle to tell him: "You're not the man I married." But Hardwick had signed a two-year contract extension earlier in 2016 and part of the deal was a short leadership course at Harvard, which his colleagues believe opened his eyes to his lack of authenticity when the going had become tough.

Not only was Hardwick surrounded by some significant negativity from certain assistant coaches, but the harder he worked the less available he became, putting up walls while - in the simple words of his honest young defender Nick Vlastuin - "over-coaching" his players.

By the time Neil Balme had returned to oversee the football department and Justin Leppitsch and Blake Caracella joined a new-look team of assistants, Hardwick and captain Trent Cotchin entered pre-season with a new approach to leadership - an approach underlined by self-awareness and self-acceptance of their faults.

The football department had been scrutinised by a tough external review that ultimately saw the penny drop with Hardwick that the game plan had to change.

Hardwick is not new to professional adversity. His first senior coach Kevin Sheedy still winces recollecting the day he advised his 2000 premiership defender and 1998 club champion to take the three-year deal he had helped sort out with Port Adelaide coach Mark Williams.

That was late in 2001 after the Bombers had lost the grand final to the Brisbane Lions. "That was one of the worst periods of my coaching career," Sheedy said. "Due to salary-cap mismanagement I was told I had to get rid of four players - Hardwick, Justin Blumfield, Blake Caracella and Chris Heffernan.

"We'd tried to link Hird's and Lloyd's contracts to jobs with the Essendon website and the AFL said 'no'. I remember sitting down with him at what is now the Pullman Hotel in Wellington Parade and him telling me how disappointed he was.

"It hurt us losing him. He eats humour, Damien, but when it was time to get serious about football he put his hand up every time. Still he's come a long way from the Commonwealth Bank teller in his early years."

For Hardwick, recruited by Noel Judkins in the early 1990s, micromanagement was not always his strong suit. His Essendon teammates recall him injuring a hamstring while enjoying kick-to-kick with a mate in the park and being on the verge of demotion due to his attitude before a final challenge from Sheedy.

Hardwick was the one who constantly complained about the tedium of match and training preparation and it was only his humour that saved his complaining from bordering upon whinging. Matthew Lloyd once recalled Hardwick telling the group the seat warmers in his car would provide a perfectly adequate warm-up before training.

Sheedy believes it was Hardwick's brutal intensity in the first half for Port Adelaide in the 2004 grand final - aided by Byron Pickett - that "shook not only the MCG but Brisbane". Teammates say it was a dinner organised by Hardwick for the Port players on the eve of the finals that set the tone for that September campaign. "We were under the pump in Adelaide and in the eyes of the football world," said Kane Cornes. "But he had no fear of, or connection with, the choking tag which had haunted us and, unprovoked at this dinner, he stood up and spoke to the group about the importance of executing pressure and not letting up our intensity.

"I'll never forget him coming up to me after the siren sounded in the preliminary final and we'd narrowly beaten St Kilda and he said to me, 'This will be the best week of your life.' And it was."

Hardwick was unsure whether he wanted to be a coach or an administrator when Port assistant Alastair Clarkson convinced him to join him after that premiership at Hawthorn. An astute reader of the game, he quickly developed a passion for the former and also formed a strong bond with young Hawk forwards Lance Franklin and Jarryd Roughead.

Chris Fagan was on the way out at Melbourne at the end of 2007 but advised the panel in the early part of that club's search for a new coach. Hardwick was a candidate and Fagan told then Demons chairman Paul Gardner that he seemed an ideal candidate to replace Neale Daniher and grow with a young group of players.

But the job went to Dean Bailey. More famously Hardwick also missed out on the Essendon job that year with some board members concerned at what they viewed as his single-minded attitude to handling players from differing backgrounds and with differing demands. And, more famously, his computer failed him during a key part of his main presentation.

Hardwick spent two further seasons at Hawthorn, including the 2008 breakthrough premiership year, before winning the Richmond job at the end of 2009 in a recruiting process that went down to the wire with Ken Hinkley. So impressed were the team, led by Brendon Gale and Craig Cameron, by the intelligence, honesty and family values put forward by both men that in the end they had to make a call and Hardwick had the edge.

He remains close to Clarkson and the families are close friends, but Hardwick has not run with his old colleague for six months due to a calf injury. Nor is his role as senior Richmond coach conducive to the Bombers' and the Power's annual reunions - he missed the Port get-together in Swan Street, Richmond, earlier this week.

It was Hardwick who stood up first and spoke to Richmond players and coaches and staff early in the new year about his love for Danielle - (Mark Williams believes he could have retained him as an assistant at Port and thwarted Clarkson had "Mrs Hardwick" not wanted to return home) - and shared a series of strong emotions about his family.

The coach and captain, whose cathartic moment together at Neville Crowe's funeral had strengthened their own bond, told the group that each one of them would be required over the forthcoming season to reveal themselves and some form of vulnerability or shortcoming or fear in a spoken delivery over about five minutes to their teammates.

It was a group initiative but something Hardwick had brought back from Harvard and which Matthew Richardson noted this week has created an on-field closeness and style of communication he noticed while covering the Geelong qualifying final for Channel 7.

It was a closeness and connection executed so brilliantly by the Bulldogs last season also that opened the eyes of Hardwick and his group. This year it is Richmond and the innovative forward set-up created by the coaches in Hardwick's eighth season at the Tigers that several clubs are already looking to emulate in some form come 2018.

And yet Vlastuin likened the Tigers in his first four seasons as a puzzle that Hardwick was attempting to put together with square pieces. "It's hard to explain but it's like we were building a puzzle but all trying to be the same shape," the 23-year-old defender said.

"Now the puzzle has started to come together because we're all different shapes and the coaches are celebrating that and not so much talking about what we're doing wrong.

"In previous years we've been told what to do but this year he's stood back and not taken control. He gave the players a voice. He's been unreal. Dan Rioli does his thing, Dusty does his thing and I do my thing.

"Last year we were over-coached but now everything's changed, including the game plan."

Vlastuin said he was "shitting myself for weeks" before his turn came to stand up in front of the group and address his teammates. It was a team and football staff exercise that has lasted most of the season and when Vlastuin's turn came he spoke about his "opa" Leendert Vlastuin, a Dutch soldier during World War Two who was imprisoned in Changi for four months and then sent to work on the Burma Railway.

The ongoing affects of those harrowing experiences and the occasionally harsh parenting dealt to Vlastuin's father Chris were all part of the story the steely footballer explained to his teammates.

He said he couldn't have done it had the coach not set the ball rolling in early January.

"It made him look vulnerable," said Vlastuin of Hardwick. "To see the head coach who always seems so tough and so strong talk about his family and show that he's vulnerable really opened my eyes."

Vlastuin was equally moved by Jack Riewoldt ,who addressed the group about his family, their various hardships and the recent tragic loss of his cousin Maddie. "With Jack ... here's a guy you think where nothing troubles him and he's so big and strong and he's won two Coleman medals ..."

Riewoldt, whose Pied Piper effect on Richmond's younger players was transformed into a significant fillip for the club this season when he was officially appointed an on-field leader, spoke with emotion on Channel 7 immediately after the preliminary final win. He highlighted his admiration for Hardwick and the courage he showed in stripping himself back in front of his players.

Despite the public nature of his family's grief and well-publicised "Maddie's Vision", Riewoldt said it was Hardwick's address to the players and coaches about his own family, including his parents and his beloved "Mrs Hardwick" Danielle that helped him truly open up to his teammates about dealing with grief.

Previously Riewoldt had been a critic of Hardwick's tendency to "micromanage" his footballers and his staff but his words last Saturday night "came from a sense of admiration. I couldn't admire more the way the coach and the captain have grown this year.

"The fact is it can take a long time for a grown man to step up and admit fault and take a step back because he did micromanage and there were too many driven guys.

"But," added Riewoldt, "that's what true leaders do. It's always difficult to talk about truly personal stuff but they admit their faults and work on their strengths. They [Hardwick and Cotchin] have taught me so much about leadership."

Hardwick's assessment is that Richmond - in essence - was not as poor last year as their performances and ladder position indicated. But for Vlastuin the situation by this time last year looked pretty bleak.

"This year's been so much fun you just want to be around the place. You don't want the season to end. Last year you went to work wanting to go home.

"And then we got flogged in the last games and 'Lids' [Brett Deledio] wanted out and I was really unsure when we came back what to expect. I was really thinking where to from here?"

The young Vlastuin at the MCG on grand final day will play his happily misshapen part in answering that once-forlorn question as Hardwick, 45, will attempt to join a handful of football greats who have achieved premierships at three different clubs.