I’m pretty sure there was talk at the time that Knights went into the interview with the view of telling the board what they wanted to hear (there was great untapped talent, not major player moves required, etc.) whereas Hardwick’s bid was more of an aggressive list change.
Don’t know if there were reports / news items about it, but I recall it being mentioned here a few times during the interview process.
Knights subsequently retired players and butted heads with Lloyd over diminishing his role.
Hope that when Dimma left -----thorn that he took his own weight in post it notes.
Yep.
And I’m sure any experienced coach would have done the same.
The game had changed. Forwards no longer sat in the square. They had to apply pressure. Not only that, but they also had to move up the field far more often.
Once Lloyd stacked on the muscle, he lost his mobility and the game got quicker and quicker and passed him by.
Hardwick having seen the work Roughhead and Franklin had to do at Hawthorn, would have known this and pointed it out.
If anything, Lloyd would have been more likely to listen to Hardwick than he did with Knights.
If one thing’s for certain, Hardwick wouldn’t have had the falling out with Fletcher.
I’m pretty sure Fletcher would have retired if Knights wasn’t sacked.
Knights problem was he didn’t value defense we were known as down hill skiers so many games were teams would get on goal runs because we didn’t know how to defend glad he was sacked.
Agree, am reading Lloyd’s book at the moment, has a lot of admiration and respect for Hardwick and says how sad he was when we traded him.
(I think most of us were too)
Hey Miss Ellie, I was going through some boxes today and found a signed copy of Mattys book that I got for my brother … little did I know he had got one for himself. It needs a forever home if you would like it?
My dad has passed his book on to me, after he had a clean out.
Thank you for the lovely gesture though Darli. 
I refer to them as the good years now!
That was the line run by parts of the media, who may or may not have had agendas.
Too late, we already are.
Interesting rumour I have heard is that (heaven forbid) if the Tigers win Dimma might pull up stumps and walk away from coaching
That has to be complete rubbish.
I reckon if I was on a club board and a coach even floated that possibility, then he’d be gone regardless of the outcome, because his heart clearly isn’t in it enough.
But I reckon it would be bullshit.
You are aware that we weren’t the only club jabbing players back then and not having the proper doco to back it up?
Maybe I missed the sarcastica font.
Sacked? Sheedy wasn’t renewed. Knights was sacked, Hird resigned.
Tiges also went through about 10 coaches in 20 years at one stage.
For me the funniest thing was the Keystone Cops coup attempt by Dr Martin Hiscock, whose presentation in 2016 also might have been better with a laptop, but without a laptop, he revealed himself to be inept, ineffectual and patently incompetent in what he was trying to do.
If Dimma steers Richmond to the flag, he can thank Hiscock, because if someone with charisma fronted that challenge , Dimma would have been coaching somewhere in the Diamond Valley League in 2017.
To say Sheedy was “not renewed” rather than sacked is to put form over substance. It was very clear from very early in the year that the board had decided his time was up and he would not be renewed. Even though the year had started extremely well and we were headed for the finals. And then it was leaked to the media and that final year was effectively ■■■■■■.
Knights was sacked, you’re right. And Hird did resign, but only because he had no real alternative.
We have changed coaches for a variety of reasons only partly related to on field performance.
Richmond stuck with Hardwick despite having only limited success because the team seemed genuinely to be improving and Hardwick always had the players behind him. Anyone taking over from Sheedy was going to have a very difficult time, and the Board managed to make it even worse by appointing a coach with an appalling track record of failure who turned out to be the flop that should have been expected. If they’d appointed Hardwick the outcome would have been very different, but it’s impossible to say how it would have ended up.
To blame Sheedy’s sacking on the way that year turned out, undermines the Essington spirit of 2007.
We would never have won a final, let alone play one in any case.
I think this is pretty unfair on Knights. He appears to have been a little ahead of his time as far as strategy goes, it was well known he had terrible off-field resources, and what really did him over was having to manage the exits of guys like JJ, Lloyd and Lucas. I think whoever took over was getting a poisoned chalice, with the possible exception if the board had agreed with a coach on a total clean out from the end of 2007. In which case it might have been cleaner.
You mean he had the midfielders don’t work defensively strategy we seem to have committed to?