IT'S been a wild ride, even by Dimma's standards.
In 2025, he's had a public crack at the Victorian premier Jacinta Allan over crime. After Saints coach Ross Lyon called his Suns the AFL's "nepo baby", he stared him down and then, for fun, ridiculed crowd numbers for St Kilda matches.
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After being caught by a match broadcast camera giving the literal bird to a perceived dodgy umpiring decision, he then followed up a week later with a figurative one - to the AFL over a perceived bias against his player Matt Rowell for contacting umpires.
Only last Saturday he condescendingly referred to Essendon, which his Gold Coast team had just beaten by 41 points for their 10th win from 15 matches, as a team which in this game had moved the ball "forward … compared to the backwards hand, backwards hand, backwards kick" style he'd normally observed.
Last year, with a high degree of calculation, he very deliberately dropped the F-bomb, saying his team needed to "grow the f… up".
Damien Hardwick has always thrived when on edge, initially with physical intimidation as a two-time premiership player for two clubs, Essendon and Port Adelaide, and then even more successfully when he secured three flags in a four-season stretch as coach of Richmond.
Publicly challenging authority and pretty much everyone involved in the AFL when he feels a need to do so has always been a Hardwick trait, and in his 38 matches in charge of the Suns, he has been regularly flying very close to the sun with his provocative public commentary.
In an AFL growth market, his off-field presence is arguably as important as his on-field impact. The Suns' 10 wins from 15 matches this season is being considered as a base for an inaugural finals appearance as well as the starting point of the club meaningfully entering the psyche of the region in which it is based.
Friday night's home match against Collingwood has had the full-house sign (about 24,000) placed over it for nearly a month.
"We have never had all of the attention of a Friday night game as a home team, ever, and to have had it sold out for three weeks and to have the entire Gold Coast community talking about it is just huge for us," Suns CEO Mark Evans told AFL.com.au this week.
It was roughly this time two years ago when Evans and Suns chairman Bob East secured Hardwick as a coach. In a contrived media strategy, inside 100 days Hardwick went from being so "burnt out" from coaching the then-struggling Richmond to becoming the Suns coach.
"If you talk about phases for us, we were stuck in the vortex of bottom four to six, and struggling to get out of there, and the Stuey Dew era enabled us to stabilise, and it allowed us to keep players inside our doors while we and they grew, rather than have them continually wander out," Evans said.
"Then we go to elevated performance. And we go to elevated profile under Damien Hardwick. Damien has the three premierships and he is forthright with his opinion, very good in the spokesperson piece.
"And it feels like it's overwhelmingly good for us, and that doesn't mean there won't be some issues we have to deal with, but it has been and will be overwhelmingly good."
As part of his defence last week of Rowell, Hardwick calculatedly propelled Collingwood into his self-confessed rant. "I know we're the Gold Coast Suns, and don't get me wrong, Matt Rowell is a superstar, but if this was spoken about with Nick Daicos, Collingwood would tear the place down."
In one of the most anticipated matches of the season, Hardwick, Rowell and co. on Friday have set themselves to bring down the mighty ladder-leading Collingwood and Daicos.
It is a massive match in the Suns' 15-season AFL life, and by far the biggest of Hardwick's time with the club. With not just his coaching but also his profile, Hardwick has built this season beautifully.
Said Evans: "The fact the community up here is not just talking about this game but talking about not being able to get a ticket to this game is very significant for us, it makes it feel like it is the most important game we have had for this community."
