Damien Hardwick and Dean Solomon were strikingly similar types as players, hard-nosed and no-frills.

They loved the physicality of football through a shared journey which began almost 30 years ago and included, within 12 months, the highest and lowest emotions of the AFL.

A premiership win in 2000 and a Grand Final loss in 2001 were part of the shared learning of the pair, who will be reunited at the SUNS next year.

In what is a giant coup for the club, Solomon, a foundation member of the SUNS coaching staff and caretaker coach for the last three games of 2017, will join the coaching staff of SUNS senior coach Hardwick for his fourth year at the helm.

If they were so inclined, a combined walk down memory lane over a coffee or a beer would go all the way back to 31 October 1997, when the pair were united for the first time at Essendon.

Solomon, a talented 17-year-old from Broken Hill via the Bendigo Pioneers who was also highly rated in cricket and basketball, was drafted by Essendon with pick No.20 in the 1997 National Draft.

He joined a Bombers side which that year had posted a 9-13 record to finish 14th in a 16-team competition under coach Kevin Sheedy and captain Gary O’Donnell.

When Solomon walked into the then Windy Hill headquarters of the Bombers, he was united with a 25-year-old Hardwick, a boy from Springvale in suburban Melbourne.

His AFL journey was four years in. After Under-19 premierships at North Melbourne in 1990-91, he’d been drafted by Essendon with pick No.87 in the 1992 National Draft and had played 65 games: 17, 16, 17 and 15 games year by year.

The pair were teammates for the first time in Round 5, 1998, when Solomon debuted against Collingwood at the MCG in front of 81,542. He had 10 possessions in a 20-point loss, but it wasn’t a memorable day for Hardwick. He drew a ‘blank’ on the stats sheet after an early injury.

In a statistic that might horrify the pair, it was a weekend on which half of the eight games were played at venues no longer used by the AFL: two at Waverley in Melbourne and one each at Subiaco in Perth and Football Park in Adelaide.

Four weeks later Solomon, who would go on to play 209 AFL games, sang the Bombers club song for the first time when, again playing alongside Hardwick, he posted his first win by 38 points over Melbourne at the MCG.

In Round 18, 1999, in his 18th game, Solomon was the support act as Hardwick, later to reach 207 games overall, posted his 100th game against Fremantle at the MCG.

Nine weeks later they were teammates as Solomon made his AFL finals debut in the qualifying final against Sydney at the MCG. They won by 69 points in Solomon’s 25th game and Hardwick’s 107th.

A week later they shared a preliminary final loss to Carlton, but soon they were back in celebration mode as Hardwick won the Bombers’ best and fairest.

They were building together for something special and at the MCG on 2 September 2000, in a Grand Final held earlier than normal due to the Sydney Olympics, they shared the ultimate football moment, a flag.

After wins over North Melbourne and Carlton in the lead-up finals, Essendon, still coached by Sheedy, beat Melbourne by 60 points in the Grand Final. Hardwick had 16 possessions and Solomon 17 as James Hird won the Norm Smith Medal.

​Thirteen months later, as the 2001 Grand Final returned to its customary end-of-September timeslot, Solomon and Hardwick played together for the 66th and last time.

It was their 13th finals outing together and, sadly, it wasn’t the ending they hoped for. After starting warm favourites, they were beaten by 26 points by an emerging Brisbane. Hardwick had 10 possessions and Solomon 12.

After 153 games at Essendon, Hardwick joined Port Adelaide, where he played 54 games from 2002-04, closing out his career with a second premiership in ’04 against Brisbane.

Twice he was opposed to his old ‘mate’, both in 2003, for a 1-1 split. Solomon won their home-and-away meeting in Round 9 before Hardwick trumped that with Port’s semi-final win in Solomon’s 99th career game.

For the next five years, from 2005-09, the pair had to be content with a rivalry of a different type as Hardwick began his coaching apprenticeship at Hawthorn and Solomon ended his playing career with two more years at Essendon in 2005-06 and three years at Fremantle from 2007-09.

Oddly, their paths crossed only four times in this period, with ‘coach’ Hardwick enjoying a 3-1 edge: 2-1 while ‘player’ Solomon was still at Essendon and 1-0 when Solomon wore purple.

They took a big step up on opposite sides of the country, both as coaches, in 2010.

At Richmond, Hardwick began his senior coaching career and, at Fremantle, Solomon began his coaching apprenticeship under Mark Harvey, another ex-Bomber. It was 1-1 again.

From 2011-22, while ‘coach’ Hardwick was rewriting the record books at Richmond, he enjoyed a 7-3 edge over ‘coach’ Solomon at Gold Coast (2011-20) and GWS (2022). And in 2026, when Hardwick was in his third year at the Gold Coast and Solomon was back at Essendon after a stint with Tweed Coast Football Club, it was 1-0 to Hardwick.

But, although it was 15 years ago, ‘Solly’ will remember fondly helping to strike a significant blow for the SUNS against a Hardwick-coached Richmond in Cairns in 2011.

It was one of the club’s great early wins as they came from 36 points down at quarter-time and 13 points down at three-quarter-time to win by 15.

In 15 games as a senior caretaker coach, three at the SUNS in 2017 after the departure of Rodney Eade and 12 this year after Brad Scott’s exit at Essendon, Solomon was never directly opposed to Hardwick in the coach’s box. 

So, after 66 games as teammates for a 48-18 win-loss record (72.7%) and a 1-1 split as opposing players, the head-to-head battle between the pair was decided in 17 meetings at a lesser level from 2010.

It’s a 12-5 win for the older and more experienced Hardwick.

Whenever they played, either as teammates or opponents, it was never about the individual numbers. It was all about wins and losses.

So, it looks like the ‘new’ SUNS old boy might have to buy the coffee or the beer for the older SUNS ‘new’ boy.