"It was like God was conspiring against us having Karmichael take that mark," a clearly devastated Hardwick said after watching Gold Coast's Karmichael Hunt kick the post-siren winner in Saturday night's AFL clash in Cairns.
Divine influence aside, the Tigers coach was not sparing his players any blame for a 13.12 (90) to 13.10 (88) defeat he acknowledged was their most disappointing this season.
Hardwick said the Tigers did not work hard enough as they fell 36 points down in the second quarter.
Then, after fighting back to gain an 18-point lead late in the game, he blamed dropped marks, poor decision-making and incorrect positioning at the final centre bounce for allowing the Suns three late goals to snatch victory.
Having lost Ivan Maric (groin) and Ben Griffiths (calf) pre-game, the Tigers were missing a host of first-choice players and also lost Jake Batchelor (leg) and Chris Newman (head) during the match.
But Hardwick said that was no excuse.
"If we had Ivan it certainly would have been possibly a better result, but the reality is he didn't play, he's injured, so we move on," he said.
"We find out a little bit about our depth.
"Other sides have got the same issue as us and we've got to get better."
It was the second game in Richmond's three-year deal to host a match per year in Cairns.
The two so far have delivered costly losses, but Hardwick said the venue was irrelevant.
"It's got nothing to do with the venue, we just haven't played well up here," he said.
"The venue is (not) an excuse. At the end of the day Gold Coast played better than us."
Star forward Jack Riewoldt said too many players simply didn't do their jobs.
"Unfortunately blokes just went out of their roles and what we expect of them as players," Riewoldt said.
"It just shows if you do that with any team in the AFL on any ground in the AFL it comes back to bite you on the bum.
"We were 10-20 per cent off our game, probably more than that."
