Rise of Sam Mitchell: How Hawks champion became Hawthorn coach and his former rift with Alastair Clarkson
Alastair Clarkson used the cattle-prod to motivate Sam Mitchell, but the pair’s relationship reached crisis levels after a brutal text from the master coach.
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When Alastair Clarkson needed Sam Mitchell to rise to great heights he reached for the cattle prod instead of the gentle arm around the shoulder.
As a ruthless competitor with more self belief than most of his teammates combined, Mitchell didn’t need the warm-and-fuzzy routine.
After a 19-possession 2011 qualifying final, Clarkson texted Mitchell with a question that would break most AFL players: “When was the last time you played well in a final?’’
As Mitchell documented in his biography ‘Relentless’, the pair needed to break bread post-season to repair a damaged relationship on the brink of collapse.
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Remarkably, a decade on from that moment Mitchell’s desire to coach Hawthorn has forced the Hawks board to choose him over the greatest coach of the modern era.
Five years ago after Clarkson gently nudged five-time Crimmins Medallist Mitchell into a move to West Coast, it is Mitchell who has all the power in the relationship.
But that text message to Mitchell also said so much about the emotional makeup of the nuggety champion midfielder, third on the AFL’s list of Brownlow Medal votes.
Teammates and confidantes have felt from his very first seasons in the AFL he had the football brain to coach the socks off rivals in the coaches box.
What he has had to learn - and has clearly done so over the years and in the testing ground of the VFL as the Box Hill coach - is how to be a leader of men.
Mitchell was the ultimate hard-arse - supremely confident in his own ability, renowned for his at-times brutal feedback to teammates, and at times unfussed at the public’s opinion of him.
He grew so sick of opposition attention there was the short-lived patch as “Corker” Mitchell, who developed a technique of throwing his knee up to protect himself and cork his on-rushing opponent.
He was a football instigator prepared to push to the line for the smallest of edges, relentlessly mocking Essendon players including Michael Hibberd by pretending to inject himself during one feisty mid-game moment.
Through four premierships and 307 games at Hawthorn Mitchell was the cerebral, cunning midfielder calculating how to find an extra yard of space in the midfield while instinctive, beloved Luke Hodge led with a cocky smile and bust-or-bust through manner.
Hawthorn chief executive Justin Reeves said on Tuesday the club had witnessed Mitchell’s growth as the Box Hill coach as proof he was ready.
Peter Schwab, who coached Mitchell in his early years at Hawthorn before Alastair Clarkson, says Mitchell’s 18 months at Box Hill will have been a perfect finishing school for the 38-year-old husband of Lyndall and father of children Smith, Scarlett and Emmerson.
“He has taken over from an icon of coaching, so that’s never easy no matter what you say. It’s a hard act to follow but Box Hill will have been very good for him. Another year of that will top him off, because it’s about building relationships and understanding you have got to get your results from working with other people,” he said.
“Sometimes in some ways it’s easier to be a footballer because ultimately you rely on yourself, but he went from being a kid who no one thought would make it to a champion. So from that point of view he has the drive and capacity and strength to make a good go of it as a coach.”
His close mentor David Parkin last month made clear how highly he rated Mitchell’s football brain.
“If I was a club now, whatever club, and was looking for a coach in waiting and I have seen him at work, I think Mitchell would be in the top two or three across Australian football in this country,” he said.
One of the key architects of the club’s success over the past decade said on Tuesday Mitchell had always known he would never be Luke Hodge.
But just as he finished his MBA while working through in an AFL career, he schooled himself on his weaknesses and assiduously worked to address them.
“He has always seen the game brilliantly and sometimes guys like that don’t get that others don’t see the game the way they do,” the ex-Hawk said.
“But when he and Hodgey were vice captains he started working pretty hard on how he should deal with other players.
“The West Coast years were really good for him, he really developed well there and then he was prepared to coach his own team at Box Hill.
“The thing you get out of that is you are the guy for every person in that club. You get a sense of what it’s like to back a player, to drop a player, what to do when a player can’t train because he has a thing at work or an issue with his girlfriend.
“The emotional stuff would have been a development area but ever since he missed a draft he could work out what his gap was and he committed himself to filling the gap.”
Clarkson, whose career was famously saved by Sam Mitchell’s chase-down tackle on Shane Tuck, knew the buttons to push for his unrelenting champion.
His last two finals in that 2011 finals series?
29 possessions against Sydney and 31 and a goal in the epic preliminary final loss to Collingwood.
Mitchell has always thrived through sheer force of will and hard work and now we get to find out if those characteristics can turn him into one of footy’s great leaders of men.
Why Clarko rejected ‘significant’ Roos offer
—Glenn McFarlane
Alastair Clarkson has revealed he rejected a “significant” offer from North Melbourne to coach the club last year, saying loyalty to Hawthorn and the players he helped recruit to the club convinced him he had to stay.
Clarkson and Sydney coach John Longmire had long been the subject of interest from the Kangaroos who appointed caretaker coach Rhyce Shaw during the 2019 season and then Shaw’s replacement David Noble late last year.
Clarkson told a media briefing at Waverley on Tuesday — where the club’s 2022 succession plan was unveiled — that he had had several approaches from rival clubs across his 17 seasons at the Hawks’ helm.
But he stressed he had always felt a “moral obligation” to honour the contracts he had signed with Hawthorn, saying he intended to do so again next year by coaching out the 2022 season before handing over to his replacement Sam Mitchell.
“I don’t say this in a manner that portrays arrogance or ego, but I have had plenty of opportunities over the journey to move, including a significant offer from North Melbourne last year, which ‘Horse’ (John Longmire) and I were heavily courted,” Clarkson said.
But Clarkson said the loyalty to his players and to the club had been one of the reasons why he had stayed so long with the Hawks.
“Strangely enough, the thing that keeps pulling you back to the football club is your loyalty to the club, but also your loyalty to the people within the club,” Clarkson said.
He said he felt an obligation “to the Jaeger O’Mearas and Chad Wingards and Will Days, and those types of guys who you recruit to the club on the premise that you are going to be part of something special, and we are going to help make you the best you can be and you can help us be the best we can be.
“It is really hard to split yourself away from that emotional attachment you have with your players and the club.
“So there is no easy time to find when it is the right time to leave, albeit we geared this (current) contract – my wife and I – to the end of my third child Matthew’s schooling. He finishes at Caulfield Grammar at the end of next year.
“We thought to ourselves ‘that would be 18 years’. It is a long period of time, as Jeff (Kennett) indicated, to be in the one organisation. At that point in time, would that be an appropriate time to take a breath and see what we want to do with our lives?
“Is that in coaching or out of coaching? Is it in football or out of football? Is it in Australia or out of Australia?”
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Originally published as Rise of Sam Mitchell: How Hawks champion became Hawthorn coach and his former rift with Alastair Clarkson
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