Alastair Clarkson’s journey to AFL coaching legend started in small town of Kaniva
FOR Alastair Clarkson it’s never been about the individual. But as the Hawks coaching great strives for more AFL glory, LAUREN WOOD visited Kaniva — where the locals will all be right behind one man.
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IT’S the breeding ground of a mastermind.
About 25km short of the South Australian border, Kaniva is about an hour closer to Adelaide than Melbourne, framed by fields of canola and not far from the Little Desert National Park.
It’s the home of Alastair Clarkson. Just don’t call him “Clarko”.
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Around these parts, he’s only “Addis”. The nickname came about after his sister, Ruth, struggled with the pronunciation of Alastair. It stuck. With everyone.
Locals say there are about 700 people living in town — on a good day — and the main street stretches for about 500m of the Western Highway, past the Heartfelt cafe and the Commercial Hotel.
There are windmills, too — lots of them. Almost as many as there is players who have left this small town to pursue their AFL dream.
“We’ve probably produced more AFL players per capita than just about anywhere,” Jason Gordon, club president of local outfit Kaniva Leeor United, said.
Clarkson, two-time Essendon premiership player Roger Merrett, 200-game Bomber Glenn Hawker and 2000 Essendon flag ruck John Barnes are all from Kaniva.
Kaniva more than punches above its weight — not just for its AFL presence, but its influence in the big smoke, as Clarkson recently revealed, with the heart of the community and all it has taught “Addis” beating hard at Waverley Park.
“I don’t really drive myself around records and that sort of stuff,” he said on Fox Footy recently when asked what a fifth premiership would mean.
“I came from a small little community, so it was never about the individual.
“It was always about others and the community.”
It was a community spirit that was “indoctrinated” into Clarkson from a young age.
As the youngest of five children, there was little choice.
“You had to share everything,” he said.
“And that’s the way that we grew up. My family was like that, the community was like that, and so the way that I’ve indoctrinated everything about our football club and our philosophies is all about your teammate more so than yourself.”
BEHIND THE SERVO
IT’S a mindset that remains in Kaniva today.
Take one of the first shops on the road into town from the Melbourne side.
The only petrol station was under threat 15 years ago, with the next nearest an 80km round trip away, in Nhill.
The locals rallied, raising more than $400,000 to buy the business, now known as the Kaniva Community Roadhouse.
Mal Coutts lives behind it and has spent much of his life in the Wimmera region, coaching countless teams and footballers along the way — including Clarkson.
“You’d hear him (Clarkson) coming before you’d see him,” Coutts said.
“If you were going for a swim in the summertime, you’d see him bouncing a footy left hand, right hand, all the way from here down to the pool.
“You’d hear him … clunk, clunk, clunk. His skills were exceptional.”
THE OTHER DAD
SKILLS were honed in the yard of Oscar Harrison, who Clarkson has previously described as being “a second dad” to him as his parents, Tom and Jeanette, worked hard in the town.
Oscar lived around the corner from the Clarksons and it was when Tom Clarkson was building his house that he first met “Addis”.
And there was no getting rid of him.
“Alastair was about eight years old and he’d come around (and say), ‘Do you want a hit?’,” Harrison recalled.
“So in between the two houses here we’d have a hit of cricket every night of the week during the summer. And then come winter, we’d kick (the footy).
“After school, half past three, Addis’d be here. ‘Wanna hit? Wanna kick?’.
“He loved older company, and that’s what he was brought up with. He never really mixed with his own age group.
“This went on for eight years, every night and every day, until he left for Ballarat. He virtually lived in my back pocket. ‘There’s Oscar and there’s his shadow.’ We never, ever thought it would come to this.”
Oscar has followed Hawthorn since 1961 and lived in Kaniva for all of his years.
“I enjoy the serenity and the sense of no fear,” he said.
“I don’t have to fear anything or anybody.”
He travels often to watch the Hawks. Plenty of other locals now follow Hawthorn — or maybe just Clarkson, who Oscar would love to see bring home a fifth premiership from the past decade this year.
“It’d mean a lot to Addis and the club.”
EARLY SIGNS
THE coaching nous was evident early.
Coutts recalls a standout day about 38 years ago when he was struck by Clarkson’s tactical smarts.
Clarkson was about 13, playing alongside eventual premiership ruck John Barnes, two of only about four good players in the under-14s against Mundulla.
“We used to have two seven or eight-minute halves between the reserves and the seniors. They only had a set amount of time,” Coutts explained.
“There was a wind coming from the southwest across, and they had the wind in the last half. Addis came up and said, ‘Hey … if we get the footy and run straight across the other side on a bit of an angle and kick it as hard as we can over the fence, the boundary umpires are going to have to go and get it, and take it back, and that could take a minute if we kick it far enough. We get it again, chip it back to one of us and we’ll run again’.”
Coutts was a bit stunned. But they did it five or six times — and it worked.
“It was the only game we’d won for the year,” he laughed.
“He grew up with Oscar, who is very tactical. He was always like he was five years older than he should have been. That was how he grew up. He grew up fast, but he was always ahead of his time.”
THE ROAD TRIP
CLARKSON went on to play senior football for Kaniva as a teenager, booting six goals as a 17-year-old in its last premiership in 1985.
The four-time AFL premiership coach returned to the team’s 20-year reunion in 2005 with a couple of his charges — Chance Bateman and Sam Mitchell — in tow.
Both of the eventual premiership-winning pair had their seasons ended by shoulder surgery and were part of the road trip, with Bateman joking that Clarkson “used it as an opportunity to keep us captive for the 10-hour round trip as a way of getting to know us both a little better”.
It was a chance to get insights into their coach, and talk footy and life.
“Once in Kaniva, we were able to get a feel for what life would have been like for Clarko growing up,” Bateman said.
The trio called in for a cuppa at Frank and Gwen Guy’s place before heading home, with Gwen having worked alongside Clarkson’s mother at the local kindergarten for many years.
“I had actually grown up in York in WA, so I could relate to the small rural town,” Bateman said. “Everyone knows everyone and it had a very footy-centric type feel to Kaniva. It was great getting out of the city to experience some fresh air and a much slower pace.”
PROUD TOWN
SINCE the 1985 glory, there have been some lean times for Kaniva’s football club, which joined forces to become Kaniva Leoor United 20 years ago.
“In 2012 we should have won the grand final,” Harrison lamented.
“We were all keyed up ready to win the grand final, but it didn’t happen.”
That was the first year that Kaniva-Leeor had been competitive in more recent times. With the team top of the ladder, it was hoped that its first grand final since 1986 would be on the horizon this year.
But a heartbreaking two-point loss put an end to that in last weekend’s preliminary final against Mundulla.
The club recently opened a double-storey facility — the Kaniva Community Hub — that houses football, netball, hockey and the local agricultural and pony society.
There’s a fair bit still to pay off, but that hasn’t deterred Gordon, who, with fellow volunteers, pours full-time hours into the club’s welfare — along with working, of course.
Fundraising includes bar sales, functions and running sheep on a local sponsor’s farmland to generate extra cash.
Gordon and Coutts know what would happen if there was no such hub, particularly for the kids, to bring the community together for meals and host weekend functions.
“If it goes, what do you do on a Saturday?,” Coutts said.
“For argument’s sake, you’ve got two boys and two girls. And there’s no footy club or netball club up here?”
He returned to an official role at the local club recently and admitted he became emotional at this year’s second home game as the local netball and football outfits went about their business on a Saturday.
“You walk around the corner and think, ‘If this wasn’t here … a third of them would be in Nhill or Bordertown, and what would they do?’.”
An honour board hangs inside the new rooms, and naturally includes more than one feature of Clarkson and his fellow Kaniva AFL products.
“We’re just so proud of Alastair,” Gordon said. “And all that he’s achieved.”
Originally published as Alastair Clarkson’s journey to AFL coaching legend started in small town of Kaniva
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