Hawthorn great Don Scott speaks about his complex relationship with the club after accepting Legend status

Riding his horse through laneways in Surrey Hills as a kid taught Don Scott there would be obstacles in life. But it also taught him that you have to strap yourself in for a sometimes bumpy journey.

Most AFL club Legend inductees find the right words to describe the honour. Not Hawthorn’s Don Scott.

He’s been belatedly elevated alongside the Hawks’ eight other Legends – John Kennedy Snr, Graham Arthur, Leigh Matthews, Michael Tuck, David Parkin, Peter Hudson, Peter Knights and Jason Dunstall.

Catch every moment of The Ashes live and ad-break free during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Try 14-days free now.

Is Scott pleased? Not at all.

“It’s bullshit,” he explains.

The problem dates back 40 years, when Hawthorn announced its best players of the past 25 years, and failed to include two players Scott says ought to have been listed.

Scott doesn’t like individuals being singled out from their teams. Players from different eras should not be compared.

“All I want is the respect of the fellows who I played with and I think I’ve got that because they can look me in the eye and I can look them in the eye,” he says.

“In a top team there is brutal honesty. If you come through that, that’s the thing that I treasure.”

Don Scott and Ian Dicker lead the charge against Hawthorn’s merger.

Scott could have been a Hawthorn Legend a few years ago. But he didn’t want to receive the honour at a club annual general meeting, where he would know few people. So he said no.

Representations were made. The club identified Scott’s “Achilles heel” – his grandchildren Eden (or Shoey) who is four, and six-year-old Will.

“They don’t understand anything that their grandfather did, but maybe one day they may,” he says.

“There are two things in this world you can give to unconditionally and that is animals and young children.”

Scott was exercising his horses when his Legend induction, via zoom by president Jeff Kennett, was announced on Tuesday night.

He scoffs at the suggestion that his change of mind coincides with the impending end of Kennett’s successive terms as club president.

Scott says Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett needs to keep his mouth shut. Picture: Michael Klein

Sure, he thinks Kennett needs “to keep his mouth shut” and feels that the club got “played” by haloed coach, Alastair Clarkson, who left in contentious circumstances at the end of last season.

The board is too corporate heavy, and has lost the balance of football and business credentials, Scott says.

“I just can’t handle what’s going on at the moment with regard to Hawthorn,” he says.

“He (Kennett) is just too outspoken and there’s a lack of consultation and lack of knowing how a football club works.

“Football clubs are unique things. They really are based on emotion. And you’ve got to be able to separate the emotion from the practical side.”

It’s fair to say that Scott has a “complicated” relationship with the club with whom he won three flags (including two as captain) over 302 games and 15 visits to the tribunal.

Scott is proud of his winning fight in the battle to stop Hawthorn’s merger in the 1990s.

He revved up his teammates in the three-quarter-time break of the 1971 grand final, before Hawthorn, down by three goals against St Kilda, kicked seven last-quarter goals to narrowly win.

In 1978, he coaxed his friend – and also the team doctor of Hawthorn opponent North Melbourne – to give him cortisone and allow him to play in the winning grand final.

Scott wore the No.23 jumper, which has been worn by Dermott Brereton, Lance Franklin, as well as John Peck in the 1950s and ’60s. At game’s end, he generally hobbled or limped from the ground with the grimace of an injured animal.

Scott’s affinity for the club has compelled him to at times reject its direction. One of the club’s most abiding servants has also been, at times, its harshest critic.

Scott almost quit when David Parkin was sacked as coach, and it’s said he barely spoke with his teammates in his final playing season.

Being the public face of the campaign to save the club from merging in 1996 still pleases him, though that triumph of “people power” cannot compare with the flags.

He served on the club board before leaving, unhappy, and has made various tilts in recent years, in part because of the suggestion of moving Hawthorn to Tasmania.

Scott genuinely doesn’t care what most people think of him. Perceptions do not faze him. He says what he thinks, filter-free, describing his many fallings-out as “getting into a bit of trouble over the years”.

Horses and showjumping are Scott’s passion.

He doesn’t know how old he is (he turns 74 on Monday). But he can remember riding his horse as a kid through parks and laneways to the blacksmith in Surrey Hills on Saturday mornings.

Long at Tyabb, he showjumps against men and women sometimes one-fifth his age. He cannot recall how many times he has been thrown from a horse – “too many to count”.

The latest fall was just the other night.

What happened?

It’s hard to know if Scott is wearing his scowl, or playing to his wry – if mostly unsighted – sense of humour.

“I got up and flogged the horse,” he says.

“But the body was all right. I just got back on and away we went.”

Playing footy was more like going to war for Scott.

Old injuries niggle, from hamstrings to chipped bones, and he must strap his ankles and his groin before he competes. He falls asleep each night with the aid of an anti-inflammatory pill.

Upset by Covid restrictions, he is considering standing in a seat, or at least helping out, for the newly-formed Victorians Party which will field candidates at the next state election.

Scott co-hosts a podcast, You Cannot Be Serious, with Sam Newman and Mike Sheahan. If Scott and Newman are sometimes dismissed as grumpy old men, Scott couldn’t care less.

He shares Newman’s distaste for political correctness, and dismisses wokeness as a “load of shit”.

Scott uses a string of expletives to describe his working relationship with Newman: “It’s not easy. If it’s not done his way it’s the high way so I’m aware of what my position is in the podcast.”

Scott plans to attend a celebratory function for his Legend induction next year. Assuming the event doesn’t clash with the showjumping schedule in Queensland, that is. And only if he chooses to return to the Covid-craziness of Victoria.

Originally published as Hawthorn great Don Scott speaks about his complex relationship with the club after accepting Legend status