Friendship between Alastair Clarkson and John Longmire formed 27 years ago, endures despite rough patch over Lance Franklin defection
IT’S the friendship that not even Lance Franklin’s defection could sever, though there were a few uncomfortable times that followed.
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IT’S the friendship that not even Lance Franklin’s defection could sever, though there were a few uncomfortable times that followed.
When Alastair Clarkson and John Longmire shake hands before the AFL Grand Final — the second time in three seasons as coaching combatants on football’s biggest day — it will be the latest chapter of a story that started 27 years ago.
With similar philosophies and values — albeit with a few subtle differences — it has taken them from the dusty small towns of their childhood to one of the most competitive industries in Australian sport.
They’ve been teammates; they’ve conquered adversity; they’ve been fierce competitors in the coaches’ box. But one thing has not changed since “Horse” Longmire met “Clarko” on a plane bound for London in October 1987 — they are friends for life.
Both Grand Final coaches spoke exclusively to the Herald Sun this week, revealing two men driven by their football ambitions, but forever linked by a mateship that has survived the cut and thrust of a sometimes brutal sport.
THE KID FROM KANIVA AND THE BOY FROM BALLDALE
CLARKSON and Longmire were born 20 months apart in families ingrained on the land.
Clarkson’s father was a builder in Kaniva, tucked into a corner of Victoria’s Wimmera, 25km from the SA border. He recalled: “My father relied enormously on the land to provide any work, if the cockies had a good year, then dad had some work. If the farmers didn’t have a good year, we were pretty dried up for opportunity.”
His mates were sons of farmers and he helped them out on the weekends and holidays. He said: “Because you were so exposed to the weather, and all that sort of stuff, your fortunes fluctuated from one year to the next. Everyone had to help out; everyone had to chip in.”
That work ethic, camaraderie and community spirit scorched itself on to Clarkson’s psyche.
Like Clarkson’s mates, Longmire was the son of a farmer, though his home was the family’s 920-hectare property at Balldale, near Corowa, New South Wales, just over the Victorian border.
Longmire said: “Clarko and I are just a couple of country blokes who are trying our hand at the footy caper. We’ve got similar backgrounds and we both really enjoy the competitive nature and cut and thrust of footy. We both grew up in a country environment where you value hard work and being with your family and friends. It’s a pretty simple way of life, but it is a terrific way to live.”
BUSH KANGAROOS
LONGMIRE was meant to play with Sydney, not coach them a generation later. Clarkson might well have been an Essendon player (Roger Merrett and Glenn Hawker were from Kaniva) and he was almost signed to St Kilda.
But the North Melbourne recruiting/administrative nous of Greg Miller and Ron Joseph claimed them both. Miller had watched Longmire and a kid called Wayne Carey in the NSW under-12s and never forgot them.
Miller recalled: “I remember Ron and I meeting up with John and his dad at the Corowa-Rutherglen Golf Club. I got a mate to drive another car up there and he parked it in the car park. We had dinner with Fred (Longmire) and John, and we walked outside and Fred said: ‘Aren’t you going to drive us back to the farm?’ I just threw the keys of a new Holden to John, and said, ‘That’s yours’. He was only 16. He used to drive it up and down the driveway at the farm for two years because he didn’t have his licence.”
Miller says there was a “bit of skulduggery” in terms of a St Kilda deal to claim Clarkson. “I’d invited Alastair to a Grand Final, and then I had been at VFL House and seen his name on St Kilda’s list. I rang him up and he said, ‘I haven’t signed anything’. So I managed to get him struck off St Kilda’s list and he got put on to ours.”
Clarkson and Longmire quickly became firm friends at Arden St, and their links became the subject of some fun among teammates. Clarkson said: “We were the only two to see the light in our careers at North, and lived on the south side of the Yarra. Everyone else lived on the north side. They called us two flogs because we were among the toffs on the south side of the river.”
TOUGH TIMES
GREAT coaches are generally shaped by adversity. In Clarkson’s case, it came early. After booting the winning goal with a kick after the siren in his debut game (1987), he was embroiled in an incident in the game that became known as the “Battle of Britain” later that year that tested his character and resolve.
Miller recalled: “He got painted as the villain, but there were 25 villains that day. The AFL decided to have a scapegoat and unfortunately Alastair was the face of it.”
It was on that trip that Longmire, not yet 17, and yet to play an AFL game, first met 19-year-old Clarkson.
Clarkson also had to change clubs — to Melbourne — to further his career in 1996. He recalled: “A lot of good coaches were perhaps elite athletes at one point in time, but were never actually the pin-up boys of the game. That was probably similar for me, but not necessarily for Horse. He had some years as the pin-up boy when he was a Coleman medallist, a best-and-fairest and a very good player.”
Longmire’s adversity came in the form of a knee injury that cost him a flag in 1996. “Horse was a child star,” Miller said. “He missed that Grand Final, and he had to fight back to play in the ’99 flag. No one deserved it any more than he did.”
COACHES IN WAITING, MARK I
THE seeds of Clarkson the coach may have come in one of the most unlikely of locations — at a camp in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1991. “It was an unbelievable trip,” Miller said. “There were some pretty hairy moments.”
Clarkson and Longmire made their stamp on the camp, as the Kangaroos took hiking and rafting to new levels. “It was a horrendous trip,” teammate and friend Liam Pickering recalled. “We were climbing up mountains and working off rations.”
Clarkson would use those experiences later on as a coach. He said: “Horse and I were in the same team, ironically enough. We were the Blue Ringers up against the Grey Nurses, the White Pointers and the Lemons. We were a pretty competitive team, and with Horse and I on the same team, we were pretty keen to win.”
Longmire said: “It was a five-day torture camp. We were on top of a mountain and it was so windy and there was a straight drop down. I remember (coach) Wayne Schimmelbusch looking at it and going, ‘We could seriously lose someone here’. The rapids were grade six and we had blokes washed up on to the rocks. I think Alastair took Port Adelaide back there. But I probably thought, ‘If I am going to be a coach, I wouldn’t do those sorts of things.”
COACHES IN WAITING MARK II
PICKERING was best man at Longmire’s wedding, and always pictured him as a coach, even though he moved into player management briefly before taking on an assistant’s role at Sydney in 2002.
Clarkson was a teacher at Wesley College, and had a keen interest in website development when the internet was in its infancy.
“Clarko was always going to be a coach,” Pickering said. “He was driven, he is academically very smart and he is as street smart as anyone I have ever known. Horse was just a leader. He could have been captain of North Melbourne if it had not been for ‘Duck’ (Wayne Carey) and his knee.”
Miller agreed: “They were both students of the game.”
Joseph insisted both showed great leadership. Mark Brayshaw, who played with them for three years and has recently worked with them at the AFL Coaches Association, said: “They have always been young men with their feet firmly on the ground ... their wives (who are also friends) have been in their lives since they were playing in the 1990s. Their football and families mean everything to them.”
Longmire was on a shortlist of applicants at Hawthorn at the end of 2004. So, too, was Clarkson, who had been an assistant coach at St Kilda (1999), coach of Werribee (2000), a premiership coach at Central Districts in the SANFL as well as assistant coach at Port Adelaide.
Clarkson was the shock choice for the senior job and is now a dual premiership coach. It could be three flags by the end of Saturday.
Longmire was the logical replacement for Paul Roos after a strong apprenticeship at Sydney, taking over in 2011. He already has one premiership as coach, and could add a second later this weekend.
THE BUDDY TEST
THE biggest test of the friendship came in October last year. Hawthorn’s Lance Franklin had agreed to move to Sydney and it was revealed discussions the two parties had secretly taken place in January, 2013. Clarkson felt blindsided. Two of his closest friends had been party to the secret for 10 months. Longmire was one, and his mate and manager Pickering was another.
At the time, Pickering was managing Clarkson, Longmire and Franklin. Pickering, who played with Longmire and Clarkson at North Melbourne and has been their friend ever since, conceded he felt like “the meat in the sandwich ... they were both my clients then (Longmire still is) but I had to do what my client (Franklin) wanted me to do. I don’t feel great about the way it ended up with Hawthorn, but that’s free agency and that’s how it worked.”
When the news became public, it put a strain on the relationships. Clarkson said: “I didn’t like it one little bit that (Buddy) Franklin was able to go to their club 12 months after Kurt Tippett
“I have a very different philosophy to Horse on equalisation and salary cap allowances and that sort of thing. I know full well he would squeal like a shot pig if Hawthorn was getting the fortune of $1 million salary cap relief.”
Longmire acknowledged it was a challenging time. “It was not an easy thing. We obviously went down a path and Lance was keen to come to us. The good thing for Hawthorn’s point of view is that it didn’t affect their premiership last year. We are really good mates, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have good solid chats some times.”
Clarkson added: “It was frosty in so much as I didn’t agree with Buddy, who I had found out had indicated to Sydney and to many others that his decision was something he had made before he told us. And frosty because it involved two mates who I had known for 25 years and things were done behind our back and I expected more. But it also reveals the brutality of the game.
“I knew that being frosty was never going to bring Buddy back. So it was time to move on.”
The détente came in Sydney earlier this year when Clarkson and his wife Caryn went out for dinner with Longmire and his wife Shelley, and the friendship endures to this day.
GRAND FINAL DAY
Longmire sought out Clarkson after the Swans had won the 2012 Grand Final. He recalled: “I spoke to Alastair when we were out on the ground. There is not much you can say. We just shook hands and I said they are a great football club.”
Clarkson said: “If anything was going to disrupt the friendship, it would have been the Franklin recruitment to Sydney. We have been able to endure a frosty patch, but we have come out the other side knowing full well that our friendship will stand the test of time. Let’s just hope it is a different result this time.”
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