Inside the downfall of Alastair Clarkson and how his one-time captain Sam Mitchell became king
Alastair Clarkson’s departure from the Hawks will forever be one of football folklore. One theory upsets former club president Jeff Kennett more than any others.
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It had the theatre of a Greek tragedy: The downfall of a hero and tyrant, a man who demanded duty and honour and a man who was cast outside before he fell on his own sword.
It is a story of Alastair Clarkson, the most successful coach of this century, and his protégé Sam Mitchell, his one-time captain who would become king.
Was it supposed to be like that?
SOUR GRAPES IN THE BAROSSA
In any other time it was the perfect setting. Nestled in the Barossa Valley Ranges, overlooking the vineyards of Jacob’s Creek with a picturesque golf course next door, the Novotel Resort had plenty of appeal.
But in August, 2020, with Covid restrictions gripping, it became ground zero for the Hawthorn Football Club and Alastair Clarkson.
While the rest of the competition was sent north to the Gold Coast hub to soak up the rays and enjoy far less restrictions, the Hawks were under lock and key.
There was certainly no indulging in the local drop, golf wasn’t allowed and it rained every day for the first week.
It was a depressing scene, and by this stage the Hawks were already on their way to the worst finish of Clarkson’s reign.
“He was a caged animal,” was how one observer described the coach’s mood.
He’d already had ongoing issues with CEO Justin Reeves, while the stress of the Barossa situation saw cracks appear in his relationship with football manager Graham Wright.
The players were caught in the crossfire. Frustrated they couldn’t do anything, with Reeves and his management team seen to be the over-the-top fun police compared to other clubs regarding the enforcement of the Covid rules and regulations.
President Jeff Kennett, who enjoyed a hot and cold relationship with Clarkson, was also jumpy and penned a letter to the members addressing the horror season.
“So, while disappointed, I am excited about the challenge ahead. We have been in this position before and can again become very competitive,” Kennett said.
“Do not get me wrong, we at Hawthorn never give up, and will fight out every game.”
What he didn’t know then – how could he? – was the fight would be among themselves.
The Barossa fallout started with captain Ben Stratton’s shock retirement, and it solidified premiership hero Isaac Smith’s decision to play elsewhere.
Then in January, 2021, it claimed its biggest victim. The Wright-Clarkson relationship deteriorated to the point where the footy boss walked. Two days later he was at Collingwood.
That move would have seismic ramifications six months later, as did Kennett’s decision to hand Reeves a five-year contract extension.
“Kennett slammed that through the board and unless you’re Brian Cook when he was at Geelong, no one gets a five-year contract extension as a CEO,” one Hawthorn insider said.
“That five-year extension was basically a ‘f--- you’ to Clarkson. It was like, ‘If you’re going to stay here, you have to work with this bloke’.”
Not a lot worked for Hawthorn and Clarkson in 2021. A tick over the halfway stage of the season the Hawks had two wins from 11 games.
The only place going worse was Collingwood, where Wright was in the thick of it. He facilitated Nathan Buckley’s decision to stand down as coach, and the first name at the top of his list of prospective replacements? Hawthorn’s VFL coach Sam Mitchell.
KIRRIBILLI GONE WRONG
Jeff Kennett bristles at one theory – popular or not – that the highly ambitious Mitchell white-anted Clarkson to get the senior job.
“No, no, no, that’s crap,’’ Kennett says. “I never saw that, it certainly wasn’t instigated by me and it certainly wasn’t instigated by Sam. That’s not the way Sam works. I don’t know who said that, and how would they bloody know in due respect? I find that offensive, and that’s just part of the rumour thing that goes on in our game. I’ve always found Sam to be an honourable citizen.”
He says Mitchell wasn’t in the picture until Clarkson decided to renege on the agreement to coach in 2022.
“It (the handover) could’ve been a lot smoother if Clarko stayed on for 2022, it would’ve been normal, but he didn’t and that led to a whole lot of press,’’ Kennett recalls.
“We were very generous. We had recognition of his service to the club and allowed him to walk away with a year’s pay, for goodness sake.’’
The figure is estimated to be about $900,000, which was included in the soft cap, and which likely denied the club from employing more football staff to help Mitchell in first season.
“He resigned, there was no need for us to pay, but we did out of recognition to him,” Kennett says in a typical matter-of-fact tone.
“I got a lot of flak for that. Why would you be wasting the club’s money playing Clarkson anything for the year he travelled the world? The reason we did is because he had been a good servant.
“But just remember, and this is what always upsets me about this game, people zero in on the coaches and he was a great servant, but the greatest servants were the players who actually put in the hard yards.”
The start of the end may have its embryo in the Barossa, but officially it came just after the mid-season bye in 2021, when Clarkson, who had agreed to postpone contract talks until the end of the season, changed his mind and approached the board via footy department channels and wanted to talk.
By this stage, the Buckley sacking and his potential replacement was red-hot media fodder, and everyone at Hawthorn already knew the moment Mitchell returned to the club as midfield assistant coach in 2019, after a brief sojourn at West Coast, he was earmarked to be Clarkson’s replacement.
As did Clarkson.
“That wasn’t what we expected,’’ Kennett says of the Clarkson mid-season approach. “Out of respect for Clarko, we said all right, we’ll give it some thought.”
The board assessed the on-field performance of recent years, and off-field performance, which Kennett didn’t elaborate on, and decided not to extend Clarkson beyond 2022, which was the final year of his contract.
Clarkson initially agreed to coach and that Mitchell, who was cutting his teeth coaching his own team at Box Hill, would be promoted to senior assistant coach for 2022.
But the Kirribilli agreement lasted barely three weeks.
“The history of Kirribilli agreements in this country isn’t very good, name one that has worked,” one Hawks insider noted. “It didn’t work with Hawke and Keating, it didn’t work with Howard and Costello, how is it going to work at a footy club with two alpha males?”
Just a week before it officially fell apart on July 30, Clarkson was in full spin mode: “Once you make a commitment to someone, then you follow through to the end and my commitment to Sam Mitchell is through to the end of next year. That commitment is to Sam, that commitment is to Lyndall, his wife, and his three children.
“That commitment was made several years ago when I walked into the doors of the Hawthorn footy club, and Sam has paid me back in spades, and it’s my turn now to try to help him be a senior coach.”
Forgotten amid the drama were the players. They were angry and confused with what was happening around them. They were the first group to recognise the scenario would be unworkable. Then Clarkson made a sensational U-turn.
“It was time for Clarko to recharge his batteries and look at another opportunity and it was also necessary for the club,” Kennett said.
“Once the board decided not to extend, we told Clarko and Sam, and Sam and Clarko agreed and understood, and they might not have been 100 per cent happy with it, particularly Clarko, but they both agreed.
“We had our coach, our coach may be in-waiting, and then Clarko came to us, and said, “My time is up, I want to go”.
Despite reports to the contrary, and a cold press conference where Kennett explained the decision to the media, with an expressionless Clarkson beside him, Kennett argues there was no hostility.
That’s despite Clarkson not wanting to be at the club and incoming coach Mitchell not wanting him there, either.
Kennett says a deluge of media coverage skewed the situation.
“It became very public,” Kennett says.
“They (Clarkson’s camp) were positioning for what they called compensation and money. That was a difficult time because most people were only reading as the journos were fed it.”
He says the club did not speak to Mitchell about the senior role until after Clarkson had scuppered the agreement.
“I don’t ever remember a conversation with Sam, saying he wants the job per se, until we got to the situation where Clarko said he wasn’t going to coach,” Kennett said.
“At that stage the board said, ‘well, we thought Clarko’s brought him back, he’s a (former) player and a person of high character, he’d been trying out at Box Hill, could he be our next coach? Yes, he could, and that’s when we started the discussions with Sam.”
The Hawks considered other people, which Kennett didn’t reveal.
“I spent a lot of time observing Sam last year and one thing that struck me was his calmness with the playing group. That’s increasingly the role of the modern coach. Have you looked at the chap at Collingwood (Craig McRae), he had great success last year and this year because he brings a different temperament to the game, it’s a considered temperament, it’s not demonstrative, it’s not one that’s loud, it’s one that’s inclusive,” Kennett said.
Kennett has not spoken to Clarkson since Clarkson’s departure.
Any regrets?
Kennett emphatically says: “None at all … none at all. Clarko needed a change and we needed a change, it’s as simple as that. No regrets. Clarko’s time was up and the only thing you might’ve asked is whether it should’ve happened three years earlier.”
Should it have?
“I don’t know but you could ask the question because he had success with a group of players, a lot of players had and were leaving the field, and we started topping up,’’ Kennett says.
‘’Topping up works sometimes, but not often. It didn’t work for us. As I said, Clarko needed to change and we needed the change.’’
THEY BOTH HAVE WHITE LINE FEVER
ALASTAIR Clarkson is a complex, quirky and mercurial character who has the ability to put people off-side and, in many different circumstances, inspire all around him.
The fact is Lance Franklin, a source says, left Hawthorn largely because of Clarkson.
A meeting between the pair in 2013, which distressed Franklin, being the match that lit the flame which culminated in Franklin departing for Sydney.
There were other reasons why he left, but it’s well known Franklin didn’t like it when, at the end of the 2012 season, Clarkson knocked on Franklin’s hotel room door in Las Vegas to discuss Franklin’s future, as detailed by former teammates Jordan Lewis and Jarryd Roughead in 2020.
Clarkson wanted to know if Franklin planned on leaving and if he was, Clarkson was prepared to trade him.
That frostiness grew after the meeting in 2013. At that meeting, a source says, Clarkson accused Franklin of not being a team player, for example his hair style was kind of ‘me, me, me’.
Clarkson’s quirkiness extends from playing guitars and singing songs to the playing group, to one-time buying former player Grant Birchall a dog, which Birchall gave back a few days later because Birchall couldn’t look after it.
There would be countless quirky stories in Clarkson’s bag.
Mitchell is not as flamboyant as Clarkson, but there’s no doubting the two have many similarities.
Not least a ruthlessness to compete and to be successful.
One former player said: “They always butted heads because they are so similar. They are twins born 15 years apart.”
Another former player said Mitchell often challenged Clarkson’s thinking when he was a player, and despite Mitchell being offended by Clarkson’s comments when Mitchell’s wife was having their twins, which the Brownlow Medallist detailed in his book, the pair grew to have a healthy if not sometimes confrontational relationship as coach and player.
It’s a fact, though, that Mitchell didn’t give a care about Clarkson and his departure from the Hawks at the end of 2021
This wouldn’t or shouldn’t surprise Clarkson. After all, he helped foster Mitchell’s kill or be killed attitude.
Unquestionably, Clarkson’s decision to exit the champs, such as Luke Hodge, Mitchell and Lewis, and to play Roughead, a former captain, in the VFL in 2019 was a curious decision.
Lewis and Clarkson hardly speak, the same as Franklin, although Clarkson recently visited Hodge, his captain in three premierships, at his Brisbane home.
The relationship between Clarkson and Mitchell now is complicated and a little awkward and that wouldn’t shock anyone. That’s not to say they’ve banned text exchanges, albeit before Clarkson joined the Kangaroos.
“We send some messages when we see the hot air balloons up in the sky. It means it’s going to be a good day,” Mitchell revealed last year.
“It is one of those little quirks we had as a player and coach relationship, so whenever I see the hot air balloons I shoot him a text or a photo of the hot air balloon and say ‘Good day today’. He usually sends back something.”
Still, football folk are shocked by the reality that the four-time premiership coach is not close to some of the champs who helped make him a champion coach.
To this, Kennett says everyone has different relationships.
He highlights their similarities by declaring that Mitchell’s bold list strategy was similar to Clarkson’s list strategy when he first coached in 2004.
“The club made a decision last year, through Sam, that fundamentally Sam was going to do what Clarko did in 2004-05, and that was to let go senior players, put together a young group, get them working together and depending upon each other as a young group,” Kennett said.
“We knew this was going to be a tough year, this is the teaching year, next year is very much the building year and after that I expect us to be in the eight and competing.”
Of their personalities, he says: “They do have that white line fever.”
On Saturday in Launceston, the pair will cross paths for the first time as opposing coaches. Clarkson is riding high after winning his opening two games at North Melbourne while Mitchell is coming off a horror start to the season, a 59-point loss to Essendon and an 80-point flogging by Sydney.
The theatre of it will be unmissable.
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