Alastair Clarkson’s next move: Does he see out the rebuild at Hawthorn or join a rival club?
It is the toughest balancing act in footy. But after their three-peat of flags, did the Hawks get the balance right between drafting and trading?
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Alastair Clarkson has to be wrestling with his next move.
The Hawthorn mastermind has four premierships, to be one of the game’s all-time coaching greats, but he’s now staring in the face a rebuild that some say is long overdue.
After almost 17 years in charge at Hawthorn, does Clarkson have the energy, hunger and the drive to see in a new era at Waverley?
He says yes, although he appears reluctant to even label it as a rebuild.
And there are some, such as former Hawthorn recruitment boss and club great Gary Buckenara, who believe it should have been undertaken years ago.
Four-time premiership coach Kevin Sheedy – who reigned over Essendon for 27 years – warned against counting Clarkson out.
“He’s been there over 15 years, which for me in my 15th season was 1996 and we got beaten by a point in a preliminary final in Sydney,” he said.
“So you can hang around and still be a good coach.
“Then I hung around and we got beaten by a point in the 1999 prelim and won it in 2000, so that period was from my 15th to 20th year, so he can do it.
“I think he has the capacity to do anything.
“He’s a great coach and he’s got the capabilities and the talent, so that’s no problem for him.”
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THE POTENTIAL SUITORS FOR CLARKO
Clarkson still has another year to run on his current deal, but speculation about his future has already begun in earnest.
The potential suitors at this stage loom as Carlton, Collingwood and GWS.
He has been most strongly linked to Carlton, where, if the Blues were to move on David Teague, he could reunite with his beloved former high performance guru Andrew Russell.
While his former football boss Graham Wright is now at Collingwood, where Nathan Buckley is in the final year of his current contract.
If he was to land at the underachieving Giants, he’d replace a former Hawks disciple in Leon Cameron.
Like Clarkson, Cameron is contracted to the end of 2022.
Coaching legend Mick Malthouse – the VFL-AFL’s longest serving coach – said Clarkson’s decision to stay or seek a challenge elsewhere was a difficult choice.
“In Clarkson’s case, is he better staying where he is or going somewhere else? It’s an interesting one,” Malthouse said.
“He’s 52 so he’s not that old but he’s coached a lot of games, so it’s whether or not he wants to go through that process.
“He could lob with some of these sides that could change (coaches) at the end of this year.
“If he gets a good club that just needs straightening out and probably with three or four drafts, you’re going to have another good side and another good run at it.
“If he takes over one of the bottom sides, you’re in for a long haul and you’ve got to be confident in taking over a bottom side where the committee is on side and you’ve got the right resources in front of you.
“That means a good football operations manager with the recruitment staff available to bring in, and maybe because of his name, a couple of free agents and then short circuit the pain of being bottom to eighth or ninth and then make your play.”
THE HAWKS REBUILD
At the end of 2015, the Hawks were the undisputed kings of the AFL.
They’d just won their third straight premiership, their fourth in seven years, and they craved more.
But at what cost?
As the club’s then recruiting boss and list builder for over a decade, Buckenara was the architect of those four flags.
When he departed at the end of 2015, he sensed the sacrificing of long term gain for short term success would one day catch up with the Hawks.
“I think you can get a bit greedy and that’s probably what happened,” Buckenara said.
“And you can’t blame them for wanting to stay successful, but that’s the balancing act now of list management.
“There’s a fine balance of going too long, and I probably think that after 2016 it was time to start adding some kids again.
“I think the club went probably two to three years too long in trying to add experienced players.
“Yes, they added the likes of Tom Mitchell, Jarman Impey, Chad Wingard, Jaeger O’Meara and a few others, but they gave away a lot of potential good young players to the point where the depth of young players, as it stands today, is I wouldn’t say is poor but not as elite as it was.
“That’s because you’re always picking late and the draft tells you the later you pick, the percentages of them having 100 plus games are less than your first and second rounders.
“The club, in my opinion, had far too many third round picks for a number of years because they gave all their early picks away and that’s where they find themselves now.”
There are some good, emerging kids at Hawthorn, but the numbers don’t lie.
They’ve had only 12 national draft selections the last four years, and only four of those have been in top 30.
Before taking Western Australian Denver Grainger-Barras at pick No. 6 last December, they’d not had a top-10 selection since Mitchell Thorp in 2006.
Clarkson has long scoffed at clubs that accumulate prized early picks in the belief they’ll automatically translate to finals success.
“For some clubs Grand Final day is towards the end of November, and that‘s because they’ve got all those high draft picks. But that’s never been our go,” Clarkson said in 2018.
More recently, he has questioned the compromised nature of the AFL draft.
“When people say ‘why don’t you just rebuild and go to the draft’ – you can’t go to the draft, it’s so compromised,” Clarkson said last September.
“You have to do it with other mechanisms like free agency and the depth of your rookie list.”
Buckenara said Clarkson was right to an extent.
“Of course the draft is compromised, but at the end of the day early picks are still early picks,” Buckenara said.
“And the talent is there if you do your homework, which is what list management is all about because today’s draftees are for your list model in three years’ time and not for now.
“That was the mistake they made in 2016, bringing in players to stay in the window of winning premierships, but the list was getting old and that’s a dangerous combination to have while you’re giving away early picks.”
Since saluting in 2015, they’ve traded away draft selections that were ultimately used on Todd Marshall (Port Adelaide), Hunter Clark, Ben Long, Josh Battle (all St Kilda), Liam Ryan and Willie Rioli (both West Coast).
“That’s probably a decision Clarko has made, to be honest,” Buckenara said.
“Clarko can be very persuasive in terms of what he wants.
“And when there was the mantra of adding the kids, he was supportive of it because that’s what the club wanted.
“And as we had success, his influence around list management and recruiting became stronger and stronger to the point where basically he was maybe putting short-term success ahead of long-term development.
“But we had the three-peat and maybe he just wanted more and more.
“I’m not being derogatory to the young players (as) I think Will Day is going to be a good player, but the list is just a little bare in my opinion in young talent.
“I therefore think the Hawks will have a few years as a middle of the pack type team.
“If they have luck with injuries they could possibly slip into the top eight, but the depth is just not there in my opinion.”
COULD CLARKO STAY ON?
If Clarkson stays on beyond 2022, what does that mean for Sam Mitchell?
The Hawks’ head of development and VFL coach is seen as Hawthorn’s senior coach in waiting, but that is no given, as a succession plan is not in place.
Although, if Clarkson was to stay at the Hawks longer than his current deal then Mitchell could become impatient and it leaves the club open to a poaching raid.
Hawks president Jeff Kennett last year appeared to put a use-by date on Clarkson’s time at Hawthorn, suggesting his coach’s current contract would be his last.
It remains to be seen whether Kennett will be the one to tell Clarkson his time is up, assuming the coaching great hadn’t already jumped to a rival.
If Clarkson does stay to see in the new era at Hawthorn, some may question whether he has been there too long.
Do players stop listening, even if the coach has the aura that Clarkson no doubt possesses?
“If a club has changed over, your senior players become your disciples,” Malthouse said.
“They take what you’ve been preaching for a long time with them daily, and they clearly agree with it because they’ve been a successful part of it.
“Then you keep changing players over.
“In Clarkson’s case, he’s got a whole bunch of players from other clubs so they’d be all ears.
“Then the new kids coming through would be guided by the senior players.
“There is the presumption from outside that you can be there for too long, but reality wise you’ll find the top end players are probably preaching as much as he is about the game structure.
“Ben McEvoy, Tom Mitchell to a degree, Jack Gunston and Luke Breust would be humming along with him.”
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