Inside the Hawthorn succession plan: Why the Hawks moved on from Alastair Clarkson
Hawthorn fans still can’t believe the greatest coach of the modern era is gone. These are the behind the scenes conversations that led to his exit.
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Richie Vandenberg has never been one to do anything by halves.
Not on the field as a “line-in-the-sand” type of player, or as the transformational captain who set the culture for a club that would establish a dynasty in his wake.
As the Hawthorn football director, he has been a key player as the club made the astonishing decision to move on AFL supercoach Alastair Clarkson – for a time, engulfing the club in turmoil.
So when Vandenberg’s wine brand, Hidden Sea, committed to pulling 10 plastic bottles out of the ocean for every wine bottle sold, he decided to go big.
Working with Danish company The ReSea Project, he has committed to pulling a billion bottles out of the ocean by 2030, with six and a half million already extracted through the first year of sales.
It is in that spirit 44-year-old Vandenberg has joined Steven May, Travis Cloke and Abbey Holmes as a spokesman for the Polished Man 2021 campaign, starting much-needed conversations against child violence.
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He will sport a painted blue fingernail for the month to spark discussion, with $7m to date raised through the social impact mission to be invested into violence prevention and recovery programs for children at risk of violence.
“It’s great that something can be so small yet so recognisable, the blue nail and the team have done such a great job to raise so much money for an important cause,” Vandenberg said.
“It’s part of a deeper conversation. Even if you look at being a Hawthorn past player and my role on the board, I want to give back to the club that gave me so much.
“It’s an extension of becoming involved in things with a higher purpose.
“I am passionate about wine and wanting to clean the ocean and doing more and it’s the same with the Polished Man brand.”
Vandenberg’s 145-game career from 1998-2007 led into a Hawthorn board seat in 2016 as he replaced AFL Commission-bound Andrew Newbold.
He reflected with the Herald Sun on some of the biggest decisions in the club’s history since it staved off a merger with Melbourne and has charted the way forward for Sam Mitchell’s Hawthorn.
WHY DID HAWTHORN MOVE ON FROM CLARKSON?
BEFORE Clarkson blew up his succession plan, before the weeks of failed talks on how the succession plan was actually going to work, there was a decision.
For the Hawthorn board, it was a seismic moment that boiled down to this: was Clarkson going to deliver another flag for the Hawks?
The decision not to extend Clarkson’s deal past 2022 led to the club choosing Sam Mitchell as the senior coach-in-waiting.
Hawthorn fans still cannot believe the greatest coach of the modern era would not choose his own departure date.
But it is clear the Hawks board that had given him everything – cap space, recruiting targets – since the end of the three-peat felt he had underperformed in that time.
“I think we have got to reflect a bit. It’s six years since we won a flag and we have been out in the wilderness for a while,” Vandenberg said.
“We showed a bit in 2016 and 2018 and got into the finals but we couldn’t fire a shot and then that starts to raise questions about our direction and our list and what does the future hold?
“That is the process we have been through, and the performances on the field are plain to see for everyone in the last couple of years.
“The standards we set for ourselves, both from a win-loss perspective but more the way we go about it. We want to get back to being the Hawthorn we were and the Hawthorn we expect to be.
“We feel really comfortable and confident we have the right person to lead that in Sammy as the coach and with Rob McCartney, who has done a fantastic job leading the football department, so we have had a big turnover, but we really feel we have the right people in place now to take us on that next journey.”
For Vandenberg, appointed as Hawthorn captain in the first three seasons of Clarkson’s tenure, it was an especially difficult decision.
“It was difficult in many senses,” he said.
“Certainly from my perspective playing under Clarko and having had a strong relationship with him over many years and seeing what he has been able to achieve.
“Everyone can see what Clarko has been able to do over the years.
“But from that perspective it sort of feels like it was never going to be a good time.
“We felt like we had invested in Sam. It was in the plan and there were no guarantees for him, but we were comfortable with the way the team was set up with Sam at Box Hill and Clarko coaching the senior team, but we needed to make some really strategic changes to the direction we wanted to take – and we needed absolute alignment in the way we did it.”
THE ILL-FATED SUCCESSION PLAN
HAWTHORN’S decision to force Clarkson into a succession plan that, in hindsight, looked doomed to fail from the start has been sheeted home to Jeff Kennett’s stubbornness.
If the Hawks president was to pay Clarkson for the 2022 season, he might as well get another season out of him while heir apparent Sam Mitchell coached Box Hill.
But Vandenberg said the Hawks board was keen to give Clarkson a dignified exit that helped Mitchell’s apprenticeship.
He said the club could have spent more time considering whether Clarkson would embrace that role.
But in good faith – given Clarkson had been so integral in bringing Mitchell back to Hawthorn – they believed the succession plan could work.
“We felt there was absolutely a place for him honouring the contract and playing a role in developing the kids for the next 18 months,” Vandenberg said.
“It was more about we have a contract and at Hawthorn we like to honour our contracts.
“To do the honourable thing by Clarko, this was our position.
“I think where the misalignment started to manifest itself – and where it ended up and the position changed – was around the misalignment and an absolute buy-in of the direction and what it would take going forward.
“Really, that was it. Life is about money in many respects but, from the board’s perspective it wasn’t about the money, it was about us wanting to honour contracts.
“So do the right thing. He deserves a dignified exit that we tried to give him. But, as you know with succession plans, the two most important people in the succession plan are the two people in the plan. So in hindsight, maybe there was a better way to do it.
“In the end, he decided it wasn’t right for him or the club, so the decision was made to part ways.
“We acknowledge that of course as a board, we have reviewed the process and the role we all played in it, and hope to learn from it, and feel like as a club we have been able to stabilise it and we have worn that bit of pain. I don‘t think moving any legend of the club on is an easy thing to do for anyone.”
SAM MITCHELL’S NATHAN BUCKLEY-ESQUE GROWTH
NATHAN Buckley turned from a man nicknamed “FIGJAM” into one of football’s most emotionally intelligent figures through the course of his coaching career.
Vandenberg had no doubt Mitchell was ready to coach senior football next year and said fans and the club’s players would see he had also softened in the same manner as Buckley.
“When you understand his journey as a player and what it took for him, you are a brave man to bet against him,” Vandenberg said.
“He did it the hard way through Box Hill. He was completely written off. It’s a bit like those back pocket coaches. He had to really fight to get there and fight to be a great player.
“When we looked at all the criteria that are important as a senior coach, he ticked all the boxes.
“In his stability, his life, his leadership, his ability to lead teams of people and playing groups, he has got a little bit of an edge to him.
“He has got that hard edge but what is also more understated and not understood outside the four walls of Hawthorn, but he has a lot of empathy as well.
“Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and there are people willing to accept the weaknesses and be willing to do something about it. Sam is absolutely one of those people.
“This is not just now, it’s been over the past two or three years. It is basically about standards.
“He sets very high standards for himself and he expects high standards of others. But to lead a big group of people, to coach people, you have to understand other people, come at it from a different way. Sam understands that.
“We all saw the transformation in Nathan Buckley, where he learned to let go. When he learned to bring the playing group in. The results spoke for themselves. We truly believe Sam understands that and he has already made a great connection with the playing group.
“He is ready to go. We would have been happy for him to continue his apprenticeship for another year, but I have been in very close contact with him since he got back (to Hawthorn) and he is ready to go. He is absolutely ready to go.”
PAYING OUT CLARKSON
VANDENBERG said not enough credit had been paid to Clarkson for his willingness to help the Hawks fully staff their football department despite the club paying out the final year of his deal.
The Herald Sun revealed on the day Clarkson departed that the Hawks would pay about $70,000 of the AFL’s football department luxury tax per year after handing Clarkson $450,000 in each of 2022 and 2023.
“That was a really important part of it all. You bring in a new coach, you cannot compromise your football department,” Vandenberg said.
“There are rules in place and at Hawthorn we are very strong around adhering to the rules with TPP (total player payments) and the soft cap, but this is a unique situation.
“So we were able to work with Clarko to ensure Sam had all the resources he needed to give himself the best opportunity for him to succeed, so there has been no compromises in the footy department, and, as a result we may have to pay some tax.”
So Clarkson was keen to ensure the club was fully staffed? “Correct,” Vandenberg said.
He said Hawthorn would again turn a profit this year despite the challenges of Covid, which was part of the club’s pledge after the merger talks not to let the on-field issues affect the balance sheet.
While the Hawks are likely to be young and unfancied entering 2022, he said he believed Mitchell and his new coaching team could spearhead an eventual premiership build.
“The exciting thing for us, as was the case this year, is guys like Dylan Moore and Changkuoth Jiath and Jacob Koschitzke and Mitchell Lewis will continue to improve and then we will watch these young, highly talented players we draft come into the group, which will be exciting, and also the way
“Sam is going to coach the team is going to be really interesting for all of us to watch. So there is plenty of excitement for Hawks fans.”
HAWKS CONFIRM PLAN TO BE BIG PLAYERS IN TRADE, DRAFT
Hawthorn is open to a full range of possibilities to improve its 2021 draft hand, including trading future picks and even moving on established players, after honest conversations with the playing group.
Hawthorn football boss Richie Vandenberg told the Herald Sun ahead of the start of the draft period on Monday the club was aware it needed to again replenish its stocks of youth under new coach Sam Mitchell.
While the Hawks have done brilliantly to fast-track the likes of Jacob Koschitzke, Changkuoth Jiath, Lachie Bramble, Dylan Moore and Mitch Lewis with value draft selections, the club has only selected two players within the top 25 of the national draft on its entire list.
The club’s ample cap room could open up the possibility of paying some of the salary of a departing player to maximise the draft pick the Hawks received in exchange for that star.
Vandenberg, an ambassador for the Polished Man campaign against child violence along with Steven May, Abbey Holmes and Travis Cloke, said the club was aware it needed to boost its draft hand of 5, 21 and 24.
He is part of a list management committee that could help shake up what is expected to be a quiet trade period, starting on Monday and finishing on Wednesday October 13.
“It’s been well documented we started (restocking via the draft) back with Will Day in the 2019 national draft and last year with (Denver Grainger-Barras) so we have been trying to get to the draft. Even this year we want to continue to improve our draft hand, that is the way we want to go. We are looking at all kinds of ways we can go,” he told the Herald Sun.
“We are looking at trading picks, future picks, current picks, salary cap movement, players.
“It’s only natural people are speculating around (trading) players and how we want to go about that. We understand that, our players understand that.
“We are all professionals and we have to make the decisions we think are right for the footy club and equally players have to make decisions on what to do with their futures. With an understanding of where we are at.”
Mitchell has made clear premiership players including captain Ben McEvoy, Luke Breust and Liam Shiels would be critical in helping teach the young brigade.
The Herald Sun reported last week Tom Mitchell is keen to stay and finish what he started at the club after a brilliant finish to the season.
Chad Wingard is also desperately keen to stay, but the Hawks are aware of the need to secure multiple early picks as Essendon was able to with picks eight, nine and 10 in the national draft.
Melbourne’s premiership triumph with a vast array of players taken with high draft picks has set the club up for a wide-open premiership window for some time to come.
Asked if Vandenberg had been part of those discussions with players, he said the football department had spearheaded those conversations.
“I am not directly involved in conversations. Sam and the team have all had those meetings about where we are at, where they fit into our plans. And I won‘t go into details of the conversations,” he said.
“I think everyone at the footy club has a really good understanding of where we are at and where they are at individually.”
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