Alastair Clarkson hits back at Ross Lyon’s claim that serious AFL clubs don’t sell games
Alastair Clarkson has taken aim at fellow coaching veteran Ross Lyon’s claim that serious AFL clubs don’t sell matches. See what he said in response here.
North Melb
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North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson has hit back at Ross Lyon’s claims that ‘serious footy clubs’ don’t sell games interstate, defending the club’s deal to play two home games to Western Australia for the next three years.
And Clarkson has urged the AFL to make greater soft cap exemptions to allow for more player welfare staff and safeguards at club level as well as giving clubs the chance to travel overseas for training and development camps.
The St Kilda coach made the comments in an exclusive interview in the Herald Sun last month, saying: “Once you start selling your home games interstate you are hanging your shingle out the front that says you are not a serious footy club.”
Clarkson said he had no desire to get into a slanging match with Lyon on the eve of the 2025 season, but he stressed his counterpart’s comments were inaccurate.
He told this masthead that his own experience at Hawthorn — where he won four premierships as a coach while the club had a small foothold in Tasmania — showed why Lyon’s comments were wrong.
“I like to look at history pretty accurately and say that there have been some clubs who have been successful at it,” Clarkson said.
“There have been some clubs like Collingwood who have been able to win some silverware by not selling games elsewhere. You need to sustain a revenue stream for your footy club and Collingwood can do it through membership and big crowds at the MCG.
“You have to work out a way that works for your club.
“Hawthorn has been an example of a pretty successful side for more than a decade (who has sold matches to Launceston).
“To sit there and say there is only one way to do it (to be a serious club) is false.”
When asked whether he would accept a Hawthorn invitation to its 10-year 2025 premiership reunion, Clarkson declined to comment.
In a wide-ranging interview, Clarkson remains perplexed that the AFL has not restored its soft cap on football departments to pre-Covid levels, saying it was still having a detrimental effect at club level.
The AFL slashed the soft cap by around 30 per cent when the Covid pandemic threatened the game, wrenching it back from $9.68m to $7.25m in 2020.
The league has increased the soft cap spend for clubs in recent years, with this year’s uplift of $400,000 taking it to $7.76m this year.
It will be boosted by further increases by $250,000 across the next two seasons, but it remains a long way short of pre-Covid days, which Clarkson says has impacted on staffing numbers and development and welfare opportunities.
“When we all decided to take those (Covid) hits, it was really on the basis that we would return all that to every stakeholder at the earliest opportunity,” Clarkson said.
“They haven’t done that with the coaching fraternity and the football department fraternity. It has been and will continue to be an issue, and the lag effect has been an Adam Simpson, and a John Longmire and me a few years ago and others …
“The toll on those people (has been strong) in terms of the hours they have given to work and the extra micromanaging they have to do, and the complexity of youth coming through today in terms of social media and drugs and other areas.”
He said when he was coaching at Hawthorn the club’s then president Andrew Newbold wanted to see at least four staff members in the player welfare area, but he says most clubs these days would only have one or two.
“Our game is littered with young men and young women who can sometimes make poor decisions. That is a part of their learning. It is not ‘oh beauty, let’s put more staff into those places because it would mitigate any of those things happening’.
“But the flip side is that it might reduce (the problems) a little bit, and when it does happen, you might have more staff there to ensure there is some sort of smooth pathway to get them out of that predicament.”
Clarkson wants the AFL to make a $400,000 soft cap exemption every three years to allow for clubs to take players on overseas camps, such as Hawthorn’s late 2004 trip to Kokoda which played a big part in the bonds that helped win the 2008 flag.
“There is not a club at the moment that is travelling overseas,” he said. “We could be showcasing the game overseas, it doesn’t just have to be International Rules, but we have to find different ways to promote the game internationally.”
Originally published as Alastair Clarkson hits back at Ross Lyon’s claim that serious AFL clubs don’t sell games
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