The Hawks were ‘close to death’. These are the people who brought them back from the brink

Every AFL club has a network of influencers who make things happen through their wealth, fame or political connections. This is our series on the football world’s movers and shakers.See all 3 stories.

At the president’s dinner before Hawthorn’s round one clash with arch-rivals Essendon, Hawks president Andrew Gowers presented his predecessor Jeff Kennett with life membership.

The pair had exchanged barbs a little over two years earlier during a bitter election campaign. But as the sun set on the MCG, they spoke graciously about each other in the Olympic Room, which was crowded with Hawthorn diehards.

Hawthorn’s fans have felt connected to the club since the anti-merger vote prevailed in 1996Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images

Gowers, a 1991 premiership player, told the room that whatever had divided them, a shared love for Hawthorn would prevail. Kennett joked he might speak for a couple of hours before he impressed the audience with his sincerity in accepting the honour.

It was quite a moment for the club following the brutal board election of 2022, which featured PR operatives at 20 paces as Gowers battled Kennett’s preferred successor – the quietly spoken and respected Peter Nankivell – for the presidency.

Former state Labor minister James Merlino, though running as an independent for the board, was aligned with Gowers, who was being backed by the supporter-led “Hawks for Change” movement. Both sides flung insults across the divide.

There remains an intriguing dynamic around the board table. There are connections to Kennett and loyalties to former president Ian Dicker, who alongside Don Scott opposed the infamous proposal to merge with Melbourne nearly 30 years ago.

Hawks coach Sam Mitchell is putting his imprint on the new Hollywood HawksCredit: AFL Photos

However, dissent from the Kennett clan disappeared as Sam Mitchell’s team emerged as a contender last season then started 2025 in exciting fashion to sit fifth on the ladder. Petty politics have been set side as the Hawks prepare to move to their new training and administrative complex, the Kennedy Community Centre, at Dingley in Melbourne’s south-east.

“I don’t try to pull strings from outside as I have made my contribution, although I am still interested to see which project this board embarks on next to take the club forward,” Kennett said.

“The great thing about Hawthorn boards has always been the members have known their role. There were no liniment sniffers.”

Not being a liniment sniffer is a strength – although his suggestion early in 2010 that Alastair Clarkson was out of form and could do with a spell coaching in the VFL, and the famous Kennett curse, meant the president’s willingness to break convention sometimes added pressure to the football department.

Dicker says he, too, is back in the fold after a period of estrangement.

It was Dicker who got the ball rolling for modern Hawthorn when he became president in 1997.

He led a massive marketing push to increase membership from 12,484 members to 27,005 within 12 months, second only to Essendon among Victorian clubs.

But he became disenchanted over the club’s treatment of coaching legend Alastair Clarkson during the Hawthorn racism scandal.

“I was disappointed at how Alastair Clarkson was treated, but I am rapt at how the club’s leaders Andrew Gowers (president), Ashley Klein (CEO), Rob McCartney (football boss) and Sam Mitchell (coach) have energised the club again,” Dicker said. “I was at the club recently.”

To understand the Hawthorn of today, it’s important to understand the club’s history – and the best place to start is with the Hawks’ near merger in the mid-1990s.

The brink of elimination

Hawthorn Legend John Kennedy snr is the most influential person in the club’s historyCredit: Fairfax

There’s nothing like a near-death experience to keep egos in check, and the arresting image of the revered former captain Don Scott ripping velcro strips off a “Melbourne Hawks” jumper at the Camberwell Civic Centre in September 1996 is never far from the minds of Hawthorn’s powerbrokers.

That fateful and often feral night, when members voted down the merger, is central to every big decision the club has made since.

Triple-premiership coach Allan Jeans was howled down and exasperated social club president George Lawson told a persistent heckler to “get off your arse, darling, and do something” as they argued in favour of the merger in the belief it was best for the club.

In the end, the anti-merger forces led by Scott and Dicker – their credibility helped by $900,000 raised via members through Operation Payback – won the battle to keep the Hawks as a standalone club.

“Even when there are times of difference and a bit of tension, it’s never so deep that people forget how close to death we came,” says a senior club figure, granted anonymity to speak freely.

“There remains a commitment that the club has got to be able to stand on its own two feet and never be in a position again where our existence is threatened.”

Dicker also drew on his personal wealth to make sizeable financial contributions, including a million-dollar donation to the club’s foundation (he was annoyed when it became public) as well as good decisions to ensure the club’s ongoing independence.

He successfully led the club’s decision to relocate from Glenferrie to Waverley Park in 2006.

Crucial to the Waverley deal was Kennett, by then the former Liberal premier who barracked for the Hawks and had begun to take an interest in their affairs.

He told Mirvac, the developer who bought the surrounds of the oval from the AFL for $110 million, that the best way to sell their vision was to include a community aspect to their plans.

That meant making sport part of the plan, so the Hawks were offered the administrative facilities and the oval for a measly dollar and retained the oval as a training base, while Mirvac developed the old Waverley carpark as housing.

Hawthorn’s assets, plus a gym they later bought, are now on the market for $20 million. That’s a Paul-Puopolo-at-pick-66-type return.

The Hawks also resisted the league’s push to move to Docklands in 1999 and struck a deal to play their home games at the MCG, a popular move among supporters.

Dicker’s board also strengthened the alignment with VFL club Box Hill, an underrated ingredient to the club’s on-field success and the place Mitchell found his feet before becoming a champion player and Brownlow winner.

The first Kennett era

Dicker was eventually ousted by Kennett after the club’s poor 2004 season – but not before he sat on a subcommittee alongside club legend Jason Dunstall and appointed then untried coach Clarkson.

Prominent supporter Stephen Quartermain could not hold on to his thoughts when asked on Channel 10 after the decision was announced what he thought of the appointment. “As I said, they [the Hawks] are struggling.” They aren’t struggling any more.

Kennett, who had two stints as president from 2006-11 and 2018-22, could be black and white and abrasive, but he also drove change at a furious rate.

The Kennett board outlined the aggressive “five-2-fifty program” in 2007 with the aim to win two premierships and have 50,000 members by the end of 2012. But for a two-goal loss to Sydney in the 2012 grand final, the plan would’ve been fulfilled. That said, the premierships that followed in 2013, ’14 and ’15 made sure that disappointment didn’t linger.

They also cemented the relationship between the club and Tasmania after the Saints bailed out of the state at the end of 2006, a revenue source – along with pokies venues, which sat uncomfortably with many members – that complemented the influential figures contributing financially and spiritually to the club.

Jeff Kennett was twice Hawks president during the Alastair Clarkson eraCredit: Getty Images

Aged care business owners the Mackenzies were two who worked in the background as host families and benefactors. Dawn Mackenzie has continued the legacy of her late husband Peter, who was on the Hawthorn Foundation board, and is an adored figure at the club. They used to host monthly dinners for a dozen young players as well as having many live with them.

Dicker remained for a time as chair of the foundation, joking that he often put his hand up to get the ball rolling on fundraising auction items before being left holding the winning bid. Mortimer Petroleum’s David Mortimer also sat in the background, his close relationship with the club less about ego than about being involved in an organisation that adhered to his values. Clarkson’s relationship with him was strong, as both enjoyed time out from the city. He remains quietly significant and highly respected. Radek Sali, the founder of Swisse Vitamins, is no longer on the board but was a strong contributor.

Those individuals have influence but aren’t heavy-handed. One benefactor, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he could pick up the phone to the CEO, but he saw his role as a mentor rather than someone “who jumped up and down as a donor to get what he wanted”.

Hawthorn’s $10 million man

Geoff Harris, who co-founded Flight Centre and served on the club’s board from 2004-13, including as Kennett’s vice-president, had been on an advisory panel with Dicker.

That battle for survival left its mark on Harris, still one of the club’s most influential figures.

The socially minded, knockabout businessman suggested and funded the club’s first trip to Kokoda, and paid for the statue of club icon John Kennedy snr, which overlooks Waverley Park and will be relocated to the new Kennedy Community Centre at Dingley.

Entrepreneurial by nature, Harris financed an innovation program while on the board that allowed staff-led ideas to work their way up to the board for approval and implementation.

But after a discussion involving his son Brad and a nervous CEO Stuart Fox – now Melbourne Cricket Club CEO – about whether that annual funding could instead become a lump sum directed towards the club’s biggest project, Harris committed $10 million to kick-start the process for gathering donations needed for the Dingley development. That massive commitment, which dwarfed other known contributions to AFL clubs, made his passion for the club clear.

“I have been lucky in business and in life. We have donated to Hawthorn and a bunch of other community activities to make sure that ’96, ’97, ’98 period never happens again and Hawthorn will be bulletproof financially off the field,” said Harris, a philanthropist who also supports youth-focused organisations the Reach Foundation and Streat.

Harris was on the board in 2013 when the Hawks decided to explore a move from Waverley, eventually settling – under Andrew Newbold’s leadership – on a 28-hectare parcel of land in Dingley, which they bought in 2016 for $7.75 million out of cash reserves. They are now the only club to own the freehold on the land on which the club is based. They will launch their attempt to become the first club to win a premiership in seven consecutive decades knowing their balance sheet is as in as good a shape as their team.

No wonder Harris and his wife Sue were greeted by a handwritten note from Mitchell welcoming them to the game when they checked in at their hotel in Sydney to watch their beloved Hawks play the Swans in opening round. The note was a nice touch, but a more permanent reminder of the family’s largesse will be found at Dingley with the Harris Elite Training and Administration Facility bearing his name.

Watching from the sidelines and part of the battle of that fateful merger vote night were prominent media figures such as 3AW’s Ross Stevenson and The Age’s John Silvester, who coined the term Operation Payback. They are part of a loose collection of Hawthorn-supporting mates who call themselves the Dolce group after the restaurant in which they first debated the ins and outs of the team. The group includes Quartermain, former Test cricketer Damien Fleming (whose daughter Jasmine is an emerging Hawks AFLW star), media personality “Lehmo” and business figures such as ex-Crown boss Rowen Craigie.

Stevenson scoffs at the notion they have any influence. “More like under the influence,” he jokingly told a friend when an article described him recently as an influential figure at Hawthorn.

Clarkson’s biggest supporter on the board was Dunstall. When asked in an interview for the book The Three-Peat who deserved most credit for the premierships he coached, Clarkson didn’t hesitate: “Jason Dunstall”.

Dunstall backed the club’s youth policy and Clarkson during their early struggles for wins and later when they just fell short of flags. Eventually, that shared belief blossomed into the three-peat under the stable presidency of now AFL commissioner Newbold, who had Gowers on his board.

A new era

Kennett’s dominance began to wane as Clarkson left in 2021 ahead of schedule in acrimonious circumstances when the club tried to engineer a succession plan to Mitchell, who had returned to the club as an assistant under Clarkson.

The list had entered no-man’s land, but Clarkson’s exit was messy.

In addition, Kennett was making critical comments about the then Andrews government, which was not helping the club’s bid for state government funding towards the Kennedy Community Centre in Dingley.

It coincided with the birth of the Hawks for Change lobby group, which arose after two supporters began to advocate for Kennett to leave before his term ended in 2023.

Those supporters were Mark Hawthorne and cricket commentator Adam Collins, who had assembled a group to buy the famous Batmobile that carried Angry Anderson at half-time in the 1991 grand final.

What followed was the aforementioned bitter and public board battle, that ended in Gowers being elected president, despite the Hawks’ board backing Nankivell as Kennett’s successor.

It was only after Kennett left his post in 2022 that the club received $15 million from the state government for the Dingley project.

The Hawks have a nominations committee, which determines the best candidates for vacant board positions. It is an underestimated sphere of influence at the club.

Board members Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson, former board members Harris and Lucinda Nolan, as well as Meryl Dooley and former captain and AFL commissioner Chris Langford, sit on the increasingly powerful committee.

Langford’s rare public comment before last year’s election, when Scott chose to run – unsuccessfully – despite not winning the nominations committee’s endorsement, revealed his ability to influence.

Bringing back the ‘family club’

No discussion of influential figures at the Hawks can pass without the Kennedy name. John Kennedy jnr was already a respected figure due to his four flags and quiet diplomacy, but as president of the past players’ group and carrier of the family legacy, he has been closer to the decision-makers in recent times. Former players Rodney Eade and Gary Ayres are also helping raise funds for the Dingley centre.

The aim is to involve the golden “three-peat” era more – Jordan Lewis hosted the most recent AGM, Jarryd Roughead is back working at the club in recruiting and Mitchell has made a point of trying to connect former greats with the current crop, a past players’ day to celebrate 100 years held at Waverley was a massive statement of intent by the club. Every player who had played one match, or their family, was invited.

Mitchell has also been keen to listen to people who didn’t have a great experience at the club, an issue that rose again this week when Port Adelaide’s Willie Rioli jnr made his dislike for the Hawks clear on social media, due to how he felt his father was treated at the club. Willie Rioli snr was drafted by Hawthorn in 1990 but did not play a senior game.

Gowers explained after legal involvement in the racism saga ended last November that he knew work remained, with many influential people at the club still grappling with how to reconcile the less-pleasant elements of the past.

Much of Mitchell’s work is only possible because of the support of his wife Lyndall, who is now being credited for her role in the recruiting pitches that helped the club land Josh Battle from St Kilda.

Hearing her explain how the family club lives up to its name when people arrive at the Hawks is more convincing than hearing it from a coach focused on talent. The “Mitch Pitch” has brought Lyndall’s importance to the club to public attention.

Despite the peace, what’s next is the question Kennett asks most.

There is no doubt, however, what all in the group above would like most: a 14th Hawks premiership.

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