Clarkson to exit Hawks ahead of schedule amid tension

The end of four-time premiership winning tenure of Alastair Clarkson at Hawthorn has been brought forward.

Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson will leave the club earlier than anticipated. Picture: Getty Images

Alastair Clarkson’s golden reign of coaching Hawthorn will end in the messiest of fashion next month after a hastily-arranged succession plan with Sam Mitchell fell apart this week.

The four-time premiership coach will see out the season before exiting with Hawthorn at a low ebb, potentially as wooden spooners, in a disastrous end to an extraordinary tenure.

Whether he coaches elsewhere next season is unclear. Clarkson said he is keen to draw breath after spending the last 45 years chasing football perfection as a player and coach.

Collingwood has a vacancy. Carlton is in the midst of a review with David Teague considered under pressure. Even the Gold Coast might arise as an option in coming years given they are yet to play finals.

Amid reports he will receive a payout of $900,000 — how it will be paid is to be finalised given soft cap ramifications — this century’s most successful coach said nothing precluded him contractually from coaching.

But Clarkson has long had an interest in international sport, making regular forays to foreign countries for “study tours”, and said he did not know where he might end up.

“Right at the present time, my commitment is to have a spell and see where 2023 might take me,” he said.

Clarkson, his successor and Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett stressed last week the champion coach would continue in 2022 as planned while ridiculing suggestions of dysfunction at the club as a result of the deal.

Just days later, the charade is over. The succession plan, Clarkson said, “had whiskers on it”.

The 53-year-old said late on Friday he “couldn’t genuinely look in the eyes of some of the people around this organisation and say we had two coaches.”

While Clarkson was at pains publicly to wish well towards Mitchell, who will begin his tenure next year in strained circumstances, he acknowledged it was a messy handover.

Hawthorn moved rapidly this month when Collingwood approached Mitchell to gauge his interest in applying for the senior coaching role left vacant by Buckley.

The decision to orchestrate a handover to the Box Hill coach for the 2023 season was arrived at in good faith according to Kennett but the reality proved anything but smooth.

Clarkson said recent discussions with club captain Ben McEvoy and Jaeger O’Meara showed there was confusion and crystallised a decision to give Mitchell “clean space”.

“It is my view that the footy club needs to free itself from my shadow, in a sense,” he said.

“I’m of the firm belief only one coach can steer the direction of a club and its playing group. We didn’t want to be a footy club that was treading water for 12 months.”

Mitchell, who was a premiership captain under Clarkson in 2008 before the role was assumed by Luke Hodge, said it had been a testing few weeks.

“It’s been a really strange day of disappointment and sadness,” he said.

“I hope we get the opportunity over the next month to give Clarko what he deserves.”

Clarkson likened his relationship with Kennett to “two pieces of sandpaper rubbing up against each other” but said “healthy tension was a good thing in a football club”.

He challenged the notion fairytale exits from football exist. Few in recent memory have been uglier.

“I know it is some sort of frenzy, (but) tell me a footy club in this great code of ours which hasn’t been embroiled in some sort of controversy about a change of coach,” he said.

“It is the turmoil that football clubs find themselves in. The game spares no-one. So many people through the game, it needs to continue to move forward.”

Kennett, who described it as a “momentous day” for Hawthorn, dismissed suggestions he had misled club members throughout the saga despite evidence to the contrary.

“We thought it would work. No-one is perfect. I accept responsibility for that. We move on,” he said.