AFL 2021: Hodge, Dicker and Gunston reveal what it’s like to be surrounded by Clarko

As Alastair Clarkson rides off into the sunset – for now – three key figures from his 17-year reign at Hawthorn reveal the magic behind his madness.

He changed the way the game was played, won four premierships to put himself into the conversation as one of the greatest coaches in VFL/AFL history. As Alastair Clarkson rides off into the sunset – for now – three key figures from his 17-year reign at Hawthorn reveal the magic behind his madness.

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IAN DICKER

Hawthorn president 1996-2005

The key to any interview process is to make a lasting first impression and Alastair Clarkson certainly did that to the man who ultimately signed off on his appointment.

Ian Dicker knew very little about the 134-game former North Melbourne and Melbourne player when he sat in front of him to pitch for the job as Peter Schwab’s replacement.

New Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson being announced in 2004. Picture: Michael Dodge

“He was the first one to come to the interviews and I don’t think I even knew his name,” Dicker recalls.

“He was the first one in and he blew us away right from the first interview.

“He walked in with his computer guy and said straight away, ‘He’s coming with me if I get the job’. He then started this presentation on the screen with this other fella playing with his fingers on the computer.”

Club great Jason Dunstall had been in charge of sourcing candidates and was bullish about Clarkson who had been plying his trade in South Australia. Clarkson coached Central District to the 2001 SANFL premiership and was an assistant coach with Port Adelaide who’d just won the 2004 flag.

“What really got us at the interview was that he told us that whenever he could he went to meet other people in sport,” Dicker said.

“So he had built up a portfolio of contacts in the sporting industry.

“He was a bloke who was an assistant coach but he was really planning for the long term because he was building up all these connections, getting advice and getting ideas.”

This continued throughout his time at Hawthorn and even after Dicker’s presidency ended he was constantly matching Clarkson with his contacts in America which included in the front office of NFL team the Green Bay Packers.

Dicker had met Peter Platten, an executive committee member of the Packers, through his business network and connected him with Clarkson.

“This is a very Alastair story,” Dicker says. “He wanted to give a Hawthorn book to Peter’s son who was also named Peter, but he was at school.

“Alastair says, ‘I’ll go to the school’. So he goes to the young man’s school and calls him out to the front of the class and gives him the book.”

LUKE HODGE

Hawthorn premiership captain 2013, 2014, 2015

IT was late 2004, the message went around to those Hawthorn players who were still around and hadn’t taken off on holidays. The new coach wanted a meet and greet down at the club.

It was suggested they bring their runners so Luke Hodge figured a light jog to keep the legs ticking over in the off-season wasn’t the worst idea.

“There might have been 10 or 11 of us along with Clarko and Andrew Russell who he’d brought over as the new fitness guy,” Hodge explains.

“Everything was locked up so we had no access to the gym, but he got us to grab these bricks and we did a circuit session with these bricks.

“Then he told us we’re going for a run and he ended up beating most of us in the 5km run. We thought he wanted to catch up and say ‘G’day’ but it was a lot more than that.

“What we learnt early was he wasn’t going to ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.”

Fast forward 13 years later and Hodge is in his final year with the Hawks and Clarkson is still doing the same thing.

Luke Hodge and Alastair Clarkson celebrate a win. Picture: Julian Smith

A horrible loss to St Kilda in Round 6 by 75 points in Launceston had tipped the coach over the edge and he called a 6am session the following day at Brighton Beach.

“He thought we needed to get a bit of resolve and a bit of resilience about ourselves again so he sent us to the beach at 6am,” Hodge says.

It wasn’t just the players, every coach was there with Clarkson leading the charge as they ran out to the end of the pier, jumped in the freezing water and swam back to shore.

That was when the fun started for Clarkson who had them all do what he called “Schnitzels”. Each player had to lay down on the beach and have a teammate cover them in sand from head to toe.

“There is nothing more uncomfortable than cold wet sand,” Hodge says.

“You had to grab the sand, rub it up and down all over your partner and then it was his turn to do it to you.

“Then you both had to run back out, jump off the pier again and swim back in. And then you did it again and again.”

Hodge has sat through many legendary pre-match addresses or memorable team meetings where Clarkson has got innovative, but they don’t always hit the mark.

One particular Friday team meeting at Waverley Park at the start of the team’s premiership run still makes Hodge smile.

The lights were dimmed in the room and then some soft classical music began as vision of two figure skaters doing a performance on the ice came on to the big screen.

“The whole messaging he wanted out of it was you had to work as a team, see how graceful and fluid it is and everything they do they have to rely on the other person,” Hodge says.

“But about half-way through we were all thinking it’s going to pump up soon and finish with a bang, but it didn’t.”

The whispering soon started in the back row and quickly spread. At the end of the video everyone was to jump up and give an over-the-top reaction to the figure skaters’ performance.

“So when it finished everyone just erupted and were like ‘Yeaaahhhh’, clapping, fist pumping and going bananas,” Hodge says.

“Clarko got up and said: ‘You guys can all go and get f … ed’. He then stormed into the kitchen, we all thought he was taking the piss but it turns out he wasn’t.

“After the game my wife, Lauren, was talking to his wife, Karen, and it came up with Karen saying he came home and was pretty disappointed because he had put a lot of time and effort into it and the guys had taken the piss out of him.”

While there were a few misses, the hits were good like before the 2013 preliminary final against Geelong.

This was during the famous “Kennett’s Curse” when the Cats had the wood over the Hawks. So Clarkson went into his bag of tricks and arrived at the meeting with a bag of flour.

“He’s poured this bag of flour on the ground and he’d be there talking about the game and then he’d step over the line and get all angry and competitive,” Hodge says.

“Then he’d step back and just talk normally again before going back over it and getting angry again.

“What he was trying to say was Geelong had the wood over us and we were always really nice and always said the right things about Geelong, that we really respected them.

“He was saying it’s time to step over the line and stop doing that. He also put a football oval up on the board and we all had to sign a piece of paper and put it inside the line saying we were committed when we crossed it.”

Hawthorn ended up winning the game by five points and a week later started its premiership three-peat by defeating Fremantle in the grand final.

JACK GUNSTON

Hawthorn premiership player 2013, 2014, 2015

WHILE Jack Gunston had learnt not to be surprised by anything his coach did, even he was taken aback with what happened in this particular team meeting in Sydney.

The Hawks were going through a transitional phase and for this game against the Swans some of the veterans including captain Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell and Brad Sewell weren’t playing.

“He has walked in wearing the full English guard’s uniform, the ones they wear at Buckingham Palace,” Gunston explains.

“It was pretty self-explanatory with the whole changing of the guard, but it just showed the lengths he would go to.

Jack Gunston becoming a Hawk after being traded from Adelaide. Picture: Michael Dodge

“He looked like an absolute idiot but didn’t miss a beat, just went about his business doing the speech in the meeting in this full dress-up.”

In Gunston’s first year at Hawthorn in 2012, Clarkson came up with the theme of navy seals for the year.

“We were doing all this hypoxie training in the pool, constantly swimming laps even the day before a game,” he says.

“We had this team meeting and everyone is changed to go home at lunchtime to prepare for the game the next day yet Clarko then says everyone get in their bathers, we’re going down to the pool to do some more underwater swimming.

“One other time we did that and we then had to put our shoes on, run out on to the ground in our bathers, kick a goal and then come back and do another lap inside.

“He just comes up with stuff like that which steels the resolve of the players’ minds. You hate him for it at the time but then the next time you see the benefits as he’s always looking for ways to impact the group.”

But Gunston’s favourite story is still Clarkson’s famous shirtless run in Canberra when it was snowing before the Hawthorn’s round 21 game against Greater Western Sydney in 2019.

“A sign of weakness to Clarko is wearing sunglasses in public and you also don’t wear long sleeves on the footy field,” Gunston says.

“This day in Canberra it was literally snowing and the boys were sitting there putting on their long sleeve Skins tops and pants and Clarko comes into the changerooms and says no one is wearing Skins today.

“We had to wear what we would in the game so we all go out there absolutely freezing and then he runs out in his shorts with no shirt on.

“It’s the old, ‘follow me’ and it works.”

Hawthorn was a major underdog for the game against a finals-bound Giants. The Hawks won by 56 points.

‘Might be forever’: Clarko future uncertain ahead of farewell

Alastair Clarkson says he has the “sincere intention” of having a year off coaching next season, but won’t make any firm plans about his immediate future until the next few weeks.

As the four-time premiership coach prepares to bow out of Hawthorn after 17 seasons and 390 games on Saturday, he left the door slightly ajar about potentially taking on a new role at a rival club.

The 53-year-old was reluctant to speak in depth about his future on Friday, conceding circumstances can swiftly change, evidenced by his decision to hand over to Sam Mitchell a year earlier after previously stating he would see out of the final season of his contract in 2022.

“I am nearly a little bit embarrassed to talk about it to be fair because whatever has been said in the last three or four weeks has changed so much,” Clarkson said at a farewell press conference at Waverley on Friday alongside retiring Hawk Shaun Burgoyne.

“Whatever you say, you just can’t take it as gospel.

“But my sincere intention right at this point in time – and has been for the last four to six weeks now that I am no longer coaching Hawthorn – is I want to have a spell from the game.

“I will see what the rest will do for me, whether it will reignite some passion to get involved in the game again or actually take the opportunity to go overseas … and do some things that my wife and I have never done before because we’ve been so heavily involved in footy.”

Alastair Clarkson and Shaun Burgoyne speak to the media on Friday. Picture: Getty Images

Carlton is believed to be on the lookout for a new coach with David Teague under increasing pressure to keep his job.

Ross Lyon, who expressed his interest in coaching the Blues this week, said Clarkson would be a logical No. 1 choice for any club if he was available to coach next year.

Clarkson will hand over senior coaching reins to Mitchell as Hawthorn after Saturday’s final round clash with Richmond at the MCG, seeking a fourth straight win to close out his time at the club.

He will then spend the next few weeks looking at what his future might look like in 2022 and beyond.

The most successful coach of the modern era is certain to field offers from clubs for a variety of roles, but he is leaning towards taking some time away from the game to refresh.

“It might be 12 months or two years, and it might be forever, I don’t know,” Clarkson said when asked how long he might be out of coaching.

“I might need to get into the next few weeks and just see where that all pans out for me.”

Clarkson admitted the reality he would no longer be coaching Hawthorn hadn’t really sunk in yet.

“I don’t know what I’m going to miss, because I haven’t left yet,” he said. “I think there will be some realities that hit me over the next month, six months and even years on.”

Alastair Clarkson and Shaun Burgoyne share a laugh.

Asked what provided him with the biggest sense of pride, aside from the 2008 and 2013-15 flags, Clarkson said it had been the development of the players he had coached as people.

“I’m really proud of seeing our players like Hodgey (Luke Hodge), Shaun (Burgoyne), Rough (Jarryd Roughead) – the list goes on – I’m so proud to see them become husbands and fathers having known them for the best part of their adult lives,” he said.

“That’s something I’m most proud of.”

He praised Burgoyne for what he had brought to the club as a player, a leader and an Indigenous role model, saying it seemed fitting they were bowing out at the same time, even if it would come without crowds.

“Not having a crowd this weekend is just the way it is,” he said. “There’s a big part of it that Shauny and I are lucky to still be able to do our jobs. It almost brings you to tears how this virus has torn apart some other industries.

“So, we’re hardly going to get upset by (having) no crowd.”

Originally published as AFL 2021: Hodge, Dicker and Gunston reveal what it’s like to be surrounded by Clarko