A re-energised and rejuvenated Alastair Clarkson has vowed to coach on for as long as he believes he is charting North Melbourne’s course towards its next “piece of silverware”.

But the Kangaroos coach remains steadfast in his determination not to deviate from the club’s painstaking rebuild, refusing to take short cuts for unsustainable gains.

As Clarkson prepares to enter his third season at the Kangaroos - and his 20th as a senior coach — he knows external pressure will ramp up on him and the club unless there are solid signs of improvement, with the Kangas having won only six games in the past two years.

He is not only ready for the pressure; he’s looking forward to it, confident the Kangaroos are on the right track, and that the incremental gains will rise in 2025 and beyond.

“I will coach here for as long as I feel like I am taking the guys forward towards the goal of winning silverware,” Clarkson told the Herald Sun.

“I see myself coaching for as long as I can.”

Clarkson has two more seasons beyond this year to run on his current deal, and buoyed by the patient ride to success of his friend and former colleague Chris Fagan at Brisbane, he has an unrelenting determination to help drive the Kangaroos back into contention.

It’s that combative hard-edge that has made the 56-year-old the most successful coach this century, with four flags coming at Hawthorn.

And while that edge has never truly waned in his 426-game coaching career, it has been sorely tested by two challenging events that impacted his recent footy life.

The first came after he left Hawthorn in late 2021 following a tense succession plan not of his making which left him looking at different roles in sport and the education sector.

The second came during 2023 when he had to temporarily step aside from the North Melbourne coaching job just months into it as the mental strain of the Hawthorn racism allegations against him and Fagan - which they vehemently denied - ate away at him.

Those close to Clarkson say he was living “three lives” in those early months at the Kangaroos – the coach working his “arse off” trying to fast-track the club off the bottom; the person fighting like hell to combat the trashing of a brand he had worked so hard to build; and the father, husband and friend who had a diminishing energy to be all three.

Something had to give, and for a time, it did.

The first challenge ended with his appointment as Kangaroos coach; a resolution to the second came late last year when the Hawks finally settled the dispute more than a year after the AFL made no adverse findings against Clarkson, Fagan and ex-welfare boss Jason Burt.

He’s happy and in a good space now, but he is far from content.

“When I finished at Hawthorn (after the 2021 season), I genuinely thought to myself ‘I am content to go and explore other things and just see what is out there’,” Clarkson said.

“There were considerations within the game and within sport (other than coaching).

“But then, as luck would have it, an opportunity to get back involved again (in coaching) came up and the appeal of coming back to a club that had given me a start was there.

“In my AFL (playing) career, I had tough things going on in my life and North Melbourne was nearly my saviour. Then the best part of 35 or 40 years later, things had flipped and North was the one who was on oxygen and they needed my assistance.”

He now knows the club — and the job he has — has also played a part in his own healing.

‘THAT’S WHAT GETS ME UP IN THE MORNING’

There were times during Clarkson’s toughest ebb when he barely slept a wink at night.

Now, he is springing out of bed with renewed purpose.

“What I love is that I got the chance as a player to chase my dreams at the highest level, and now I’m afforded the privilege to shape the next generation of players,” he said.

“That’s what gets me up every morning, these young guys trying to forge their own path. If I can play a role in helping that, that’s something that is really driving me now.”

He says he and football boss Todd Viney had easier options when they were looking to get back into coaching. But easier isn’t always better - or right.

Clarkson chose not to go through the process when Carlton and Collingwood had a vacancy at the end of 2021, knowing he needed a season off.

He then rejected a last-minute approach from Essendon a year later when he was already down the road to accepting the Kangaroos job.

“Todd and I both had chances to be involved with clubs who were probably going to be an easier path to success than what we have experienced here, but what a beautiful thing it is,” he said about his relationship with the club which dates back almost 40 years.

“The hard part is there is no silver bullet. The one thing I do know is that if you fast track things, you might climb the ladder a bit quicker … we could have said ‘let’s not go with youth, let’s get experienced recruits and older guys looking to get two or three more seasons at the back end of their careers’.

“That’s been done by plenty of clubs over the journey. You might work up the ladder a bit, but there is not the genuine belief that it is going to get you some silverware at some stage.”

‘WE’RE NOT CURSED’

A recent chat with the North Melbourne playing group summed up why he thinks rebuilds work and quick fixes don’t.

“I said: ‘Boys, don’t think this is just a curse on the North Melbourne Football Club, this has influenced all footy clubs for a long period of time’.”

“What people don’t realise is that you have taken a few years to get to that stage.

“We’re hoping we now have some fresh air where we can get traction with our onfield stuff.

Part of that has been the stability provided by president Sonja Hood and chief executive Jen Watt, as well as the staples in the football department.

“The faith that I have got with this game is that it is regulated with the salary cap and the draft, and if you are patient and smart and you get the right stakeholders in the right spot … you can end up achieving that success.

“It is not about popping up for one year, it is about being up for three or four years just to give yourself the chance of winning one of them.”

Clarkson lists the examples.

There was North Melbourne’s first premiership in 1975 - half a century ago this September - which came about after a wooden spoon three years earlier.

He was one of the architects of Hawthorn’s revival in the first decade of this century, winning a flag in 2008 in his fourth season, then going on to win a hat-trick of flags from 2013-15.

He has told his players they can channel the Brisbane Lions’ pathway, a club which was at a low ebb when Fagan took over as coach in late 2016.

Eight seasons later, Fagan became the oldest premiership coach at 63.

“I’ve used Brisbane’s example (to the players), I’ve used Melbourne’s example (of 2021), I’ve used Port Adelaide’s example from 20 years ago under ‘Choco’ (Mark Williams) and I have used my example at Hawthorn,” he said.

Clarkson even used Hawthorn’s HokBall rise last season as an example of what can happen in a short time.

“We need to compete deeper into games,” he said of the Kangaroos in 2025.

“We started to see that in the second half of last season … we lost to Collingwood after being up by a mile and then fell away, we were leading West Coast down at Hobart and there were a couple of games where we were strong and competitive and just couldn’t get over the line. How far can we stretch that this year?

“I don’t think that would be any different to the messaging out of Hawthorn at this time last year. Hawthorn haven’t finished it yet because they haven’t won any silverware.”

EMERGENCE OF THE JOEYS

Clarkson says footy fans shouldn’t judge all high-end draft picks on the two-season dominance of Harry Sheezel.

“We laugh a bit about it, Sheez is doing no favours to the poor buggers who are doing what usually happens to 18-year-olds in the game,” he said.

“In more recent times, it’s been (Nick) Daicos and Sheez. They are the exceptions to the rules … to get up and go so early.”

The Kangaroos have drafted eight players in the top 15 of the national draft in the 2020s - Will Phillips (pick three, 2020), Tom Powell (13, 2020), Jason Horne-Francis (one, 2021), Sheezel (three, 2022), George Wardlaw (four, 2022), Colby McKercher (two, 2023), Zane Duursma (four, 2023) and Finn O’Sullivan (two, 2024).

He is confident in the continued growth of those players, other than Horne-Francis who quit the club after one season.

Sullivan will be eased in without expectation in a number of different roles.

“He (O’Sullivan) will play a little bit of half back, a little bit of wing, a bit of half forward and he will go in (the midfield) on occasions,” he said.

He said players developed at different stages due to circumstances and set-ups.

“Tom Powell is now five years into his career and he is (now) starting to play more consistently in the midfield,” he said.

“Even LDU (Luke Davies-Uniacke) now gets to his eighth year and he is a best and fairest winner. But for his first three or four years he had to get his body right but secondly he was about sixth in the pecking order behind the likes of Ben Cunnington and Jack Ziebell.”

LDU VIEW

Clarkson says experience tells him that you can’t blow up your salary cap just to try and keep a free agent - no matter how good they are.

He was on the wrong side of it when Buddy Franklin controversially moved from Hawthorn to Sydney. The Hawks lost Franklin but won the flag the next season in 2014.

He would dearly love to keep Davies-Uniacke beyond this year, but only at the right price.

“He (Davies-Uniacke) is an important player, but there was no more important player in the game than Buddy Franklin,” Clarkson said.

“You have a salary cap and its relativity is really important to a footy club because while you are trying to appease the needs and requirements of one player.

A cashed-up St Kilda has made a massive play for Davies-Uniacke, but the Kangaroos have made their own seven-year offer to him.

“We’ve had quite open dialogue, but he knows (we won’t compromise). He has every right to explore his free agency options, especially what has transpired at this club over his time.

“We have got every right to match whatever offer comes along, but it would depend on what that offer is.”

VETERANS AND TAKING ON THE DOGS

Clarkson makes no apologies for publicly naming some of the club’s experienced trade targets during last season, including Luke Parker, Caleb Daniel and Jack Darling who came into the club last October.

“We got criticised a bit for naming names … but we were actually quite open about (our plans),” he said. “We wanted to attract players who had been through the full gamut of AFL experiences.

“They (Parker, Daniel and Darling) all won flags and they all played in sides that missed finals. The reason why they have been able to withstand all that adversity is that they are high quality lads, their leadership, their calmness under heat, their acceptance that the game is a tough and complex, chaotic game.”

He said of the high-end free agency chase: “Naturally enough, it is a club that hasn’t had much appeal in terms of its ladder position and success getting into the market where you are in conversations with free agents or high profile players from opposition clubs.

“We’re not in that space now.

“It was difficult for me at Hawthorn in my first two years. Then … Shaun Burgoyne, Josh Gibson and Brian Lake want to come to your club because they can see the upward trend.”

Parker, Daniel and Darling are set to play their first game in club colours on Saturday night against Western Bulldogs - a club the Kangaroos have not beaten since round 10, 2019.

That was Brad Scott’s last game as North Melbourne coach.

Clarkson knows the Kangaroos are taking on an injury-hit Bulldogs minus Marcus Bontempelli, Adam Treloar, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan, Cody Weightman and Liam Jones.

But as he said “What I do know about the Dogs and what I do know about Bevo (Luke Beveridge) is that they are at their most dangerous when their backs are to the wall.”