How Hawthorn rehabilitated its image from the horrific racism allegations that threatened to destroy the club
This Saturday marks the three-year anniversary of the Hawthorn racism scandal explosion. In 2022, it seemed destined to damage careers and the club forever. Yet the Hawks are back and better than ever. How? Jon Ralph finds out from the central figures.
The PR guru, the jetsetting cricket commentator and the reluctant presidential candidate.
As Hawthorn faced the prospect of a never-ending racism saga damaging its future, it was Mark Hawthorne, Adam Collins and Hawks premiership player Andy Gowers who swung into action.
This Saturday marks the three-year anniversary of the Hawthorn racism scandal exploding onto the AFL landscape in a storm of horrific and damaging allegations.
On that morning it was impossible not to believe this controversy would damage legendary coaching careers forever and leave legacies tarnished or in tatters.
That trio would not claim the credit for the club’s rise back up the ladder.
And yet while Hawthorn has rehabilitated its image and avoided the aftershocks that seemed so inevitable, across town Essendon is still battling to dig itself out of a hole created by the 2012 ASADA scandal.
The Bombers are mired in yet more controversy over its culture and future while the Hawks have rebranded, rejuvenated and are ready for another flag tilt.
So how did Hawthorn succeed where Essendon failed?
Some good luck, some good management and the fact that in such a short space of time Hawthorn became so unrecognisable on so many levels.
As one industry insider said this week of Essendon, they are still unable to extricate themselves from a crisis that has swallowed them up for over a decade.
And yet as Hawthorn marches into another premiership window, it is as if the racism saga never existed.
The central figure was premiership player Gowers, who eventually accepted the challenge of taking on board member Peter Nankivell at a late 2022 election to decide the club’s president.
Kennett had been elected to 2023 but amid the fallout from the club’s coaching change from Clarkson to Sam Mitchell and the commissioning of the damaging Hawthorn racism report he was on the nose.
He was determined to hand over the presidency to board member Nankivell.
And yet the grassroots members were desperate for a fresh start.
Gowers’ elevation was in part due to the intervention of the Hawks for Change group, as unlikely a collection of friends and allies as you would find.
Remarkably Hawks for Change founders Hawthorne and Collins met as part of a group of 32 Hawks fans who in 2020 bought Angry Anderson’s blue Batmobile from the 1991 grand final entertainment.
The cost was $25,300 – split 32 ways.
Gowers only AFL premiership in his 81 games at Hawthorn – the 1991 flag.
All these years on as Hawthorn was reeling from the first weeks of the crisis, the pair were part of a group who worked hard to encourage Gowers to run for election as the club’s new president.
After an ugly and damaging election where everyone picked sides the headline as Kennett departed was: “Jeff Kennett departs Hawthorn with fractured AFL club needing healing.”
With Gowers in charge that was exactly what it got.
The club was able to move on from Kennett’s involvement as the new president attempted to build a bridge with the Indigenous parties and heal a broken club.
As one insider said this week: “Andy deserves credit. He has had a lot of empathy for every person involved in this situation. He’s a very caring individual and he wanted to heal all the relationships, not just with players and coaches. He didn’t take sides.”
Another Hawks figure says Gowers decided very early that he could fight the allegations forever or instead decide to find other ways to bring the saga to a close.
While Essendon fought until it could not find another court to fight in, Hawthorn eventually decided to lay down its guns.
“If Jeff Kennett was still at the club we would still be in court,” the senior figure said.
“Andy Gowers decided it was in the best interest of the club to negotiate. He decided to draw a very Hawthorn line in the sand and move on. The other option was to litigate this club into oblivion.”
Collins and Hawthorn had to strongly encourage Gowers to run against Nankivell on the night before board nominations closed and yet eventually the popular past player who works in succession planning became the perfect candidate.
A club seemingly broken as its senior leaders bickered in 2020 when their Covid stay in the Barossa Valley was able to chart a new path forward.
“Understand where Hawthorn was when Andy came in,” Hawthorne said this week as he continues to guide Gowers at times as one of Melbourne’s leading PR advisers.
“After that ill-fated Barossa trip, it was evident that we had people in key roles at the club who weren’t working together. There was a botched succession plan, and we were about to go to war with our past Indigenous players. Hawks for Change was never a faction.
“This was never going to be a coterie. We’ve all seen what powerful coteries have done to other clubs. This was a group of members from across the whole club who saw the need for a circuit breaker.
“We actually had to sound out Andy several times to run for president. Andy and the board have worked hard to fix the off field issues that were dragging the club down.”
Nankivell had done plenty of heavy lifting on the club’s legal issues and the new Dingley expansion but having lost the election immediately stepped off the board along with vice-president Richie Vandenberg.
Both should be praised for their legacy but it did allow the club a fresh start with Kennett also gone.
Gowers didn’t deny the truth of those allegations, he didn’t duck and run.
There is certainly collateral damage that remains given chief executive Justin Reeves walked away in 2023 as a result of the toll.
Clarkson took time away from North Melbourne through mental exhaustion.
The club’s critics would say those allegations were never truly tested in the appropriate forum as the league’s own investigation ran around.
That the Indigenous figures involved were paid to move on in a process with little true accountability.
On November 20 last year Hawthorn reached a settlement with some of its former Indigenous parties as it danced through a careful legal minefield.
While that settlement ended Federal Court action for the Hawks, it was reached “without determination of any parties allegations” as the club apologised to the players and their families for “ongoing hurt and distress in their time at the club”.
And like that, the drama was seemingly consigned to the past.
As the AFL’s eight-month investigation wound up in May 2023, Reeves moved on for new executive Ash Klein who is rarely seen or heard in public but does quality work behind the scenes according to the club.
The club was also able to rebrand itself so comprehensively from the former era under Clarkson.
Essendon brought back James Hird as its coach in 2015 in a disastrous 5-14 season before he was sacked.
Former coach Mitchell was the fresh face not involved in the saga with a brash new team playing a provocative style dubbed Hokball.
He didn’t give running commentary on the AFL investigation which morphed into a Human Rights Commission claim because he wasn’t involved in the process and didn’t have anything to hide.
When he was pressed on his relationship with lead complainant Rioli he spoke of a rapprochement, of reaching out to his premiership teammate.
It allowed Hawthorn officials to work behind the scenes on the November 2024 resolution that paid money to the Indigenous players but eventually cost the club less than $1 million given its insurance coverage.
Clarkson and Fagan were left to bear the public brunt of the constant questions amid a multi-day mediation session in March 2024 before the Australian Human Rights Commission investigation broke down in May last year.
Hawthorn continues to offer overtures to Rioli and was buoyed when former captain Luke Hodge was pictured in conversation with him at the recent Darwin clash.
It says it has made profound changes to its business to ensure it never repeats this catastrophe.
The club has a First Nations Strategic plan and a full time Indigenous welfare officer and head of Indigenous affairs in former West Coast and Melbourne player Jamie Bennell.
It has a First Nations Advisory Group that includes former player Chad Wingard, it believes its relocation of its Tyetdji Yulk cultural room at Waverley to a prominent position in the Dingley headquarters is an important cultural symbol.
Says Hawthorne of the new way forward: “We now have alignment between the president, the CEO, the footy manager and the coach. We have mended relationships with the AFL and the state and federal governments. It’s no accident that a happy team off the field becomes a successful one on it. Hawthorn, under Gowers, is a destination club again.”
Crisis PR expert Peter Wilkinson, of Sydney company Wilkinson Butler, has worked to minimise the fallout from these kinds of public catastrophes for decades.
He says Hawthorn’s public contrition did help the club move on more quickly than it might have hoped.
“The starting point is always how does this organisation improve trust?
“So in a long term crisis when it won’t be forgotten in a day it’s about getting ahead of the narrative and it’s about trust. So often that includes an apology but actions have to follow,” he said.
“You can make short-term fixes to get it off the front page but you also need genuine long-term fixes. You need to be trusted by the community again.
“And you have to be genuine. Australians have great bull**** detectors. They can spot it a mile away. So if you can do that the trust goes up and the loyalty goes up and it might be a father talking to his son but he says this club has good values again.
“That might not be the way he expresses it but he says, “We can support this team again, it’s the right thing to do. The Essendon catastrophe went on for so long and people would have said, ‘These guys don’t know what they are doing. They are not role models for my children’.
The only real arbiter for how Hawthorn coped with this saga is whether the Indigenous players who brought these allegations believe justice was done.
That is still very much an open question.
And yet there is no doubting Hawthorn in the toast of the town with a new gleaming facility to be opened in three weeks, with Essendon’s captain keen to jump ship and with another premiership only two finals victories away.
Originally published as How Hawthorn rehabilitated its image from the horrific racism allegations that threatened to destroy the club
