“I’ll come on a different flight. I just don’t think that, given the investigation that I’m embroiled in with Hawthorn, I don’t think it’s a great idea that we’d be sitting on a plane together.” – Alastair Clarkson on why he’ll avoid Hawthorn when he flies back from Launceston.
Clarkson’s relationship with the Hawthorn Football Club is a complex one, a marriage that yielded four premierships over 17 largely successful years, but which soured at the end and then had an unpleasant aftermath that still rankles.
Saturday’s game against Hawthorn looms as a big moment for North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson, given the nature of his exit from the Hawks and events since then. Inset: Hawthorn CEO Justin Reeves and coach Sam Mitchell.Credit:Getty
While Clarkson’s beef is not with Sam Mitchell – the former captain and champion who replaced him in a messy handover – and the coach has not described his first encounter with the Hawks as a grudge match, within North Melbourne there is recognition that the match does contain an additional emotional edge for the combative coach.
North players, indeed, have been quietly made aware by their officials that this particular game in Launceston is one that “Clarko” really wants to win.
Not that the Kangaroos would need to be told that their coach – so demonstrative on the boundary line in Perth for the exciting denouement of North’s uplifting upset win over Fremantle – would enter this game with extra emotion riding on the result.
They know that Clarkson will not be joining them on the flight back from Launceston. The coach revealed on Thursday that, due to the AFL inquiry in which he is a central figure, he’s chosen to avoid being on the plane with Hawthorn – an extraordinary situation, albeit one that both clubs understand.
Neither Hawthorn, nor people close to Clarkson, can definitely say whether the four-time premiership coach will turn up when Luke Hodge and his 2013 teammates meet later this year for the club’s 10-year reunion of the first of their fabled treble of flags.
The Hawks say they hope Clarkson will be there for the reunion. Hodge is involved in organising the function, and his view is that Clarkson is no different to any of the other 2013 players or officials who now work/play for rival clubs, in that his attendance will be dependent on the reunion date aligning with his schedule.
Hawthorn chief executive Justin Reeves said: “I would hope he would be there to celebrate such an important milestone with his staff and his players.”
Clarkson does nurse an animus towards Reeves, as Hawthorn and North Melbourne people acknowledge. The CEO and coach fell out during 2020 when living in the hub together in South Australia, their relationship faltering further in the messy handover period of 2021 and not helped by Hawthorn’s legal manoeuvres over Clarkson’s $900,000 payout for 2022.
Alastair Clarkson says he has no rancour towards his former captain and star midfielder Sam Mitchell, who replaced him as Hawthorn coach.Credit:Getty and The Age
Clarkson approached Reeves and then-president Jeff Kennett in mid-2021, asking if the club intended to renew his contract after 2022. He was told that they would not do so.
This led to the Mitchell handover – probably expedited by Collingwood’s apparent interest in Mitchell as a replacement for Nathan Buckley. Clarkson and Mitchell initially felt they could work together in 2022 but, according to the Hawks, after discussions between the pair, Clarkson felt it was not workable and moved on.
Hawthorn board sources from that period say that Clarkson was incensed by Kennett’s decision to renew Reeves’ contract for a long-term in 2021 and that the coach also was disappointed when he was asked to take a 20 per cent pandemic pay cut in 2020.
There was further tension when the Hawks notified Clarkson’s management that he had to comply with his contractual obligations, such as sponsorship requirements – he was still owed $450,000 – after he was announced as North coach in August last year.
Jeff Kennett and Alastair Clarkson experienced great success together, but their relationship was rocky.Credit:AFL Photos
Clarkson, for his part, says that he was instigator of the handover to Mitchell, and that his time was up at Hawthorn in 2021.
“We’ve all moved on. He’s coaching Hawthorn, and I’m coaching North Melbourne. It’s a great narrative for the rest of the football world to say there’s tension there, but, in actual fact, Mitch becoming coach of Hawthorn was part-orchestrated by me.”
Hawthorn handover wounds are much less hurtful for Clarkson now, given he landed at Arden Street – where he started his league football career – and took up a massive five-year deal, compared with the damage of the AFL inquiry that arose from a Hawthorn-commissioned cultural safety report, authored by ex-Richmond player Phillip Egan. Clarkson has denied any wrongdoing.
The review detailed the testimony and alleged mistreatment of several First Nations players and their partners. It prompted the AFL inquiry that various parties – including the AFL hierarchy – acknowledge privately has become a drawn-out mess.
So, it is clear from various parties that Clarkson’s anger towards Reeves and Hawthorn is no longer so grounded in the events of 2020 and 2021, but in the fallout from the Egan review – which saw only players and partners interviewed – and the fact that he feels he has been treated unfairly by constraints of the AFL probe.
Officials at both North Melbourne and Hawthorn have wondered what would happen on Saturday if Clarkson crossed paths with Reeves. The CEO, for his part, says it would be cordial from his end.
“I’d say hello,” said Reeves. “Nothing personal for me.”
If there is a scenario that Hawthorn wishes to avoid, it is that the estrangement with Clarkson solidifies and turns into a brown-and-gold version of Kevin Bartlett’s lengthy exile (which lasted 16 years) from Richmond following his removal as coach in late 1991.
A major frustration of Clarkson’s has been that, like former Hawthorn colleagues Chris Fagan and Jason Burt – who also deny wrongdoing – he feels he has been denied the opportunity to respond publicly to the allegations that prompted Gillon McLachlan to announce an investigation in the days before the 2022 grand final.
More than six months after the ABC first published allegations by First Nations players and their partners, Clarkson, Fagan and Burt are yet to make any statements or submissions to the investigation, headed by Bernard Quinn, KC, and none of the players and partners have been interviewed for the record by the panel, which accepted written submissions from those making allegations and other interested parties.
An offer of mediation, without lawyers present, by Arnold Bloch Leibler’s influential Leon Zwier – who is representing several players and their partners – has not yet been accepted. A number of ex-Hawk players and officials have made written submissions to the investigation, several of them sympathetic to Clarkson and Fagan, who now coaches Brisbane.
Mitchell is not among those from the Clarkson era to have made a submission to the inquiry, according to well-informed sources.
Former champion Cyril Rioli and his wife Shannyn also have joined the ABL group in airing their concerns about alleged mistreatment in the past. The assumption of well-placed sources from Hawthorn and elsewhere is that some of those players and partners will be seeking – and likely getting – financial settlements from the club.
Given the backdrop of the investigation, in which the combative and interventionist coach has become the central figure, Clarkson has indicated that he cannot have a convivial relationship with Hawthorn. Not now anyway.
“We’ve got a pretty significant issue in terms of the investigation,” Clarkson said, when asked on Thursday about his estrangement from Hawthorn. “And it’s pretty difficult to wrap your arms around a footy club that have embroiled us in such a circumstance we’ve faced over the last seven months.
Alastair Clarkson is now back at North Melbourne, where his career as a professional footballer started in the 1980s.Credit:Jason South
“So, until, at the very least that is met with some sort of satisfaction by all parties, I think it would be difficult. But let’s just see where it all goes.”
If Clarkson is awaiting the outcome of the inquiry before he can consider reconciliation with Hawthorn, the Hawks’ private view is that the former coach, Fagan, Burt and the club are genuinely aligned on the AFL investigation, since they are in the dock together, accused of mistreating those players and partners.
“The best outcome for us is the best outcome for him,” said one Hawthorn figure.
Kennett, perhaps surprisingly given the outspoken ex-premier’s history of discord with the coach, offers sympathy for Clarkson on the matter of the AFL investigation, saying that Clarkson, Fagan and Burt, have been treated poorly by the process.
But if others within the competition – including the Brisbane Lions’ hierarchy – first pointed to Hawthorn’s handling of the First Nations players’ complaints as the source of the imbroglio, Kennett says the fault does not lie with the Hawks. He says Clarkson and co have been hurt by the leaking of contents of the report to the media, by the relevant players speaking to the ABC, and that the club had done its part by handing the report to the AFL’s integrity unit.
“I feel very sorry for the three of them,” Kennett said of Clarkson, Fagan and Burt. “And I feel sorry for Hawthorn.”
Kennett, who has not spoken to Clarkson “for a long time”, wishes the coach well. “He needed a change, we needed a change. Change is good,” Kennett said.
