Alastair Clarkson drew his last game. He lost his job. But he won the era
For footy fans of a certain vintage, the final round of the 1987 home-andaway season is remembered as one of the most extraordinary afternoons in the history of the sport. The 2021 denouement may well have topped it. In the space of 24 hours, legends were farewelled, scripts flipped, premiership credentials established, and seasons frittered away.
In 1987, Carlton skipper Stephen Kernahan secured top spot with the ultimate clutch goal after the siren. On Saturday night, Melbourne’s captain Max Gawn followed suit. Thirty-four years ago, their fans crossed the West Gate Bridge and crammed into the Western Oval, not a part of town many of them were familiar with. Garry Lyon broke his leg and the Dees rattled home to make their first final in two decades. On Saturday, their fans watched from their couches. They were subject to curfew, and Luke Darcy’s intonations. Their team were being skewered, and they were tweeting apocalyptically. An hour and a half later, they were celebrating – as much as one is permitted to these days – one of their most significant wins in half a century. It was the first time a Melbourne footballer had won a game with a kick after the siren. After years of off-field tragedy and onfield ineptitude, Dees fans finally had a team they could trust.
On that bonkers 1987 August afternoon, Geelong were at one stage six goals the better of the reigning premiers. But Jason Dunstall scuttled them, and their finals hopes, with two goals in the final minute. On Saturday night they produced an almost flawless quarter, and had all but sewn up the minor premiership. But when they play with the brake lights on, and when they revert to slow, safe, snoozy football, they are always vulnerable. In a facsimile of so many big games in the Chris Scott era, the opposition brought the heat, and the Cats got the staggers. They pissed away a 44-point lead, and top spot.
Since their 2016 premiership, the Western Bulldogs have been a mix of the weird, the wonderful, and the woeful. A decidedly lopsided and protean side, they nonetheless hummed along in the top two for nearly five months. But they have had a wretched few weeks. Their key forward tore his ACL on the final siren of the Essendon game. On Friday, they led Port Adelaide for nearly two hours, only to get overhauled. They then had to rely on the inoperably unreliable West Coast to put up some sort of resistance against Brisbane. Just to prolong the torture, the Eagles finally showed some spunk. Brisbane fans consulted their calculators and Anthony Hudson again demonstrated why he should call all nine games a week. The Lions caught a few breaks, the Gabba shook, and the Bulldogs were suddenly staring down a cutthroat final.
On that 1987 afternoon, in just his seventh league game, North Melbourne’s Alastair Clarkson kicked a couple of late goals. When he walked into Hawthorn in 2004, one of the board members thought he was an IT assistant, there to help jig up the Power Point presentation. The president didn’t know his name. Seventeen years and four premierships later, he left it as the most significant figure the modern game has thrown up.
On Saturday afternoon, there was no crowd to see him off. There would be no finals. There wasn’t even a result. In the previous few weeks, he had worked the locks to many of the premiership aspirants. He was as committed as ever. He was coaching as well as ever. And he was done. Pensioned off, and paid out. He had been Jeffed.
It was a typical Clarkson game. Even when they were on the skids, his teams were always hard to play against. They were always a migraine for opposition coaches, and often for fans. The coach always had a trick up his sleeve. A Hawthorn game was an audit. If you had any holes, he would find them. He would probe for weaknesses. There were more than a few battlers in his line-up but they were always honest, always disciplined and instantly recognisable as Clarkson footballers.
Listening to Clarkson throughout the week, and watching him on Saturday, I was reminded of the great NFL coach Bill Belichick. They share the same quicksilver coaching minds, the dress sense, the contempt for idiotic questions, the grumpiness. The insatiable desire to keep learning, keep innovating, keep winning. Like Belichick, he had a great eye for talent – whether it was biomechanics experts, weights coaches or draft prospects. Belichick’s pillar “rigid in fundamentals and techniques, but flexible in scheme” fits neatly with Clarkson. The great Hawthorn and Patriots sides both had a foot-on-the-throat mentality that belied their clean-cut image. In the 2015 grand final, on a day better suited to building sandcastles than playing football, his side was pitiless. “Ruthless to the fucking end!” he screamed at threequarter time.
In politics, and in sport, that has been Jeff Kennett’s philosophy too. But Jeff has made a meal of this. He has had, it must be said, a bit of a plonker’s pandemic. His tweets are increasingly incomprehensible. His succession plan stank from the get-go. Mitchell and Clarkson had 20 minutes to discuss it before flanking the president at the press conference. Kennett granted the journalists one question each. The messaging was sloppy. Hawthorn, usually so watertight, were leaking. The president was speaking in circumlocutions. “The Family Club”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean these days, was fractured. Kennett was a master political operator back in the day, but Clarkson played him like a harp.
With apologies to the former Collingwood boss, Kennett has always been the most vocal of the AFL presidents. The nuts and bolts of the game have never been his special subject. Instead, he focuses on good governance. He is the first to lecture other clubs, the AFL and particularly the Victorian state government, on the topic. In his columns for the Herald Sun, in his rambling letters to Hawthorn members, and even in his Twitter replies to everyday punters, he hammers it home.
Late on a freezing Friday afternoon, in what has always seemed to be one of the coldest parts in Melbourne, he made it official. Clarkson shambled down the stairs in his old jeans, one hand in his pocket, a knowing smirk on his face. Kennett was tetchy, and less than convincing. He couldn’t shovel sand over the assembled media throng. He eventually asked for more questions – “Going once, going twice, go Hawks”, he said. Mitchell and Clarkson went their way. The president went his.
“The game spares no one,” Clarkson said. But he is hardly on the scrap heap. In the midst of a global pandemic, with footy’s reservoirs of cash drying up, he is about to be paid nearly a million dollars to do whatever takes his fancy. In the public relations war with Kennett, he won in a landslide. If anything, his status as the premier coach of the modern era has been burnished. He could name his price at any football club, at any sporting organisation, in Australia. He drew his last game. He lost his job. But he won the era. Like round 23 itself, he will be one tough act to follow.
Kennett was a master political operator back in the day, but Clarkson played him like a harp