Alastair Clarkson did not watch the Sonja Hood-Todd Viney press conference that announced in relatively brutal terms why he had been sacked. But his wife and children did and the result, according to the “blindsided” four-time premiership coach, has left them shattered “and thrown our lives into turmoil … for the second time”.
“… To sit there and say one man has lost his marbles in terms of the modern game. Wow. We’re just shocked, and we just thought we were owed a little bit of respect in being informed and warned. Instead, they chose to dance on my grave like this.”
Speaking exclusively to The Age late on Friday, an emotional Clarkson seemed bereft and at a loss to explain how a review he said he helped instigate in the weeks leading up to the end of the season led to the Tuesday text from president Hood asking whether she and Viney could pay him a 5pm visit.
“In four years they’ve never come to my house like that. In four years I’ve never had one formal performance review,” Clarkson said.
He recalled they sat in his kitchen with him and his wife, Caryn, to discuss the logistics of what would unfold when the news broke.
“They said, ‘We can’t control what you’re going to say, ‘Clarko’, but can you be diplomatic? We know you’re going to have to talk at some stage, but we hope you don’t bag the club’. I never would have done that. They wanted me to be as dignified as possible.
“Any deficiencies I’ve got – and you know that I’ve got them – to be absolutely blindsided like that … I’ve got a daughter who works at Fox News – can you imagine how she feels? How we all feel to be so publicly humiliated.”
Locating the breaking point that finally spelt the end for Clarkson’s illustrious coaching career is a murky exercise.
Clarkson, himself, believes he, the club and those around him suffered from his own messiah complex.
His supporters believe that his aura, combined with his famously turbulent nature, led to colleagues and bosses at the Kangaroos walking on eggshells around him, too hesitant to deliver the strong feedback he needed.
Certainly, North’s version is that Viney delivered some strong feedback at times. Clarkson, himself, points out that “by having a crack at me Todd [Viney] is having a crack at himself and all our coaches”.
However, several instructive incidents occurred in the days leading up to his final game as the Kangaroos’ coach that preceded his removal – a sacking widely criticised for its means but less so the end result.
One was a mid-week meeting with his players that saw Clarkson choose his words poorly when addressing the Sydney Swans’ Pullman Hotel scandal.
The veteran four-time premiership coach, whose “cultural behaviour” was cited as one key reason for his departure in separate meetings on Wednesday with North Melbourne players and staff, said nothing wildly inappropriate, according to those present.
However, he underplayed the Swans’ actions to the extent that he later corrected his earlier words in another conversation with his team.
Not for the first time, another staff member, this time CEO Jen Watt, stepped in several days later to lead a more nuanced discussion of the Swans players’ failings from a woman’s point of view.
Clarkson said he had chosen to speak largely because of the allegations that have continued to emerge since his sacking, such as the aforementioned incident. He said that Viney had pulled him aside and suggested his comments regarding making the right choices simply around women might have been misconstrued.
“I was talking to the players pre-training but mindful a lot of them would be heading away to Bali at the end of the season,” he recalled.
“And we were playing the Swans. That club has been devastated by what has happened, but it affects all of us at every club. I was trying to explain about the four Ps – the piss, the punt, the penis and the powder, and how it was so important they make the right choices and that they would all find themselves in situations at times, and sometimes these wrong choices can destroy your careers and sometimes ruin your life.
“Three minutes later, I spoke to them again and explained what I was trying to say.”
Several days later, after Clarkson’s listless Kangaroos had been engulfed by the Swans on an emotional Sunday at the SCG, Essendon chief executive Tim Roberts called Watt to report that Clarkson had made a crude remark in a hotel lift before the Sydney double-header while in the company of a Bombers AFLW cohort. The attempt at humour allegedly referenced the Sydney sexual assault allegations.
Clarkson became more emotional when asked about the incident. He said he was devastated by the reported version of events.
“I was trying to make those girls feel safe in the lift,” said Clarkson.
“It was me and one other bloke in the lift who I didn’t know, and all these enthusiastic young girls barged into the lift. Three of them stood back as the doors were closing, and I said they could all fit in and something like, ‘We’re all safe and free here. We’ve all got our hands up here, you can all pile in’. No one respects more than me what our AFLW team has achieved.”
Earlier in the season, Watt and Hood had to apologise to Melbourne’s acting CEO Brian Cook and president Steven Smith after Clarkson criticised the Demons’ major sponsor Zurich and urged the cash-strapped club to cut its ties with the global insurer.
The lift incident saw a carefully crafted apology to Essendon and its AFLW players, but Clarkson’s team maintains that if a recording of what took place in the lift exists, it would show that all that happened was a poor attempt at humour and in no way threatening.
“I think there’s a danger in groupthink sometimes,” said Clarkson.
At a loss to explain his plans for the future, Clarkson still appears shocked, and his devastation is twofold. First the sacking, and then the public analysis that saw Viney refer to muddied messaging and meetings which became too long, and Hood declare that North would search for a coach for “the modern game”.
“They ask me to be as dignified as possible, and then they do this to me,” said Clarkson.
“I can’t tell you how hard it is. You’re perceived as this messiah. They talk about only wanting 10-minute meetings, but then I’m in a meeting, and of course a player or a coach will ask me a question, and of course then that’s a longer meeting.”
Clarkson said he believes he and his team were on the right track at North and that, as a result of his meetings with players in the final weeks of the season, a number of review and performance strategies had been put in place for next season.
“It is just so hard, and you tinker for so long to get everything right. People look back at Hawthorn and [think] I was the great coach. Then it’s ‘Clarkson only won because of [Chris] Fagan’, ‘Clarkson only won because of [fitness boss Andrew] Russell’, ‘Clarkson only won because of all the great players’.
“I tell you why we won – because of all of us. All of us together meant we somehow created this beautiful chemistry.”
Even before North’s 53-point thrashing by the Swans in round 24, meetings had begun with concerned senior players, disenchanted assistant coaches and staff. Clarkson said he instigated those meetings – a form of 360-degree reviews in which the players told him they wanted simplified feedback.
Certainly, some senior figures connected to the club took the coach aside and suggested he confront the growing dissatisfaction and lack of on-field consistency.
Warning signs were becoming alarm bells. Apart from speaking to Clarkson, some spoke to Hood, some to Watt, some to football boss Viney.
Back in June, that trio had believed they could manage the senior coach into his fifth contracted year. But a series of on- and off-field concerns gradually eroded that belief as the weeks progressed, and list management decisions and the trade period loomed.
Ultimately, the decision to sack Clarkson with one year remaining on his contract was ratified at an unscheduled Kangaroos board meeting on Monday night. To adopt two of the famous coach’s brutal analogies, there was no smoking gun which led to the decision. This had been a death by a thousand cuts.
Hood has endured some unacceptable external misogyny over her AFL journey, and she did so again after she fronted the media on Wednesday with Viney to explain the sacking.
Previously criticised for being too woke (the North old guard, some of whom still threaten a board challenge, mocked Hood and Watt when they were engraved with Kangaroos AFLW premiership tattoos), Hood now stands accused of disrespecting Clarkson’s legacy with her unusually honest assessment of his failings.
Critics also targeted Viney, though less severely, even though his assessment was equally brutal.
Viney’s chief failing seems to centre on the fact he plans to remain at North and help lead the search for Clarkson’s replacement, even though he joined the club as Clarkson’s right-hand man at Clarkson’s urging.
But Viney had made it clear to Kangaroos bosses weeks into his appointment that he prioritised the club. Viney and Clarkson have enjoyed an enduring football relationship for decades but calling them “best mates” would be an overstatement.
Clarkson could not say whether the friendship would survive this, or whether another once-brilliant football relationship had been destroyed for him.
Viney’s sad assessment of the scars Clarkson bears from the Hawthorn racism scandal and how it might have impacted his performance at North struck a chord and, to a degree, mitigates Hood’s move to facilitate the messiah-style, multimillion-dollar signing.
She could not have known what was coming in the weeks that followed his appointment when the allegations – which Clarkson always denied and for which he has been exonerated – arose, but equally perhaps she did not delve deeply enough into his final years at the Hawks.
Asked whether Viney was correct about the enduring legacy of those scars, Clarkson became too emotional to answer. Clarkson broke down on three occasions during our conversation. Once when attempting to give his version of events surrounding the Essendon AFLW complaint, once when trying to explain how his sacking and its aftermath had impacted his family, and once when asked about the Hawthorn racism allegations.
To suggest Hood, too, should fall on her sword at North Melbourne is nonsensical, but she would do well to take her reflections on the Clarkson experience into their next senior coaching search.
The struggles endured in recent years at Gold Coast and St Kilda – under respected senior coaches who moved clubs, Damien Hardwick and Ross Lyon, versus the performances of recent appointees Dean Cox, Steven King and Josh Fraser – have been instructive as North weigh up favourite sons John Longmire and Adam Simpson against the younger brigade of newer-age assistants.
Interestingly, Hood has chosen not to sit on the panel that will lead the new coach search, telling fellow directors that a more-recent board appointee would be more appropriate.
Hood pushed for constitutional change at North’s 2025 AGM but a motion extending the tenure of presidents was narrowly defeated, meaning she must step down from the board at the end of 2028.
Former captain and two-year club director Andrew Swallow will join the panel, potentially along with one other director not due to retire. Watt and Viney will also take part, along with one consultant from outside the club.
The forces threatening to challenge Hood’s board include former players and club directors, such as Mark Roberts, Mark Dawson and Stephen Head. Just how organised and united those forces are remains unclear, but Hood attended a meeting with two members of that group earlier this year and was told they were seeking positions on the board.
Hood’s strong performance alongside Viney on Wednesday might have deeply hurt Clarkson and his supporters, but it appears to have drawn a line in the sand for the club.
On Wednesday, Viney referenced the twice-yearly players’ survey conducted by the AFLPA, which rates club environments, well-being and communication. The most recent survey showed that North had fallen from a top-six-rated club to the bottom six, although, in truth, the survey only reflected a fall from around 9 per cent to 7 per cent.
“That survey dropped three weeks ago,” said Clarkson.
“That’s a bit crude, a bit cruel to bring that up, isn’t it? Todd’s the manager of our football program. Hasn’t he got any say in our environment?”
Football staff wishing to remain anonymous said coaches and football department staff sometimes dreaded Clarkson’s days off because of the reshaped ideas, philosophies and lengthy book and film reviews which would inevitably follow.
The ideas put forward by the curious, well-travelled information-seeker extolled by his former football lieutenant Chris Fagan now seemed gimmicky.
Fagan, who strongly defended his long-time colleague, questioned whether he had received the required feedback needed to shift his behaviour.
Clarkson, himself, said he was stunned by the suggestion his relationships with his assistant coaches had become strained.
“If you saw the text messages I’ve received in the last two days, you’d know how ridiculous that is,” he said.
“And the response from the players – and I had long meetings with the three key leaders and three older players – after they delivered the feedback, and I responded, were just so positive.”
Clarkson also said he had never been spoken to about the fact that players grew increasingly fatigued by the war analogies and the Hawthorn Kokoda experiences. To Clarkson’s football mind, war symbolises mateship and strength through adversity. To a younger generation of footballers, war was more likely to symbolise something far more negative.
“Is that all my fault is it?” Questioned Clarkson. “My mantra has never changed, and that has been to have care and empathy to help players chase their dream. I feel like my life’s shot.”
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Caroline Wilson is a Walkley award-winning columnist and former chief football writer for The Age.Connect via email.