Key reason behind shock sacking was foreshadowed five years ago
Before joining North Melbourne, Alastair Clarkson was unquestionably on the podium when discussing the best coaches of the 21st century, not just in the AFL but in Australian sport, full stop.
Four premierships with Hawthorn, including a three-peat, rebuilding the club from its lowest ebb and taking it to the pinnacle.
Alastair Clarkson. Getty Images
And yet, he was sacked suddenly by the Kangaroos with a year to run on his contract for being tactically and culturally out of date. How is that possible?
His departure from the Hawks was almost as shocking as Wednesday’s North Melbourne axing, with Hawthorn moving him on to jump to their next era under Sam Mitchell.
After a year out of the game, Clarkson signalled his desire to return to coaching, leading to a bidding war between the Kangaroos and Bombers for his services. He picked North, and Essendon ended up with Brad Scott. Four years later, both coaches have been moved on.
Clarkson was known as the 'master coach' during his Hawthorn days. He advanced the game tactically multiple times. His cluster defence revolutionised how teams defend and helped the Hawks topple the Geelong juggernaut in 2008.
He then masterminded the Hawthorn three-peat across 2013, 2014 and 2015; thanks to overwhelming talent, ruthless trading and his management of that group.
But the game moves quickly. By the start of the 2020s, that era was over. The Hawks needed to spend a few years down the bottom to regenerate their list.
In a move that potentially signalled the first warning sign that Clarkson may have begun to fall behind the pack as a senior coach, they made the brutal call to move him on and install Mitchell into the role. A brilliant move in hindsight.
He was always going to land whichever job he wanted in the aftermath of his Hawthorn exit, and North Melbourne felt like they had won the lottery when he came on board.
It was awkward timing, however, as the Roos were in the midst of a rebuild themselves, one many believed to be on par with the Hawks.
Four years later however and Hawthorn has won finals, made a prelim and is contending once again after a top four finish. Clarkson, meanwhile, has won just 20 games with the blue and white stripes.
North Melbourne is stacked with young talent, and those players needed time to develop, but the same cutting-edge tactical nous Mitchell has installed at Hawthorn, and the gun players it enabled them to attract, has not occurred at the Kangaroos.
Alastair Clarkson and Sam Mitchell after Hawthorn’s 2008 premiership. nna\cdesilva
There has been a youthful arrogance to Mitchell's Hawks, led by personalities like Jack Ginnivan, Nick Watson and Connor Macdonald, and that has been strengthened by quality defensive pieces like Tom Barrass and Josh Battle, and an attacking game style that has captured the best of modern footy's emphasis on ball movement and speed.
North Melbourne, meanwhile, has chopped and changed game styles more times than you could count over the last four years. Their aggressive defensive structures in 2025 led to them conceding more points than any team bar West Coast. It allowed them to score freely, but it was clearly not a winning formula.
They moved away from that in 2026 and took a small step forward, winning nine games, but they also blew a number of leads, lost games they should have won and ultimately cost themselves any chance of sneaking into the Wildcard Round.
Clearly, they felt they were capable of more this season internally. Stacked with emerging talent, the Roos were always going to leap out of the bottom four, but quality young players can only drag you so far.
North Melbourne would be looking at what has happened at both Carlton and Melbourne in the last 12 months as a clear example of this.
Both clubs sacked coaches tactically behind the pack in 2025-2026 in Simon Goodwin and Michael Voss, and immediately saw clear spikes in performance under Steven King and Josh Fraser respectively.
North Melbourne may look to emulate that success with the next top untried assistant coach, whether it's Fremantle's Jaymie Graham, who reportedly only missed the Carlton job because of Fraser's remarkable run, or St Kilda's Corey Enright, or someone similar.
It might make them tentative to turn to another second-time coach like John Longmire or Adam Simpson, despite both being premiership coaches. The Roos have vowed to go through a full process and leave no stone unturned.
The Kangaroos said it themselves on Wednesday. Football boss Todd Viney, who was headhunted to the club by Clarkson himself, said they were too far behind tactically and culturally.
Alastair Clarkson won 20 games in four years. Getty Images
“Unfortunately, there are still some gaping holes in our game plan which we have been looking to try and fix, and there’s some key metrics, that I’m not doing a deep dive into now, that we haven’t been able to arrest. Therefore, we haven’t been able to make the jump,” Viney said.
“One thing that Clarko did, he tried too hard, in trying to fix that, and therefore we get into more meetings, more information and the players at the end of the day become a little bit confused, and we don’t get the cohesion we need to win more games.”
North Melbourne champion David King put it succinctly on SEN himself, saying “Clarkson got old”.
“The game plan wasn’t cutting edge and the players knew it. They talk to other clubs, find out information, they realise they’re not doing any of it,” King said.
“The simple fact is Clarko got old. When you’re talking to young people, you know when your grandpa’s stories are too long, a little bit of that.”
Hawthorn’s brave call to move on from Clarkson at the end of 2021 meanwhile continues to age extremely well.
