Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness. It’s the Shakespearean truth that’s brought down kings and queens.
Here’s North Melbourne football boss Todd Viney, the day after telling long-time friend Alastair Clarkson that he was no longer their AFL senior coach.
“Most of you would know Clarko – he’s full-on. He’s fully invested and I think from the middle of the year, when things started to ramp up around the expectation of ‘is (his) contract getting extended’, that all of a sudden the workload went up,” Viney said at Wednesday’s club media conference.
“He had a point to prove. We need to delegate our roles within the football club, to share the load.
“The game is too big for one person to do it. I think he took that extra load on too much himself and perhaps didn’t delegate as well as he could.
“The messages became probably a little bit too much for some of the players.”
In another time, another place – Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett once wondered whether Clarkson should be dropped to coach their reserves – Clarko was at his pugnacious, intense best when it was hottest in the kitchen.
That was then. How many coaches, for whatever reason, don’t do as well at their second club?
Also, how many coaches have had to deal with something as devastating and all-encompassing as the Hawthorn racism scandal?
A month after Clarkson was appointed North coach, the racism allegations were made public in the 2022 grand final week. It was the AFL equivalent of a nuclear airburst.
An AFL investigation cleared Clarkson and others a year later. In 2024, an out-of-court settlement was reached between Hawthorn and former Indigenous players and their families.
But the damage was done.
“I’m not sure of the exact impact, but I know it’s had an effect,” Viney said on Wednesday.
“He’s been through a lot and he’s managed it well, and coaches us well, but … he’s not the same, bubbly person that I knew early days.”
Remember, Clarkson was hospitalised in 2014 with the auto-immune condition Guillain-Barré syndrome while at Hawthorn.
Then, as with the racism saga, he had to take time off from coaching.
What has Ross Lyon said? Coaching sometimes takes people to places where they should not go.
But when they get it right, when their greatest strengths are at their best, the results can be extraordinary.
Clarkson is notorious for his shocking temper. He can be maddening, frustrating and too old-school.
But he also masterminded four Hawthorn premierships. The first came in 2008, just four years after TV presenter Stephen Quartermain famously said on air the club was “struggling”, in reaction to Clarkson’s appointment.
That unlikely 2008 grand final win over Geelong was Clarkson at his finest – Stuart Dew’s crucial cameo and the “kill the shark” theme.
Adam Simpson, Damien Hardwick, Chris Fagan and Luke Beveridge are premiership coaches. All worked under Clarkson at Hawthorn.
His legacy is rock-solid. But Viney and others at Arden St decided their next premiership would not be delivered while Clarkson was coach.
In the bear pit of AFL coaching, even a genius can meet his end.
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