Has the AFL’s era of the big-name saviour coach officially come to an end?

Alastair Clarkson was not the first premiership coach to arrive at a new club as a messiah and leave as a cautionary tale. But there is every indication that he will be the last for some time.

For two years Adam Simpson hovered in the back of people’s minds as a potential successor to Clarkson, especially as the latter struggled to achieve success. But, once Clarkson was sacked, it quickly became clear that the former North Melbourne captain was not sufficiently top-of-mind among the Kangaroos who counted.

Simpson read the play after a meeting with club bosses and declared himself out of the running. His list of reasons for withdrawing was legitimate enough, but Simpson clearly wanted to know if applying for the role was worth his while.

Equally clearly, he did not receive the required assurances.

Another favourite son and premiership coach, John Longmire, is yet to make a call on the North role for which he would have been considered a shoo-in four years ago.

But the failed Clarkson era changed all that. Longmire, who missed out on the Tasmania job to Ken Hinkley, must now decide whether he is prepared to pit himself against Jaymie Graham and a group of highly regarded assistant coaches, and face a panel whose president has declared will be searching for a coach compatible with “the modern game”.

Longmire was contacted by North president Sonja Hood to gauge his interest, but at the time of going to press had not received a follow-up call.

The North process was met with some bemusement from the experienced coaching fraternity. Their view is that the trend will turn at some point back in favour of experienced coaches. But not this year. One candidate’s manager referred to the Malcolm Blight experience at St Kilda.

It was a different story back in the early spring of 2022 when Hood declared the Kangaroos had got their man and that there was no “plan B”. The mitigating circumstances which led to Clarkson’s downfall have been well documented, but there is no doubt the Clarkson experience at North has damaged the prospects of Simpson, Longmire and potentially even Nathan Buckley.

Buckley, however, would rightly point out that he is more than keeping in touch by going back to basics, playing a key role in one of the most respected football programs in the history of the game by becoming an assistant coach at Geelong.

Buckley and his football intensity would appear yin to Chris Scott’s yang; Scott is venerated not only for his coaching but also his management and delegation, with the numbers to back it up. Scott won the Geelong job in his early 30s and has coached the Cats to 10 top-four finishes in 16 years.

St Kilda also had no plan B when they sacked Brett Ratten around the same time as Clarkson was hired and lured Ross Lyon back to Moorabbin.

Nor did the Suns the following year when they headhunted Damien Hardwick. To varying degrees neither has achieved the desired results.

Lyon heads into 2027, the final year of his contract, knowing that another disappointing season would mark the close of his senior coaching career.

Hardwick’s highly fancied Suns plummeted from brief premiership favouritism to 13th, his emotions occasionally getting the better of him. Poorly chosen public words rightly or wrongly seem less forgivable when you’re underperforming.

As Lyon and Hardwick failed to live up to expectations, Josh Fraser stepped in as Carlton’s caretaker coach at round 10 when the Blues had won one game and took the team to finals. Long-time assistant coach Steven King, who won the Melbourne job at long odds, took the unfancied Demons to the finals in his first season, remaining consistently unflappable as he weathered that club’s continuing off-field dramas.

Of the preliminary finalists, all four coaches hold maiden senior roles at their clubs. Dean Cox and Sam Mitchell did not go through the usual selection processes but were chosen from within as part of succession plans that occurred ahead of time. Justin Longmuir, a Fremantle stalwart forced into early retirement, won the Dockers’ role seven years ago after a 10-year apprenticeship at West Coast and Collingwood.

Chris Fagan won the Brisbane Lions job from John Barker and Brett Montgomery on the eve of the 2017 season and has broken the mould in terms of his age and playing background, now coaching his sixth preliminary final in a decade. Fagan’s tactical nous is underrated but, at 65, his “modern game” credentials are underlined by the absence of fire and brimstone and the strong relationships he enjoys with his players, who revere him.

The AFL and the AFL Coaches Association reignited the Elite Coaching Program midway through the 2026 season. They did so recognising the relative dearth of credentialled assistant coaches coming through the ranks as the game’s retiring stars tended towards media careers, amid the growing challenges and demands on senior coaches and mindful of the detrimental effect on their mental health.

It is poignantly ironic that Clarkson was an early driver of the enterprise – back then known as the Level Four program – with Longmire’s support in 2014 after the Essendon drug scandal highlighted the pitfalls of a handing the club keys to a favourite son and rookie coach.

Abandoned during COVID, the 18-month program starting in June aimed to fast-track the development of eight to 10 assistant coaches but ultimately selected 14 contenders due to the quality of the applicants.

They included Kangaroos assistant Xavier Clarke, a contender for the North job, Graham, an early favourite for the role, and recent senior appointees Josh Fraser and Mark McVeigh, who applied as assistant coaches and will no doubt now struggle to commit to the full five-day, live-in camp in New Zealand in November.

The weight of history would seem to support this latest investment in mentoring from head office and the oft-maligned coaches’ association. Not since Leigh Matthews and Mick Malthouse at the turn of the century have premiership coaches repeated that feat at a second club.

It will be a foolhardy club prepared to hire a coach based on historic success and reputation alone. And only the most thick-skinned of proven senior coaches would be prepared to test themselves against the new breed. The September 2 Hood-Todd Viney press conference divided the AFL community and horrified most senior coaches, but it reinforced a template for the so-called modern game.

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