Clarkson’s signature is no guarantee of premierships or grand finals. Messiah coaches frequently fail, sometimes because clubs aren’t sturdy enough to house their dominating ways. Or they don’t have the players. Or their use-by date has passed.
Luke Hodge has already cautioned about his old coach’s foibles, and North, even while in thrall to Clarkson, would be wise to heed Hodge’s warning that clubs can’t allow “the Clarko show” to hijack the joint. His dealings with North chief executive Ben Amarfio will be intriguing, given it is the president, not the CEO, who has driven the pursuit.
That said, the instant gains for North dwarf the negatives.
The bigger picture is that Clarkson’s return to North would show that even the most struggling Melbourne club can attract an alpha coach with the right pitch.
Conversely, for Clarkson to spurn the Giants, despite a stronger playing list, with superior senior players, would be a measure of the challenges that face the AFL in its evangelical mission to convert Sydney’s west.
If the Giants were based in Melbourne, where Clarkson resides, rather than on the (inner) edge of Sydney’s vast western sprawl, I have little doubt that Clarkson would have signed with them.
But as the second Sydney team, they are subject to structural disadvantages that Melbourne clubs seldom comprehend; as staffers who work for GWS and Gold Coast attest, they can’t operate on the same premise that underpins other teams.
They pay excessive contracts for top players in length and dollars. They find it harder to land assistant coaches for a reasonable price, although the Suns have a lifestyle pitch that players and coaches are warming to, so to speak. Draft picks have less value to them than salary cap space – the converse of North.
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North have found it tough to attract players, even when offering “overs.” But they’ve never had an issue losing them.
The Giants shed seasoned players in every single post-season, replacing them with draftees. For several years, they’ve had zero scope to fill specific holes with anyone on a sizeable contract, as Geelong routinely can.
GWS and North both under-performed in 2022. The Giants, however, have done so with a playing list that includes Josh Kelly, Toby Greene, Lachie Whitfield, Sam Taylor, Tom Green, Tim Taranto, Jacob Hopper, Callan Ward and Stephen Coniglio , plus youngsters from the draft’s top 20.
Their list has excessive investment in midfielders, compared with forwards, but they should be around the eighth, rather than 16th, as the past two games suggest. The likely loss of Taranto and Hopper should not hurt much.
North have few senior players of such quality and probably will need at least another two years of list renovation before they can compete for finals.
Clarkson, thus, has/had the chance to take over a GWS that, with some Collingwood-like pluck and luck, could make a rapid rise. They will have a better hand in the draft than North (who have pick one and daylight, barring a priority pick). Yet, the betting heavily favors Clarkson taking the team that is further back.
Personal and family considerations, obviously, are an important factor. Much of Clarkson’s time is spent on his farm on the Mornington Peninsula. His former manager Liam Pickering said he would have advised him to pick North because “I don’t see Alastair Clarkson in Sydney”.
In another time and place, the AFL hierarchy might have intervened in Clarkson’s choice, by increasing the dowry – in the guise of an AFL ambassadorship in NSW – to a level that would see Clarkson leave Victoria and join GWS.
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They made certain, for instance, that Tony Lockett would pick the Swans; they’ve handed the Suns extra picks and concessions, and they even helped deliver Chris Fagan (via Mark Evans, now Suns CEO) to Brisbane.
GWS reckon they need the AFL dowry to have a real chance of landing the Bachelor. But, if we take Gillon McLachlan at his word from him, no AFL ambassador payment can be considered until Clarkson strikes a deal, with whichever club.
So, if after all the careful courtship, Clarkson chooses North instead of traveling north, the AFL should contemplate what this tells us about the competition’s expansion.
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