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Coach Is Clarkson a supercoach or did he just get lucky at the Hawks? Has his time come and gone?
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Like any coach they have their use by date. Clarksons not hungry he's super well paid. Barrassi went back to Melbourne in the 80s it was a disaster, blight to the saints, pagan and malthouse to the blues. North are going backwards again
Their list management is shot, clarkos recruiting is shot and he's mates he's brought along to coach aren't there for the right reasons
Their list management is shot, clarkos recruiting is shot and he's mates he's brought along to coach aren't there for the right reasons
It's not that he kicked his way to 4 flags per se - it's that those 4 flags would never have happened if not for the perfect storm of a freak core group of players at the club at that time
The moment those players left, they were rubbish.
Ditto Hardwick at Richmond. Ditto Denis Pagan. And Alan Joyce. etc. etc.
There's absolutely a 'right place at the right time' element to Clarkson's tenure at Hawthorn.
Almost all coaches have awesome strategies. It's getting the players to carry it out to the letter every week that is the hard part.
Not all coaches have Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Roughead, Lewis, Burgoyne, Gibson etc. out there coaching on-field every week for nearly a decade.
Clarkson could change the game plan midweek and his senior guys had mastered it by game day. Most teams take 2 months to adjust.
- Mar 2, 2015
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False.
The 2018 H&A season was one of Clarkson's finest coaching achievements. I thought it was incredible the way he coaxed a 15 win season from an average list and snatched 4th place on the ladder. Nobody in the media thought we'd even get near the top 8. Many on here tipped us to finish in the bottom four.
Laughable that he didn't win Coach of the Year in 2018 after being snubbed for that award in each of his 4 premiership years. Nathan Buckley received the gong for Collingwood's 15 win season when he clearly had more talent to work with.
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He was a super coach, he probably still is but has not a lot to work with. The Hawks teams he got into the top 4 in 2016 and 2018 (yes they flopped in finals) weren’t great so I think that shows his credentials just as much as the flags.
Every coach needs great players, but a lot of coaches have had the players but never got the job done. Leon Cameron at GWS.
Clarko had both but maximised that to 4 flags a r/up and a few other finals series.
Luck plays a part especially in a sport like footy where the fixtures, drafts, academies make everything uneven at times for one club or another.
Maybe one criticism of him (other than the anger, racism accusations etc) is he may have overestimated his ability when taking the North job on.
Every coach needs great players, but a lot of coaches have had the players but never got the job done. Leon Cameron at GWS.
Clarko had both but maximised that to 4 flags a r/up and a few other finals series.
Luck plays a part especially in a sport like footy where the fixtures, drafts, academies make everything uneven at times for one club or another.
Maybe one criticism of him (other than the anger, racism accusations etc) is he may have overestimated his ability when taking the North job on.
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I think people wildly overrate the most successful coaches, calling them "geniuses", "wizards" and "master coaches". I also think people are hugely unfair towards coaches of struggling teams, including the ones who get sacked. I'm not saying there is no difference between the best and worst coaches. I just think the gap isn't as pronounced as everything thinks.
Coaches are only as good as the players at their disposal and the support staff around them.
Of course Clarkson was lucky at Hawthorn to have champions like Hodge, Mitchell, Rioli, Burgoyne, Franklin and Roughead (backed up by stars such as Lewis, Breust, Gibson, Birchall, Sewell, Gunston, Smith, Hill, Lake, Guerra, Shiels, etc)
But which premiership coach didn't enjoy the benefit of champions and stars in his team? Please name one.
I also think the performance of coaches can vary just like the form fluctuations of players. Good coaches can go through periods when they don't coach as well as they did previously. Ageing coaches can struggle to keep up with the times, or their message to players might not get through like it once did. Maybe this is true of Clarkson. However, it doesn't mean his past coaching achievements should be called into question and down-graded. That's just narky people hating on the bloke for personal reasons.
Coaches are only as good as the players at their disposal and the support staff around them.
Of course Clarkson was lucky at Hawthorn to have champions like Hodge, Mitchell, Rioli, Burgoyne, Franklin and Roughead (backed up by stars such as Lewis, Breust, Gibson, Birchall, Sewell, Gunston, Smith, Hill, Lake, Guerra, Shiels, etc)
But which premiership coach didn't enjoy the benefit of champions and stars in his team? Please name one.
I also think the performance of coaches can vary just like the form fluctuations of players. Good coaches can go through periods when they don't coach as well as they did previously. Ageing coaches can struggle to keep up with the times, or their message to players might not get through like it once did. Maybe this is true of Clarkson. However, it doesn't mean his past coaching achievements should be called into question and down-graded. That's just narky people hating on the bloke for personal reasons.
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No, but they immediately became more competitive and made noticeable improvement every season under him.
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I feel like AFL coaches are judged without even a modicum of thought. But they are also inherently hard to adjudge. I think you could put together a coaching triumvirate of Clarkson, Chris Scott and Longmire and it still would have a barely marginal impact on North's performance in the short-term. Even the greatest tactical minds can't overcome a VFL quality defensive line.
How well regarded is Brad Scott? Most would agree that the North list he had was fairly middle of the road. Not bad, but not brilliant either (which ironically is also how I'd describe the Essendon list he is coaching now). So was his tenure a success? He made no grand finals. Just like Ken Hinkley. Has Port ever had the best list in the comp in his tenure? Questionable.
Whether Matthew Nicks is a barely competent coach or not seems to be dependent more on the quality of Adelaide's list than any man management or tactical acumen he provides. And the perception of the quality of that list seems to have done a 180 between the end of last season and now.
Do Melbourne have the best list in the comp (now and for much of the last 3.5 years)? If so, has Goodwin grossly underperformed with just 1 flag? But he is a premiership coach and that is undeniable.
Do I know the answer to these questions? Probably not. But everyone seems to be an expert on who is a good coach or not.
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It’s not all luck of course, you still need to be very good at it. But you need good fortune too.
He can implement as many zones as he wants - he’s not winning that 2008 flag without Buddy, Roughead, Mitchell, Hodge, Lewis, Rioli, Birchall and others all being at the club and all being fit and having great seasons.
Or without several Geelong players having a mare on GF day. Geelong beat them a matter of weeks earlier.
Then in 2009 they were crap. In 2010 not much better. Does he even survive two crap years without that GF win, as supporters start moaning he’s wasting their generational group that took them to the 2008 GF? He didn’t employ the people that employed him. What if he didn’t get a smart board of directors to work with and stick with him?
What if Terry Wallace takes the job at Hawthorn (their first choice) and he’s never even there?
What club does he go to? A crappy dysfunctional club that spits him out after a few years, like so many others?
There’s so much more to it than just being good at what you do. There’s luck and circumstance all over the place.
Changing clubs is a huge circumstance changer. Only 8 coaches have won flags at two clubs. Jeans is in that group by 1 point (1966). Checker Hughes by 9 points (1932). Malthouse needed an ugly bounce for Stephen Milne and a GF replay (2010). Parkin won his Hawthorn flag with Kennedy’s team. Barassi got the “10 year rule” which lasted lasted a couple of months and landed him Doug Wade, Barry Davis and John Rantall.
There’s luck everywhere. Clarkson has had his share of it and will need plenty more.
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Did you see the scoreline in that 2015 prelim final?
Hawks 15.4.94 to dockers 10.7.67.
All 4 behinds were rushed.
Hawks had depth and talent all over the ground compared to the dockers.
Dockers practically ran out of legs. Injuries to Pavlich and Fyfe hurt freo.
DocT
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I'm not flat out disagreeing with you but if what you said was the full story then how do you explain Buckley out, McRae in and shazam???
I think all elite sport is a matter of fractions of a percent. The right coach for the right group of players at the right time can be the difference between missing finals and a premiership. Incredible but I think the facts back this up.
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The Pies were a rabble in Buckley's last season as coach. They clearly went off the rails as a club, from the top down. The racism business which flared up again just as the new season got underway. Eddie McGuire finally resigning. Buckley resigning just before the mid-year bye.
The Pies had a talented bunch of players who finished in the top 4 in 2018 and 2019. They went within a bee's dick of winning the flag. Finalists again during a difficult 2020 Covid season with a great Elimination Final victory over in Perth against their West Coast rivals.
They clearly underperformed in 2021. Their players sleepwalked through that season. So it didn't surprise me at all that they rebounded back up the ladder in McRae's first year as coach.
I never thought Buckley was a great coach, but his coaching in 2021 underlines what I said about coaches fluctuating in form. They have their ups and downs just like individual footballers.
Same with McRae. Obviously a great coach. He was the perfect hiring after the 2021 debacle. He instantly brought the enthusiasm back to Collingwood and got full buy-in from every player. Terrific 2022 season. Even better in 2023. They overcame some late season wobbles and took their chances in September.
But what the hell is going on this year? If he's such a great coach, then why are the Pies looking so ordinary? Football is a funny game. Good coaches can be on top of everything and then sometimes for no logical reason, they can lose their grip in things.
I agree with you that elite sport is a matter of fractions of a percent. Maybe that's Collingwood's problem. Some barely noticeable complacency amongst the premiership players... They drop off their intensity by 3 or 4 percent and suddenly they look ordinary as a team.
Look, he did revolutionize the game with his full ground defence, no worries.
But the threepeat was a clear accident of history, due to the entry of the expansion teams, and subsequently Clarkson has been severely overregarded as a coach as a result.
Got very lucky. Absolute psychopath in the right place at the right time.
No coincidence he and Sheedy were both 4 flag lunatics who had success and then lost the plot. Sheedy was the first to work out flexible players and positions and then got lucky with a weak comp and good batch of kids in '93 and an absolute champion outfit in 2000 (but still underachieved and should have won at least one if not two more premierships with that side).
And let's not ignore that both coaches put their teams into a decades long mediocrity spiral so you need to take that into account as well as context when assessing them.
Clarko: very, very overrated
But the threepeat was a clear accident of history, due to the entry of the expansion teams, and subsequently Clarkson has been severely overregarded as a coach as a result.
Got very lucky. Absolute psychopath in the right place at the right time.
No coincidence he and Sheedy were both 4 flag lunatics who had success and then lost the plot. Sheedy was the first to work out flexible players and positions and then got lucky with a weak comp and good batch of kids in '93 and an absolute champion outfit in 2000 (but still underachieved and should have won at least one if not two more premierships with that side).
And let's not ignore that both coaches put their teams into a decades long mediocrity spiral so you need to take that into account as well as context when assessing them.
Clarko: very, very overrated
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He was obviously the coach for the job, but he also had possibly the best assistant coaching line up in the history of the game, great list management and recruiters with a lot of key players wanting to come to the club at the right time and solid drafting.
Clarko changed the game tactically. He's undoubtably a good coach.
Norths issues were never coaching their list is/was ****ing putrid. They've got a long way to go to challenge. Clarko just has to develop properly to give them a good chance when the next coach takes over.
Norths issues were never coaching their list is/was ****ing putrid. They've got a long way to go to challenge. Clarko just has to develop properly to give them a good chance when the next coach takes over.
_Cerberus_
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Hawks fans wanted Clarko sacked after a couple of seasons. In his 4th, he got a flag.
Tigers fans wanted Hardwick sacked literally a year before they won the flag.
Some Demons fans were not happy with Goodwin before they too pulled a flag out.
Meanwhile teams that are dead set s**t, tend to go through a few coaches and wonder why they are still s**t.
Give coaches a chance to build a team to suit their vision. Clarko is in his second season, for a team whilst putrid, have bigger handouts and more first round picks on their list than most if not all teams currently in the league (via own drafting or trading for other teams formers). He has plenty more to work with this time around.
I do think a fair bit of coaching comes down to luck as well. Can be as good or as poor a coach as you can be, it is all irrelevant if you don't draft the right players. People forget teams have loads of coaches, yet think the head coach influences every call. They can't tell the fitness bloke what to do, and if the team ends up unfit, people blame the coach and not the fitness guy running a poor program etc. Or the recruiter drafting players with poor tanks etc.
Fitness staff, strength coaches, scouts, recruiters, player development coaches, assistants, it all adds up.
North are still a couple of years away. Clarkos tactics won't work, if the cattle is simply not good enough to implement it fully. They lack enough dominant KPPs outside of Larkey.
I can't stand the bloke personally, but its unfair to write him off already.
Tigers fans wanted Hardwick sacked literally a year before they won the flag.
Some Demons fans were not happy with Goodwin before they too pulled a flag out.
Meanwhile teams that are dead set s**t, tend to go through a few coaches and wonder why they are still s**t.
Give coaches a chance to build a team to suit their vision. Clarko is in his second season, for a team whilst putrid, have bigger handouts and more first round picks on their list than most if not all teams currently in the league (via own drafting or trading for other teams formers). He has plenty more to work with this time around.
I do think a fair bit of coaching comes down to luck as well. Can be as good or as poor a coach as you can be, it is all irrelevant if you don't draft the right players. People forget teams have loads of coaches, yet think the head coach influences every call. They can't tell the fitness bloke what to do, and if the team ends up unfit, people blame the coach and not the fitness guy running a poor program etc. Or the recruiter drafting players with poor tanks etc.
Fitness staff, strength coaches, scouts, recruiters, player development coaches, assistants, it all adds up.
North are still a couple of years away. Clarkos tactics won't work, if the cattle is simply not good enough to implement it fully. They lack enough dominant KPPs outside of Larkey.
I can't stand the bloke personally, but its unfair to write him off already.
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Yeah, this is what I came here to say. That flag was absolutely Clarkson's flag, and it was a massive achievement.
Because Hawthorn went on to win a three-peat five years later, people forget just how massive an upset that was (barring the Geelong supporters who were there like I was
). Geelong started that game as massive favourites, and just kept pinging it into the forward line like flies going into a spiderweb.The plans around corralling Ablett Jr and Steve Johnson were genius, too. Two of the most damaging footballers of their time had 68 touches between them, and somehow we still lost.
The rushed behinds were absolute genius. Not only did they take the sting out of our defensive pressure, they also unsettled us because it wasn't pretty.
People like Malthouse and Lyon saw, what happened, and that Grand Final changed football forever.
If you've only started watching footy in the last 15 years, I cannot tell you how much the sport changed in the five years around that era.
I have seen two separate podcasts with the deliberate behinds covered recently (Xavier Ellis interview and Roughead interview) - it was not a directive. It just happened on the day and everyone went with it. Coaches had no part in that which was interesting.Yeah, this is what I came here to say. That flag was absolutely Clarkson's flag, and it was a massive achievement.
Because Hawthorn went on to win a three-peat five years later, people forget just how massive an upset that was (barring the Geelong supporters who were there like I was
The plans around corralling Ablett Jr and Steve Johnson were genius, too. Two of the most damaging footballers of their time had 68 touches between them, and somehow we still lost.
The rushed behinds were absolute genius. Not only did they take the sting out of our defensive pressure, they also unsettled us because it wasn't pretty.
People like Malthouse and Lyon saw, what happened, and that Grand Final changed football forever.
Somehow, that's even worse.
Sure, but this has to be one of the worst sides put out since the expansion clubs.
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He's been there 18 months now. I find it bizarre they let McKay go and didnt replace him. KP stocks are awful.
Relying on Zuhaar as the second fwd also seems crazy.
I realise its not easy to recruit good KPPs
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