Zero To Heroes

The Sunday Age

Sunday July 1, 2007

Lyall Johnson

Alastair Clarkson has been building Hawthorn from the ground up - and it is a strategy that has quickly been paying extraordinary dividends, writes Lyall Johnson.

WHEN Alastair Clarkson arrived at Hawthorn at the end of 2004, there were some who questioned whether the rookie coach had what it takes to be successful at AFL level.

He had played 134 games with North Melbourne and Melbourne and had been an assistant coach at Port Adelaide in its premiership year, but he was an unknown quantity to most football followers.

There were serious doubts whether, even if Clarkson had the ability as a coach, he had the cattle at his disposal to make a success of the club.

Thankfully for the Hawks, Clarkson and the team he brought together at Glenferrie were among those doubters.

The team is still a work in progress and season 2007 only half complete, but given that when Clarkson arrived the club was second bottom, had endured its worst season in 40 years and sacked a favourite son in Peter Schwab, the turnaround has been remarkable.

Especially as in his first year, Clarkson employed a high-possession style of football his players were clearly not skilled enough to carry off, and then appeared to contradict that game plan by calling for his players to move the ball faster.

So how is it that the Hawks are sitting second on the ladder? There is no short answer - although being too short was one of the issues.

When Clarkson and his assistants arrived for the 2005 pre-season, one of the first things they discovered was the total player payments situation was unacceptable.

In a nutshell, the club was underperforming and massively overpaying. Too many players had negotiated lucrative deals and were sitting on fat salaries and not doing enough to earn them."

The TPP model was flawed, which we needed to rectify immediately," said Chris Pelchen, who joined the club under Clarkson as general manager of player personnel and strategy."

That's taken several years because, as you'd appreciate, some players had longer-term contracts and you can only really rectify that position through renegotiating a current contract or when their contract's up for renewal."

The changes were unsentimental, with big-name Hawks such as Nick Holland, Jonathan Hay, Nathan Thompson, Peter Everitt, Angelo Lekkas, John Barker, Mark Graham, Lance Picioane, Rayden Tallis, Adrian Cox and Kris Barlow among the 22 to have been delisted, traded off or retired since the end of 2004."

I can say now that for the first time in the two years since I've been back at the club we are back on the right side of the ledger in terms of what we are paying appropriate to performance," Pelchen said.

Compounding the situation was what Pelchen, who had been at Hawthorn in the halcyon era of the late 1980s and early 1990s, said was a "me me me" culture of players putting themselves before the club."

So what we did was set about applying some of the same principles that had been there in John Kennedy's reign but, in particular, had been the foundation of the club under Allan Jeans and Alan Joyce," Pelchen said last week."

It was all about team first and it's on that basic philosophy that we've tried to re-establish the club's culture because it did need some work. " "Team first" was very much the basis of Hawthorn's success during the 1980s and early '90s. "I think that has been reflected in our list management over the last two or three years. Certain people may have been surprised at our trading, certainly outwards from the club in terms of players we have allowed to leave or delisted, but it is very much trying to follow that philosophy."

All these players needed to be replaced and so Clarkson and Pelchen prepared a three-year recruiting and list management contracting model after a detailed analysis of the club's list against all 600-odd players in the AFL.

To do this, Pelchen conducted an analysis of all players in teams that have won a premiership since 1998, looking at factors such as where they were recruited from, their height and weight, the number of games played and the types of positions and game style, then applying those principles to build what they call a "premiership model".

The analysis found that the Hawks were ranked 15th on player ability, ahead of only Carlton. The more basic among the key performance indicators used were kicking efficiency (ranked 16th), weight (15th) and height (14th)."

Those (latter) two in combination create a poor player profile in terms of the physical attributes of an AFL footballer. It meant we had a shorter player group and also a skinnier player group," Pelchen said.

The focus of the strategic plan was to identify the types of players needed to execute the robust and versatile game Clarkson wanted to play."

Basically there were 12 key playertypes or positions we needed to rectify during this three-year model," said Pelchen. "We've been able to rectify nine of those 12 positions and we still have some way to go."

With the restrictions placed upon it by TPP issues, the club ruled out trading in players and instead committed itself to the draft. An additional rationale was that it would bring in players it could indoctrinate more easily to the culture it was attempting to build. High on the agenda has been establishing a taller player list with an emphasis on a strong spine and a ruck division built from new players. "We did need quite significant work in getting our spine right. And if you look across premiership models over the last nine years, they have traditionally had a strong spine," Pelchen said.

With an average height in 2005 of 186.5 centimetres against the average height of premiership sides since 1998 of 188.8, the Hawks actively drafted tall, with only three players since the start of 2005 - Brent Guerra, Jordan Lewis and Ben McGlynn - under the premiership average. At the other end of the scale, they have recruited 13 players above 190cms.

What also can't be underestimated is the value of the relationship between Hawthorn and the Box Hill Hawks, where the fledgling Hawks not only get to play against experienced players but are forced to assume a leadership role not experienced by many in other clubs.

The relationship between Hawthorn and Box Hill is regarded as one of the strongest of any Victorian AFL club with its VFL affiliate. Although Box Hill coach Damien Christensen might struggle some weeks putting an experienced side on the park, he gets to work with a list filled with some of the brightest talent in the AFL, who he has been forced to fast-track.

But while Hawthorn is beginning to reap the rewards with its performance this year, Pelchen warns that the process is still a work in progress."

We're not getting ahead of ourselves by any means. Once this strategic plan is complete, we will move onto another.

You can't just think you've got there," he said.

COMING & GOING

HAWTHORN ARRIVALS

2005

Lance Franklin, Jordan Lewis, Matt Little, Thomas Murphy, Bo Nixon (traded from Collingwood), Jarryd Roughead, Simon Taylor, Josh Thurgood (rookie elevation).

2006

Max Bailey, Grant Birchall, Beau Dowler, Xavier Ellis, Brent Guerra, Beau Muston, Travis Tuck (fatherson), Clinton Young (rookie elevation)

2007

Stephen Gilham (rookie elevation), Josh Kennedy (father-son), Ben McGlynn (rookie elevation), Jarryd Morton, Garry Moss, Brent Renouf, Mitch Thorp.

DEPARTURES

2005

Kris Barlow (delisted), Adrian Cox (delisted), Mark Graham (delisted), Luke McCabe (retired), Lance Picioane (delisted), Rayden Tallis (retired), Nathan Thompson (traded).

2006

Simon Beaumont (retired), Steven Greene delisted), Jonathan Hay (traded), Nick Holland (retired), Ben Kane (delisted), Angelo Lekkas (retired), Nathan Lonie (traded), Bo Nixon (delisted), Doug Scott (delisted).

2007

Matthew Ball (delisted), John Barker (retired), Luke Brennan (delisted), Peter Everitt (traded), Harry Miller (delisted), Nick Ries (delisted).

© 2007 The Sunday Age

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