In Alastair Clarkson’s view, it has never been harder for bottom teams to climb to flag contention, due to the compromises to the draft, free agency and the bias of gun players towards contenders.

But Clarkson also makes plain that he is responsible for North Melbourne’s performance and that if he cannot lift the Kangaroos back into the finals or thereabouts, then the club is entitled to move him on and find another coach.

In a lengthy sit-down interview and subsequent conversation, Clarkson was sanguine about his own future. I put to him that he did not seem overly anxious about his position (he is contracted until the end of 2027).

“No, no. I came back here to help the footy club. [It’s] nothing to do with ego, nothing to do with anything else except repay to North what they gave to me as a young fellow,” he said.

“And so at the point in time they tap me on the shoulder and think, ‘Listen, we don’t think you’re the guy to take us forward any more. Thanks for your work. We know that … we’re making some progress and done some really good things.’ If they think someone else can be out there, [and] they’re going to do it quicker – I’m all for it.

“That’s why I came back to help. And Todd [Viney, football boss] was a little bit the same. We’ve worked together before, and it’s just like we actually like the idea of the challenge of just taking a bottomed-out club to try to … can it be done? Especially in the current climate, can it be done?

“There can be a lot of people jumping up and down, it’s just like, ‘Oh North aren’t getting there as quick as you like.’ Well, what do you want to do? Are Clarkson and Viney no good?

“If Clarkson and Viney are no good, then get them out and get some new ones … we’re just here for the club. From a personal point of view, trying to see if we can take this side from near the bottom of the ladder to back up to the top and compete again.”

Later, after exploring the lack of continuity in defence and North’s defensive method, Clarkson repeated that the onus was on him, as senior coach, to lift the club. The goal was to be playing finals in two years.

“If anyone’s got a problem with where we’re going, what we’re trying to do, this is on me as the current [coach]. Not the club or anyone else. I’ve been appointed and charged with the responsibility of getting this group and our club back up to the top of the ladder.

“It is a much, much tougher environment than has ever existed in AFL footy before. And I think all the clubs in the bottom five or six are finding it more difficult to find the levers to pull, to bring in talent and to resource your program and salary caps and soft caps and all these things.

“But I’ve got no doubt that we’re on the right track. Our goal, very clearly, is to get ourselves into the top four, but in the next two years, we want to be playing in September.”

Clarkson cited the Brisbane Lions as a team that had made the sudden leap, from five wins in 2018 to 16 wins in 2019.

“The game is littered with teams that have jumped up quickly, looked like they were cellar dwellers and then all of a sudden [they’ve made the leap]. And we’re showing signs that we can be that side… we want to be playing in September in the next couple of years.”

Clarkson said that by 2027 Paul Curtis and Tom Powell will be 100-gamers, and Harry Sheezel, Colby McKercher and others will have 60 to 100 games. He held high hopes, too, for George Wardlaw and Finn O’Sullivan.

“And if we’re not up around challenging for playing finals footy, we’re underperforming. Let’s get going.”

This implicitly posed the question if Clarkson, whose first season at Arden Street (2023) was ruined by the Hawthorn racism saga, had extracted the most from North’s list last year.

“It’s a hard question to answer because the narrative around our last year was being in games to compete more. We’re certainly that … now we lost a couple of close games, drew with Brisbane – that was a good effort, but we probably should have still won that game.

“And we could easily have won eight games in which everyone in the competition is probably saying, ‘That’s somewhere around the mark for North at this time.’ But yeah, we’re bullish about where we’re going, and it’s bloody tough.”

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North’s primary issue in Clarkson’s time, judged by numbers (103 points conceded in 2025), is that they have not defended well.

It is a charge that Clarkson meets head on. He highlights the lack of continuity in his backline – more than 20 players deployed back in each of his four years. The experienced Luke McDonald, Aidan Corr and Griffin Logue had injuries, as did tyros Jackson Archer and Josh Goater. But Clarkson also took responsibility for the defensive method.

“I spoke about the personnel and the lack of continuity with that. It’s not an excuse. It’s a fact. We just haven’t had the continuity and stability that we’ve identified in other clubs that has been really, really important to building premiership sides.

“This comes back to me as the coach, and I’m happy to take that, that critique – we leak too many goals, and we have done so for three years, and that might be a combination of personnel and method. It might be a little bit to do [with the fact that] we haven’t had stability in our back end, but without a doubt it’s to do with how can we find the method that best suits our personnel, and that is on me.

“But it hasn’t helped [that] as soon we’re trying to teach a method, we haven’t had the same blokes doing it over and over.”

Wipe the draft, replace it with …

In asserting that it has never been harder for the bottom teams to lift themselves, Clarkson put on record his view that the draft is failing to equalise.

His radical blueprint is to scrap the draft, given the compromises with academies and father-sons, and replace it with an academy system for all clubs, without geographic restrictions.

“This isn’t just about North Melbourne. It’s about West Coast Eagles, about Richmond, it’s about Essendon and all those clubs that happen to find themselves [down for a prolonged period] and the competition saying, ‘We’ll give you access to good draft picks’. But you deny this access to NSW, you deny this access to Queensland, you deny us access to Northern Territory, and in 12 months’ time you’re going to deny us access to Tasmania.

“I’d develop academies right around the country because I think this it is the best pathway model for every kid in the country, boys and girls. The clubs would have academies.”

Clarkson’s model would not have geographic restrictions. “I’d wipe the draft altogether … the best system in the old VFL footy was when a club got an opportunity to have an area of the country, and you go and invest in your heartland … I’m saying make the zone Australia, so anyone can get a player from anywhere.”

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In Clarkson’s model, clubs could recruit players at 14, 15 and 16 years of age. But wouldn’t such a system further favour wealthy or advantaged clubs like Collingwood?

“It would if it was a free for all,” he replied. “But if there’s a cap and you can only pick the best 10 players.”

He suggested a financial cap on signing on those teenagers, adding that the best players at 14 were not necessarily elite at 18, offering the examples of North’s Craig Sholl (not elite at 14) and Garry Lyon (elite at 14 and remained so).

“You might support that with education grants … whilst they’re 14, 15, 16 years of age, they might stay at home, but probably at 18 years of age, you’re making a choice about whether you’ll put them on your senior list.”

His ruminations and radical blueprint came from experiences. Hawthorn had priority picks in 2004 and 2005 that assisted Clarkson’s dynastic team, in a purer draft.

“That has come about because I’ve sat there in the job that I’m doing and saying, ‘Geez, this is a hell of a lot harder than I’ve ever experienced and seen before’.”

Clarkson says the ever-changing recruiting/draft rules made it harder for clubs to plan around.

“So North missed on Ryley Sanders and Melbourne missed on Mac Andrews, who they’ve been developing since he was 14 or 15, and they abolish that rule for that particular year because of [Jamarra] Ugle-Hagan. Then Mac Andrew doesn’t become the replacement for Steven May and Jake Lever when he finishes up,” Clarkson explained.

North Melbourne have been unable to lure free agents or high-value mature players because players wanted success quickly.

“Until you actually become a commodity, where people say they’re making significant progress, and we can see where they’re going to be in two years’ time, but right at the moment, they’re saying, ‘Oh, we can see where you’re going to be in six years’ time’.”

The captaincy, and why Simpkin gave it up

Jy Simpkin’s exploration of a trade to Collingwood made his captaincy untenable. Clarkson’s explanation of Simpkin’s request was that the ex-skipper was “looking at his football mortality and wondering, ‘When is this all going to happen for me?’

“He had some challenges he was dealing with both on the field and off the field. Last year, the on-field stuff was more that we were playing him in a role as a high half-forward/midfielder that, we felt, was where he was really well-suited to play. And to his credit, he tried his guts out to play that role, really, really well. But he just couldn’t play it to the level either he or we would want on a regular basis.

“We’re pretty pleased with his progress there, but he just felt he couldn’t read the game anywhere near as well in that spot, as opposed to playing in the midfield.”

This year, Simpkin was slated to play “more around the footy, midfield, wing”.

The new skipper Nick Larkey had lived through North’s struggles.

“But he’s also got this unbelievable emotional intelligence of knowing the mood of the group, the mood of the club, the mood of the wider football community,” Clarkson said.

“In a way that allows our players to be in a good spot to play their best footy.”

Wardlaw was another intriguing player, the midfielder’s progress having been stymied by repeated hamstring injuries. Clarkson saw a parallel with his former champion skipper at Hawthorn, Luke Hodge.

“George Wardlaw hasn’t been able to get going. It was no different to Hodgey. When he first started, it’s like he had stress fractures, he had groins, and it’s like, ‘Guys, is he ever going to get there?’

“But he found a way. He learnt the position to play and also the professionalism around the game that allowed him to just get continuity with his footy.

“They’re very different players, George and Hodgey. But what is very, very similar is their first three or four years of footy.”

Clarkson revisited the vexed subject of Hawthorn, from whom he was estranged for a time after the AFL’s investigation that left him, Chris Fagan and some Indigenous ex-players emotionally bruised – the coach leaving his North Melbourne coaching duties during 2023.

“That was some of the toughest times I’ve had to endure. But I’ve had to endure other tough things in my life, too,” he said.

“You know, [I] lost a brother-in-law to brain cancer and I lost another brother to a car accident when I was a young fella. So, there’s things in your life that you’ve just got to cope with. And the footy parallel to that was what Fages and I had to cope with … but, you know, that’s done and dusted.”

Clarkson stood on the MCG for Hawthorn’s 100-year anniversary in the VFL/AFL last year, he said, to acknowledge the contribution of key Hawthorn people – John Kennedy, David Parkin, and John Kilpatrick in particular – to Clarkson and his wife Caryn.

“It was my way of saying thank you, back to them.”

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