Four-time AFL premiership coach Alastair Clarkson has been heavily linked to the Bombers head coaching role over the past few days – but a Hawks great has revealed the depth of the supercoach’s ‘hatred’ for Essendon.
Clarkson has been linked to every coaching role under the sun – whether it be vacant or not – since stepping down from Hawthorn last season after 16 years at the club.
After Essendon’s diabolical 84-point loss to Port Adelaide on Sunday evening, rumours immediately emerged that coach Ben Rutten’s job was under threat.
His tumultuous 43-game tenure at the club includes a 17-26 win-loss record, with the Bombers now likely to finish 2022 in 15th after making the finals last season.
Former Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson has been linked to the head coaching role at Essendon
Hawks legend Dermott Brereton was surprised, however, given the depth of hatred that exists between Hawthorn, Clarkson and the Bombers
Given the way Clarkson transformed Hawthorn from a rabble to a four-time premiership side, it is logical for Essendon to consider going after the AFL’s best coach over the past two decades.
But Hawks legend Dermott Brereton isn’t having a bar of it.
‘Put it this way, I know (former Hawks CEO) Ian Robson a lot better than Clarko (Clarkson) and he will tell you when he ended up going to Essendon (in 2009) he got a voicemail,’ Brereton told the Herald Sun.
‘He recalls that the message just said, ‘Tell me it’s not true. Not them … Not them.’
Dermott Brereton said ‘Clarko’ has a very long history with the Essendon Football Club
This from the man who was pictured burning a Bombers jersey in 2005 on the back page of a major Melbourne newspaper.
This is is no ordinary rivalry.
There’s a long history between Clarkson/Hawthorn and the Bombers, two of Melbourne’s oldest, proudest clubs with fanatical supporter bases.
Clarkson infamously said Essendon ‘ambushed the game’ in 2014 in the wake of the Bombers drugs scandal from two years prior.
Alastair Clarkson (left) celebrates Hawthorn’s third premiership in a row with captain Luke Hodge in 2015
He had to be held back from coming to blows with Bombers legend Matthew Lloyd in the champion forward’s last game, labelling him a ‘sniper’ after a dirty, late hit left Hawthorn midfielder Brad Sewell with multiple face fractures.
Clarkson gave Robson a heated send-off for leaving the club and joining Essendon in 2009, while he had a dig at Bombers coach James Hird after he’d said he ‘hated Hawthorn more than anyone else’ in 2015.
He had a similar dig at another Essendon coach, Kevin Sheedy, in 2007 when the veteran insinuated the Hawks were using illegal tactics.
Amazingly, going back as far as the early ’80s, Clarkson would likely have been an Essendon player if not for a paperwork error – but the fiery forward instead played 134 AFL games for the Kangaroos and Demons.
Ex-Hawks premiership player Campbell Brown (pictured) has joked he would disown Alastair Clarkson if his former coach moves to Essendon
So deep is the hatred between the two clubs, Campbell Brown, who won a premiership under Clarkson in 2008, joked he may never talk to him again if he does in fact join in the Bombers.
‘I will sever my relationship with Alastair Clarkson if he goes to Essendon,’ Brown said on his podcast, Browny’s Podcast.
It’s been 6555 days since Essendon last won a final, according to the famous Twitter account that updates the count every day.
Fans really are fed up.
An Essendon fan pokes fun at the club’s dire finals record at the Bombers insipid 89-point loss to Port Adelaide on Sunday
Rutten has been under huge pressure given some of the diabolical performances of the side this year.
The men in red and black have lacked cohesion, effort and any distinctive game plan at times, with damning vision emerging every week of the lack of defensive heart shown by Bombers players.
Ben Rutten leaves the field alongside gutted Essendon players after the club’s huge loss to Port Adelaide on Sunday
Clarkson is exactly the sort of hard-nosed coach the club needs to turn its side around; but there is certainly plenty of history there that would make the union interesting, for want of a better term.
In comparison to Rutten’s lackluster head coaching record (39 per cent) – though he did inherit a highly-flawed roster – Clarkson has won almost 60 per cent of his 390 matches, which is a phenomenal return.
Can ‘Clarko’ lead Essendon back to the promised land? Will Rutten even lose his job?
There’s a lot to play out still with so many teams chasing good coaches ahead of 2023.
Alastair Clarkson vs Essendon: A heated rivalry
1980s: A paperwork error sees Clarkson join North Melbourne, which irked Essendon, who had believed he did it deliberately
2005: Essendon denies Clarkson his first ever coaching win after a last gasp goal, that umpires then admitted was not actual a legal goal
2007: Clarkson slams then-Bombers coach Kevin Sheedy for accusing the Hawks of using illegal tactics
2009: Hawks CEO Ian Robson left the club in the middle of the season to take the same role at Essendon, which incensed Clarkson and led to a very angry voicemail
2009: Clarkson has to be held back from confronting Essendon forward Matthew Lloyd on the field after the Bombers legend broke Hawk Brad Sewell’s face with a late, dirty hit
2014: In the wake of Essendon’s scandalous drugs saga, Clarkson says the club had ‘ambushed the game’. A year later his skipper Sam Mitchell would mock the club with a jab gesture during a match
2015: The Hawks smash Essendon by 39 points, with Clarkson using a back page headline saying Bombers coach James Hird ‘hated Hawthorn more than anyone else’
There have been plenty of spiteful clashes between Essendon and Hawthorn, including this match that featured an all-in brawl in the 2004 season
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