When Alastair Clarkson was appointed coach of North Melbourne in August 2022, he was the largest figure in the sport. Ange Postecoglou had advised him to take on the most challenging role he could find. At that stage, the Roos were a puddle of a team. Jason Horne-Francis couldn’t get out of the place quickly enough.
At Clarkson’s first media conference, he spoke of a club that helped steer him on the right path after his brother had been killed in a car accident. The industry was pitiless, he said. But there were good people involved too, and the occasional moments of grace. His new president, the polar opposite of Jeff Kennett at Hawthorn, ran more than 100 programs supporting kids from non-English speaking backgrounds. The North Melbourne presidency, Dr Sonja Hood says, was her “weird job”. Kane Cornes described her as “uninspiring”. But she held her nerve, stared down the industry and got her man.
