Brisbane coach left ‘shocked’ by close friend Alastair Clarkson’s sacking

Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan was left shocked and saddened by North Melbourne’s decision to sack his close friend Alastair Clarkson, believing the Kangaroos were “unfair” in their assessment of the four-time AFL premiership-winning mentor.

The Kangaroos announced on Wednesday that Clarkson had been axed after four seasons of a five-year deal.

“Having consulted widely across the club, it has become clear that Alastair no longer has the belief from enough people at the club that he is the right coach to take this group forward,” Kangaroos president Sonja Hood said.

“Once we knew that, it felt disrespectful to him to have him coach into 2027, knowing we would not extend him at the end of that.

“This club needs a coach who can coach for the modern game. It’ll be a coach who knows what they’re doing and it’ll be the coach who’s the best fit for this club.”

Clarkson was also criticised for not being able to “delegate” and players being “confused” due to messaging becoming a “little bit muddier”.

Fagan, whose 30-year friendship with Clarkson included working together with success at Hawthorn, said the sacking was a “big shock to me”.

“I actually thought that can’t be right because I felt like under his guidance, North really started to improve, and that we could all see their growth this year,” the Lions coach said.

“It just reminded me of how tough coaching can be that when a bloke who has been as successful as him as a coach can be jettisoned as quickly as that.

“I hope he’s OK. I just hope that the feedback that was given at the press conference (on Wednesday) about him was given to him in person at some stage during this year so that he had a chance to act on it.

“Feedback ... if you get it at the right time, you can do something about it. I don’t know whether that was the case or not, but I just hope that it was because it was a pretty fierce press conference, the way that he was spoken about.

“I reckon (it was) probably an unfair description of the man that’s done an awful lot for footy.”

Fagan said Clarkson, who guided the Hawks to premiership glory in 2008. 2013, 2014 and 2015, had “set the trend in a whole lot of areas in coaching”.

“Particularly in his days at Hawthorn with his capacity to go overseas, learn from other codes, (and) bring ideas back that could be applied to the Hawthorn team situation, and that led to an era where they won four premierships,” said two-time AFL premiership-winning coach Fagan, who added how much he had learnt from Clarkson.