Dear members and supporters,
Today we announced that we have parted ways with senior coach, Alastair Clarkson.
In 2022 we overtly targeted Alastair Clarkson as our senior coach. Quite simply, he was the best coach available, and the best coach for our club at that time.
I don’t need to back over any of that. Rather than describing the club as it was, let me point to the club as it is now – stable, strong, aligned and full of excellent people.
North Melbourne is a place people want to come to and want to stay at.
Alastair, along with Todd Viney and Jen Watt and their teams, has been a key part of the rebuilding of our club, on and off the field.
Alastair's strength and knowledge gave us the time and the space to make changes we needed to make, and to lay the foundations for the club we are now. We will always be grateful for this.
But now, 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.
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.
Our culture among the players, staff and coaches is undeniably strong, but we need a consistently clear and concise on-field strategy to sit alongside that.
We have made progress and won more games but we won't shy away from our desire to want more from this talented group. This is unashamedly a football decision.
Make no mistake - our next piece of silverware will have his fingerprints all over it. And regardless of how they might feel right at this moment, Alastair and his family will always belong to this club.
So where to now?
From here, Jen, Todd and our Board will move swiftly to form a process to find our next senior AFL coach.
I have said this many times before – the fundamentals of the club are as sound as they have ever been. We have a young and exciting list, our financials are as strong, we have a full book of incredible sponsors, and we have the best and most loyal supporters in the country.
This will be a highly sought-after job.
Just as Alastair was the man for the times four years ago, we’re confident we’ll find the right person to take us forward again.
