Alistair Clarkson is officially entering the twilight of his coaching career. That is at Hawthorn at least.
Clarkson will hand over the keys to assistant coach and former player Sam Mitchell at the end of 2022. No future role has been identified for Clarkson beyond that point.
The master coach has long been linked with a move to Carlton who are currently conducting an external review of their entire football department including the position of head coach David Teague.
North Melbourne offered Clarkson a monster deal at the end of 2020 but he declined. There also remains a vacancy at Collingwood should Clarko want to take a new head coaching role before 2023.
Clarkson has reiterated that he will be remaining at Hawthorn until his contract expires but we have seen this move before. Mick Malthouse said he'd be a coaching director when succeeded by Nathan Buckley at the end of 2011 before he walked away from the role.
With that in mind we take a look at some of the best possible landing spots for the four-time premiership coach.
4. Hawthorn
What if, now bare with me a minute here... What if Clarko doesn't want to work anywhere else? What's to say he isn't completely happy and fulfilled with everything he has achieved in the brown and gold and wants to pursue other interests?
Footy history tells us that is rarely the case, Kevin Sheedy's run as GWS coach tells us that. But Clarkson may be happy to hand the reigns over to Mitchell and walk away into the sunset.
Or maybe Hawthorn retain him in one way or another. Coaching director is a possibility but seems unlikely to work out for all involved. But he could easily be an ambassador of the club.
It would be unlikely that if Clarko wanted to hang around in some capacity outside of the football department (or even perhaps within it) that the club wouldn't find a way to make it work.
