The journalist, the Herald Sun’s Jon Ralph then defended the story, while not giving away his sources, leaving the readers to determine who is telling the truth and who is not.
Having read the story and listened to both Kennett and Ralph on SEN this morning, I’m none the wiser as to whose version of events is closer to the truth.
On the face of it, asking the coach to take a day off is a dumb idea. The coach is the coach, he’s paid big bucks to do his job, and he needs to front up every week to prepare the side and then to pull the strings on match day.
For this reason, the story today gives succour to the army of Kennett-bashers, both those who support the Hawks and those who don’t.
But I’m going to stick my neck out and defend Kennett, at least when it comes to the accountability he demands of everyone at Hawthorn. It is not a very fashionable thing for a journalist to do, particularly one who spent a decade at The Age at a time when he was premier of Victoria and therefore at war with the newspaper every day.
Hawthorn members elected Kennett to lead and if there was a written job description for the role, I would argue that he ticks every box.
Kennett is transparent and he makes everyone in the organisation accountable for their actions. His online ‘letter to members’ on the club website every Monday during the season is not just breathlessly anticipated by the football media looking for a story, it gives the 50,000 Hawthorn members a feel for the pulse of the club.
Rest assured that when he publicly demands more of the players, coaches and administrators, he is only echoing the views of thousands of Hawthorn supporters. He was right to carpet the team and the coach last year; they were underachieving during a time when the club’s premiership window was fully ajar and it is interesting to note that Clarkson himself admitted that the coaching staff got it wrong for the first part of last year.
Kennett has every right to call out the football department at Hawthorn for underachievement in 2009 and more so last year. Or are only senior members of the football media allowed to make that call?
Not everything Kennett has done as president is right. He has never satisfactorily explained his remarks of last year that the Hawks would continue to play four home games a year in Tasmania even though the numbers suggest the club might now be better off playing all 11 in Victoria.
His obsession with Tasmania can be tiresome and there will likely be real opposition from the Hawthorn heartland if he makes good on his occasional suggestion that the club would like to play even more home games at Aurora Stadium. At some stage, the Hawks need to reaffirm their Victorian roots.
Many Hawthorn supporters would also prefer that he confine his remarks about the state of the game to the affairs of his own club and not others, even if he often speaks the truth and is only commenting in response to a request from the media.
But then again, Kennett is the same guy who at the end of 2007 delivered a business plan called ‘five 2 fifty’ that promised two flags and 50,000 members within five years. “It was called brave by some, arrogant by others,” he noted last year, but if the Hawks deliver a second flag in the next two seasons - then the plan will have succeeded.
Kennett will be gone by the end of the season and, it must be noted, at his own behest. He was the one who initiated a change to the club constitution that introduced mandatory retirement periods for club directors (nine years) and the president (six years).
No doubt, many at Hawthorn will be pleased to see the back of him.
But there is an expectation that when you are the president of the Hawthorn Football Club, that you leave the club, whenever that may be, in significantly better shape than you found it. By any measure, Kennett will have done that.
The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or the clubs.
