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North won the race to get the most highly successful and sort after coach in the last decade or more. I was hoping he’d go to North where he started his career. They needed a big name to build the club. I grew up being a North supporter due to Barry Cable playing their in the 70’s. Poor Ben Rutten has been thrown under the bus at Essendon. Seems like a likeable fella but vision of one of the players ignoring him on the bench on the weekend isn’t a good sign for him. Hopefully that’s just one player and not the whole group and he gets to serve out his contract.

Clarkson appears to be a man of strong values and would have been horrified to see the way that Essendon treated Rutten during the week, so it was really a no brainer for him to go back to his original club. Essendon are a basket case and have been for years. They have a strong supporter group but they have had no  direction as a club since the drugs scandal and have not won a final for nearly 20 years. Michael Hurley alluded to this lack of stability in his retirement speech.