When Jarryd Roughead leads the Hawks up the race and Alastair Clarkson heads up to the coaches’ box on Monday afternoon, they will be (perhaps unknowingly) preparing to notch up a pretty special milestone.
Roughead and Clarkson arrived at Waverley within months of each other; Clarkson was appointed as Senior Coach in September 2004, while Roughead came via Pick 2 in the 2004 Draft that November.
Since then, Roughead has played 249 games under Clarkson’s leadership, with the Easter Monday clash set to bring up 250.
They will become the 10th player/coach combination in league history to achieve this feat, following on from Gordon Coventry (306 games, Jock McHale, entire career), Bill Hutchison (282 games, Dick Reynolds), Dustin Fletcher (276 games, Kevin Sheedy), Jordan Lewis (260 games, Alastair Clarkson), Sam Mitchell (257 games, Alastair Clarkson), Dean Cox (256 games, John Worsfold), Luke Hodge (255 games, Alastair Clarkson), Harry Collier (253 games, Jock McHale, entire career) and James Hird (253 games, Kevin Sheedy, entire career).
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Clarkson also continues to climb up the coaching ranks; he is set to coach his 307th game at Hawthorn this week, taking him to equal sixth (tied with Norm Smith, Melbourne) for the most games coached at one club. He still has a way to go to reach the likes to Jock McHale, who holds the record with his 714 games coached at Collingwood.
Now, enjoy some candid snaps of our captain and coach from over the years, before they chalk up a well-deserved milestone.