Let's try this succession plan thing again shall we?

There will be no boardroom bloodshed at Hawthorn as an orderly arrangement for Jeff Kennett to move on from the presidency has been revealed. At least that's the plan.

We are working hard to keep you up to date with the Hawks’ busiest off-season in years. Subscribe to Hawks Insiders for all the news through Hawthorn-tinted glasses and more exclusive content.

Having failed dismally at arranging an orderly handover from Alastair Clarkson to Sam Mitchell, Hawthorn is having another go, this time from Jeff Kennett to his replacement as president.

Thursday was a big day. Within a couple of hours of a Tom Morris report on Fox Sports about a potential membership shortfall of more than a million dollars in 2022, came Kennett’s bombshell letter to Hawk members.

The lede was the AFL had come to the party with funding for the Kennedy Community Centre at Dingley and the club now had funding from all necessary parties – all three levels of government plus the League in addition to those sourced by the club – to ensure it will open as planned in 2023.

But then came the revelation that a newly-formed nominations committee, comprising three directors and three non-directors will decide by June 30 next year who will be the next president of the club. “On the agreement of the Board of their recommendation, and the acceptance of the nominee, and his or her availability to commence work, we will then decide when I hand over the baton.”

In effect, the powerful Hawks For Change grassroots movement, with its impressive 2900 signatures, has achieved its goal. Kennett will not continue as president as planned until the end of 2023, and indeed, might be gone considerably earlier.

There is precedent for changes of president in the middle of a season. It happened at Melbourne this year with Kate Roffey succeeding Glen Bartlett in April.

Initially Kennett was up for a fight, convinced this was a Liberal v Labor battle, sparked in part by his vocal criticism of the Andrews state government over its handling of the COVID pandemic and not a referendum on his Hawk presidency.

But a series of board meetings in recent weeks convinced him to negotiate a peaceful outcome with Hawks For Change that will avoid any of the bloodletting, or the threats of court action that have occurred at other clubs. Yes Collingwood, we’re looking at you.

End of an era - or two.

So what now?

Ian Silk’s nomination for the board will go ahead, while Andy Gowers will withdraw his bid and instead will become the chair of the nominations committee. Board member Tim Shearer, who has the strong support of Kennett, will now likely remain and maintain his significant role as the principal fundraiser for Dingley. Simon Taylor’s Kennett-backed board bid appears over.

We are yet to learn whether Charles Spicer and Jennifer Holdstock will continue their campaigns.

There will be more appropriate times to discuss and debate Kennett’s legacy (hint: his first stint as president warrants a better grade than his second) but Hawthorn members and supporters have been craving change at the top and a fresh outlook at board level and now they get it.

Silk, the former boss of Australian Super, is the favourite to become the next president of Hawthorn, although existing board members Owen Wilson, Katie Hudson and Peter Nankivell will at least consider putting up their hands.

It has been a whirlwind few weeks for Hawthorn, but also necessary. The groundswell of support that Hawks For Change engendered served as a timely and welcome reminder that Hawthorn people are still engaged and are no longer content to watch passively as the club veers dangerously down the path towards irrelevancy. The golden era, for all intents and purposes, is now ancient history.

And the president remembered – just in time – that no individual is larger than the club. Had he continued to dig his heels, he ran the risk of leaving the club in worst shape than he found it, and that it is a descriptor that no club president wants scrawled on his epitaph.

---

Ashley Browne is a Hawks Insiders contributor, the author of A Season Like No Other: AFL 2020, and a senior writer at the AFL Record and SEN. Follow him on Twitter @hashbrowne.

Join the Hawks Insiders community on Twitter and Facebook.