Alastair Clarkson and Hawthorn have agreed to part ways at the end of the season, according to reports.
The Age's Caroline Wilson and Sam McClure are reporting that the four-time premiership coach agreed to a full payout on Thursday.
"It's an unmitigated disaster," Gerard Whateley told SEN in the immediate aftermath.
"Jeff Kennett believes he is cleverer than every other person in the room, and he fancies himself as a master politician.
"He has failed Hawthorn on absolutely every front as he has tried to manoeuvre this."
It comes just days after Clarkson and coach-in-waiting Sam Mitchell emphatically denied on SEN that a proposed handover would be brought forward at the latter’s behest.
“On six occasions I’ve signed a contract with this club, and on every one it was in sickness or in health, we’re going to continue until the end of the contract,” Clarkson explained to reporters ahead of Round 19.
“In lots of this journey we’ve been in a healthy position, but like in life, there’ll be times when it’s a challenge.
“Once I was no longer going to be the coach of the Hawthorn Football Club at the end of next year, the sceptics were saying ‘he’ll move straight away.’
“(It’s) in sickness or in health for me. I’m going to continue on and do this role until the end of next year.”
Mitchell was categoric when asked whether he intended to take the reins from Clarkson sooner than the end of 2022.
“Everything we are working towards is Clarko coaching next year and me maintaining the role which I love working with these young fellas and watching them progress and now a heap of them are getting games at the moment and I’m absolutely loving that," he told Whateley on July 21.
“We’re working on all of these little details and that’s part of what a good organisation does. It plans for the future.
"Right now we’re 17th on the ladder and everyone at Hawthorn is working so hard … and yet all of these people (in the media) who have a genuine lack of knowledge about the internal workings.
"There’s all this ‘I spoke to this person at the club’. I find it very hard to believe that anyone who is speaking to anyone at the club would say we don’t get along because it’s not a reality.”