Alastair Clarkson has made his next move behind the scenes at North Melbourne with The Age’s Sam McClure revealing that he’ll bring another Hawthorn name across with him to Arden Street.
Respected Hawks figure Cameron Matthews is the individual set to switch brown and gold for blue and white, as he’ll become the Kangaroos’ head of football operations and work under fellow new hire general manager of football Todd Viney.
McClure expects Matthews to take a hands-on “day-to-day” role at the club and report directly to Viney.
“We know that Alastair Clarkson has brought Todd Viney with him to be the head of football,” McClure said.
“They’ve cleared out their football department, and they have their new head of football operations who will work straight under Todd Viney and be the day-to-day operator.
“That is a guy by the name of Cameron Matthews, not many people may know that name.
“If you’ve watched many Hawthorn games over the last five or six years there’s a tall, strapping, six foot five, shaved head guy that sits there with the headphones on (that’s Matthews).”
With Viney’s appointment coming alongside Clarkson’s, McClure believes this is another case of the master coach cherry-picking individuals that he has pre-existing relationships with.
“He became very close to Alastair Clarkson over the last few years of Clarko’s career at Hawthorn, clearly Clarko has decided to poach him,” McClure said.
“Existing relationship, he’s already built-up trust with him, which is the Clarko way as we’ve seen, and he’ll work directly under Todd Viney.”
Matthews has been Hawthorn’s football operations manager since January 2021 and served as the club’s player development manager before that from late 2014.