Alastair Clarkson runs eight or nine kilometres through bayside Melbourne in the early hours of every Wednesday, alongside his friends Mark Brayshaw, Ben Crowe, Andrew Grant and Damien Hardwick.

The AFL super coach, who by dusk on Saturday could sit alongside modern-day greats Tom Hafey, David Parkin, Kevin Sheedy and Leigh Matthews with a fourth premiership, never stops moving forward but it was a journey he outlined to his running group on Christmas Eve last year that underlines the best of the man and what sporting success can achieve.

Clarkson explained he was spending the day before Christmas travelling to Gippsland to visit a man whose eyes had opened the previous day for the first time since being paralysed with Guillain-Barre syndrome. And he had three bicycles in the back of his car for the man's children for Christmas. Clarkson did not know the man, a Hawthorn supporter, but he handed the bikes to the children's grandfather demanding no fanfare nor credit.

Clarkson's compassion did not stem simply from his own frightening experience with the autoimmune condition that attacked his nerve system and sidelined him for five games during Hawthorn's 2014 premiership campaign. He has embraced his role as a statesman of the game - a position that has challenged him and his famous temper at times - and it is that compassion that comes to the forefront in times of tragedy.

Standing side by side with Nathan Buckley and the Hawthorn and Collingwood players after the July Friday night game that followed the shocking death of his former colleague Phillip Walsh, telling jokes and sharing memories at the bedside of the dying Dean Bailey; Clarkson along with his assistant coaches have fallen in behind the organised humanity led by their football boss Chris Fagan in managing Brett Ratten's tentative return to football following the death of his son Cooper.

Clarkson was still an adolescent in Kaniva when he lost his elder brother Andrew, 24,  to a drink-driving accident. By his own admission he went off the rails for several years after that; over-indulging in alcohol and cigarettes and struggling to contain his own turbulence, a turbulence that saw him break the jaw of Carlton's Ian Aitken in 1987 at The Oval in London.

It all changed for Clarkson not long afterwards when he became committed to his future wife Caryn, an engaging, cheerful and intelligent woman - also a schoolteacher - who, according to Clarkson, helped him turn his life around. Hawthorn people still shake their heads at how Caryn Clarkson must have coped last year as her husband slowly recovered from his illness and had to be prevented by the club from returning to work two weeks before the club believed he was ready.

In the words of one friend he was the classic control freak; moving out of control as he worked to regain it. Jason Dunstall, the Hawthorn legend who led the surprise Clarkson appointment in late 2004 said this week that the then Port Adelaide assistant - who had previously sacrificed a better wage to coach his own team - was far ahead of the other contenders with his game plan, his long-term plans for Hawthorn and his football philosophies. Of course, added Dunstall, he had some rough edges that "we still have to knock out of him from time to time".

The Hawks have never spoken about the 2015 mid-season board meeting that followed the late-night Anzac Day incident in which Clarkson was captured lashing out at an abusive drunk. Clarkson's initial inadequate response was eventually followed by an apology delivered by press release two nights later.

A subsequent scheduled meeting of the directors deemed that the club needed to confront the coach. Not only did the coach have significant priors in terms of emotional outbursts, but the board's view was that Clarkson needed to be warned about protecting his own brand and the image of the club. With Clarkson's new contract talks then on the verge of starting, Hawthorn chairman Andrew Newbold put his hand up for the task.

Newbold played down the meeting that followed. "The board left it to my discretion as to how I handled it and we addressed it over a cup of coffee," Newbold said. "I suggested he'd made an error of judgment and that he should have kept walking. Strictly speaking it was not so much president to coach but just as a friend addressing the brand issues for him."

Clarkson later fronted the board and conceded exactly that. That he should have kept walking.

Perhaps Clarkson's best post-grand final press conference followed the only one he has lost as a coach, in 2012, when the favoured Hawks lost to Sydney. He spoke then of the perspective of a sporting result in a week that Jill Meagher's murder had devastated Victorians. The first thing he said to Mark Brayshaw when the latter visited him the following week was how happy he was for "Horse" - Swans coach John Longmire. The second thing was how deeply the loss had cut him.

"It's a pretty raw time after a grand final," said Longmire, who met Clarkson as a 16-year-old North Melbourne rookie. Longmire had been taken to London for the exhibition game that became known as "The Battle of Britain" and led to the 19-year-old Clarkson being suspended for four weeks. Longmire and Clarkson became close friends after that bad start. A formidable force off the field, it was that pair who engineered the early days of Andrew Demetriou's rise to power when they anointed him in the late 1990s as the new boss of the AFL Players Association. Last year Clarkson also led, with Longmire's support, the restructure of the AFL Coaches' Association. This involved something of a brutal coup, which ousted chairman David Parkin and CEO Danny Frawley, who was replaced by Brayshaw.

Disillusioned with the body's performance in 2013 during the Essendon drugs scandal, Clarkson led the move to mandate a structured level of coaching experience to ensure no coach could again be appointed to oversee AFL players without any experience. "There's no doubt in my mind that Alastair's enthusiasm will make AFL coaching a far better and more organised profession," said Brayshaw. "If I had to go to war I'd take him with me."

Gillon McLachlan witnessed that first hand when he addressed the coaches in the pre-season of 2009. The AFL had some TV media commitments for the coaches and Clarkson unloaded upon the league's then second-in-command. AFL officials later said they had never seen the colour drain so dramatically from McLachlan's face. The following day Paul Roos and Neil Craig called him to apologise for the Clarkson expletive-punctuated tirade.

Now the AFL CEO, McLachlan said he had only admiration for the dynasty the coach has led, along with the manner in which he has reinvented international rules. Clarkson has re-designed Australia's game plan to embrace the slower brilliance of players such as Luke Hodge, Jobe Watson and Sam Mitchell. Four days after losing the elimination final to West Coast, he and his close friend and fitness lieutenant Andrew Russell were putting Dustin Fletcher through one last international rules  fitness test at an oval on Brighton's South Road.

"His success is no accident," said McLachlan. "He is hard-working, driven and passionate about the industry." Clarkson's thirst for knowledge saw him call up Ross Lyon at the end of 2013 during a visit to Perth. The two men barely knew each other and believed they had little in common, but one coffee led to half a day together with Lyon driving Clarkson to the airport. Lyon and Chris Scott now share the international rules coaching with Clarkson - a job that has become an intensive three-week annual campaign that gives Hawthorn and Clarkson a break from each other.

In March this year most of the AFL coaches headed for a collegiate dinner on the eve of the season launch. Clarkson collected Longmire in the Hawthorn property steward's van he had commandeered for the day because the Clarksons were moving house. Longmire joked he obviously couldn't afford a furniture removal truck and the two 2014 grand final coaches made quite a sight in the van as they headed down Chapel Street for St Kilda's Riva. The dinner was attended by the Scott brothers, Nathan Buckley, former Clarkson lieutenants Hardwick, Luke Beveridge, Adam Simpson and Leon Cameron among others and the group eventually had to be ejected as the staff attempted to close up amid the fervent conversation.

Clarkson and Longmire fell alongside each other in the bowels of the MCG walking out together onto the arena after the final siren last September when Hawthorn had turned the tables on Sydney for Clarkson's third flag. "We walked to our respective interchanges but not much was said," recalled Longmire. "Regardless of how close you are and that you absolutely wish each other the best, there's not much you can say. I certainly appreciate that he's a massive competitor."

Clarkson and Longmire did not fall out when Sydney came out of the blue at the end of 2013 and signed former Hawthorn champion Lance Franklin. But Clarkson felt so let down by his manager Liam Pickering, who also managed Franklin and Longmire, that he severed their professional relationship, moving to Ricky Ponting's manager James Henderson, an experienced agent who seems more determined to guide his client's legacy as a statesman of the game.

That legacy now sees him coaching for a fourth flag in his fifth grand final against Simpson, one of his former proteges. Carlton's new coach Brendon Bolton is the latest. That significant intellectual property leaves the club each year with promoted former Hawk assistants is not lost on the Hawks hierarchy. Earlier this season they noticed a whiteboard in the West Coast dressing rooms with "Time To Hunt" the headline. This had been a Hawthorn saying.

Said Hardwick: "He challenges people but equally places great trust in them to get the job done ... that drives continuous improvement." Brayshaw believes the two pivotal relationships which drove his success at Hawthorn were those with Dunstall, who backed him in the face of strong challenges, opposition from president Jeff Kennett and slow improvement, and Shane Crawford. "He upended Crawford's world, got rid of his mates and made it clear Crawf and the team had to go backwards to go forwards," said Brayshaw. "The trust Crawford showed in him and vice versa was pivotal early on."

Each year Hawthorn sponsor a Clarkson overseas trip where he investigates systems from European soccer or American football or even international business. This year's trip has not yet been planned but Clarkson will stay true to his private pledge of trying 10 new tricks during the off-season in the belief one or two could work next year. Dunstall still regards his decision to attack the Kokoda Track with his first young group of Hawks as the most significant in the rebuilding of the club's culture and spirit.

After the 2012 loss, Clarkson, who no longer remains the hands-on coach at training he was in the early years, became a regular attendee at the players' leadership group meetings, knowing he would pick up some thread within his on-field leaders. "He's changed the game and he's been prepared to keep changing," said another coaching foe Ken Hinkley. "Speaking as someone who has only coached against him and without having had a real relationship with him, it's inspiring to see him always looking at new stuff.

"It's true he's had great players but there is a competitiveness in him that makes him great and a little unpredictable. He's become almost a figurehead for the coaches now. He's taken that mantle and it's great to sit and listen to him."

On the Friday after last year's flag, Clarkson and the 2014 premiership cup set off on another journey, this time to Geelong to visit the coach's elderly parents. Sitting in West Gate Bridge traffic Clarkson noticed a car alongside him adorned with Hawthorn stickers. He wound down his window, lifted the cup alongside him and waved it at the man behind the adjoining wheel. Sadly for the Hawthorn-loving other driver, the traffic then opened up and the apparition that was the grinning premiership coach drove off.

Whatever the result Hawthorn and Clarkson remain determined to continue their beautiful friendship. Contracted until the end of next season the 47-year-old, who has taken the Hawks to eight finals and five grand finals in 11 years, looks set to extend that partnership for at least one more two-year contract. This will take football's unlikely elder statesman, whose club has defied equalisation, past John Kennedy, Hawthorn's father figure, as the club's longest-serving coach.