Hawthorn epitomises the intersection of business and football in a heady cocktail of aphrodisiac proportions.

The immensity of Hawthorn's latest achievement can be illustrated thus: it was in the year immediately following Melbourne's Olympic Games that a Victorian club last completed a premiership hat-trick. In those days it was Melbourne hoisting grand old flags. Whoever would have thought the next Victorian club to achieve the feat would be Hawthorn? The Hawks, after all, had never so much as made the finals prior to that 1957 season. And having done so, they were duly stomped on by the Demons on the penultimate Saturday. I have a distant recollection of being at the northern Tasmanian grand final that day and inquiring of my elder brother which teams were playing in the VFL. His reply, "Melbourne and Hawthorn", surprised me, as I'd never heard of Hawthorn.

Which was partly because I was very young, but also partly because the Hawks were next to irrelevant. For to say they'd been a chopping block until then is only true insofar as the most scarred and bloodstained of chopping blocks is concerned. As an illustration, when Hawthorn beat Carlton in that year's first semi-final it was just the club's seventh win over the Blues in 58 encounters. The record was worse still against Collingwood: three wins from 56 games. That's 10 wins over the traditional heavyweights against 104 defeats. Such was the balance of power.

But power doesn't reside in one place forever. If the Melbourne-era occurred towards the end of football's amateur age in this city, Hawthorn has emerged as the quintessential club of the professional era. Perhaps it has prospered like no other among Melbourne-based football clubs because Hawthorn became the one most likely to draw solid, but resourceful, citizens. The intersection of business and football makes for a heady cocktail of something resembling aphrodisiac proportions. Thus have been drawn to roles at clubs, through the game's professional evolution, the likes of John Elliott, Alan Bond, Geoffrey Edelsten, Bob Ansett, Ranald Macdonald, Eddie McGuire, Billy Snedden, Joseph Gutnick, Jeff Kennett, Nick Columb, Lindsay Fox, Frank Costa and a hundred other mercurial and colourful characters.

Yet the club of the so-called church-belt, Kennett apart, has largely remained a model of moderation. The sound, conservative pillars of the amateur and semi-professional era – Dr Sandy Ferguson, Phil Ryan, and Ron Cook – have been followed by the likes of Ian Dicker and Andrew Newbold. Of course, towering above them all through both eras of the game has been the club's Godfather, John Kennedy. Mark Thompson expressed the thought in recent time that Hawthorn will continue to be a great club while Kennedy lives. Understated to the point of invisibility much of the time, and like no other figure in the game's history, Kennedy has imposed an aura on his football club. From outside it appears to be such that no one who enters Hawthorn's portals – who dons the brown-and-gold – would want to disappoint him. And, of course, he isn't just a good person; he's capable of being a hard one too. That he created football teams in his own mould – fearless, tough, and capable of overcoming the odds – is part of his legacy.

Now there is another former school teacher overseeing the club's football business. And this one has exceeded even Kennedy's grand coaching achievements. Alastair Clarkson has won a fourth flag and joined the modern greats. Since Jack Worrall coached four premiership teams in 10 years before World War I, only Norm Smith and Tom Hafey have overseen four flags in quicker time than Clarkson. That the Hawthorn man has done it in a field now 50 per cent larger than those of the VFL era, and in a vastly more evolved competitive environment, must surely stamp him as the equal of any of his  predecessors. This year's triumph is his magnum opus, for there have been tripwires off the field and many times it has appeared the team's method was now being trumped by others. Yet Clarkson's Hawks kept finding a way. Not only that, they've continued to play a style of football to affirm the faith of even the most potentially disillusioned of spectators. Of all Clarkson's achievements, this might be the greatest.

Of course, there has been one other postwar premiership hat-trick between those of Melbourne and Hawthorn: Brisbane's in the years 2001-03. Not insignificantly, the coach of those teams – Leigh Matthews – also came from the Kennedy school. Curiously, both teams won the third of their premierships via the same difficult route, having lost on the first week of the finals. I rate Hawthorn's feat above that of the Lions for one particular reason. Without denigrating the effort of a great collection of players, Brisbane benefited from the early shakedown involved in the establishment of the AFL. While the so-called merger with Fitzroy didn't provide a visible boost to the playing ranks, it did give a competitive advantage via trades and other acquisitions.

No such perks were available to Hawthorn.

When Clarkson arrived in late-2004, the club was near the bottom of the ladder. Yes, the Hawks were about to win the football lottery in the 2004 national draft, but Clarkson revealed he had the courage to build steadily. Many rookie coaches have planned such a course but  lost their nerve as the temperature rose. Clarkson's team finished 14th in his first year and 11th in his second without him blinking. To win a premiership in his fourth season was a remarkable achievement.

Winning a fourth flag after 11 seasons suggests rare mastery. Kennedy himself once said that, whether it's true or not, a coach must believe he is the most important person at his football club. In Clarkson's case, is there anyone who now doubts this is so?