WITH the departure of Chris Fagan to become the new coach of the Brisbane Lions, Alastair Clarkson loses yet another key member of the off-field team that led the club to four premierships.

Since 2010, Clarkson has lost six of his assistant coaches to senior jobs at rival clubs.

Damien Hardwick (Richmond), Leon Cameron (GWS), Adam Simpson (West Coast), Luke Beveridge (Western Bulldogs) and Brendon Bolton (Carlton) all graduated from the Clarkson coaching finishing school at the Hawks and all are, or will become, long-term AFL coaches.

Fagan now joins that group, meaning a third of all AFL senior coaches are former Hawthorn assistants.

Their departures didn't affect the Hawks, nor did that of Mark Evans, head of football at the Hawks from the time Clarkson was appointed in late 2004, who departed the club on the eve of the 2013 season to become the general manager of football at the AFL.

Lions to appoint Chris Fagan as coach

But Fagan's exit leaves just two of Clarkson's long-time lieutenants still at the club. Both Andrew Russell (head of fitness) and David Rath (biomechanist and head of coaching services) have been with Clarkson since the start.

Russell is hugely important to the Hawks' football set-up because of the way he has managed the careers of veterans such as Shane Crawford, Shaun Burgoyne, Brian Lake and others over the journey as well as helping the likes of Cyril Rioli, Max Bailey and Brendan Whitecross, among others, overcome serious injuries.

Presumably he has the fitness and rehabilitation program for Jaeger O'Meara locked in and ready the moment Hawks swing a deal to bring him across from Gold Coast.

But Fagan is a huge loss. He joined the Hawks in 2008 after 10 years with Melbourne, first as director of coaching and then as GM of football after Evans moved to the AFL.

Canny and cutting edge, Fagan was the calm and collected figure who always sat by Clarkson's side on match-days, keeping the oft-combustible coach's emotions in check and the coach's box running smoothly.

By his own admission, Clarkson finds the ebbs and flows of match days challenging, and by design he refrains from communicating with his players during quarters.

"There's part of me that has to remember there will be mistakes and if I respond straight down the telephone through a mouthpiece to a player or a runner or someone on the bench who can then deliver that message, sometimes there's too much emotion attached to that," he said in a recent interview with Monash University's alumni magazine.

He explained that by having an intermediary deliver the message, "the emotional connection to it can be diluted and the message can be delivered in a different fashion, which is why we have adopted that strategy".

Together, Clarkson and Fagan have built the best football operation in the AFL, admittedly with the benefit of their club having pockets as deep as those of any club in the AFL.

So while Fagan will leave Hawthorn with nothing but universal love, praise and much gratitude, it raises questions about what the Hawks will do next.

They like to promote from within at Hawthorn, and there are big wraps on Jason Burt, who added football administration to his previous role as head of player services and welfare.

Graham Wright has done a super job as Hawks list manager, but the best outcome for now might be to keep him precisely where he is.

The Hawks might also consider elevating Brett Ratten to some sort of formal senior assistant role. Unofficially he already is, and the Hawks are fortunate to have Ratten, who so clearly has all the tools to be a senior coach, in their ranks.

As they reset their focus after their lowest finish for six years, not having Fagan around adds another dimension to what shapes as a different and intriguing off-season for the Hawks.

And you wonder at what stage Clarkson will start to feel heartily sick of his best people moving to other clubs and Hawthorn's intellectual property making its way to yet another competitor.