Round 9 - Richmond v Hawthorn

Saturday 26 May 2012 at MCG

Ersatz Hawthorn...dousing the eternal flame

Omens versus facts


On Saturday night I went to see a band called Blackout in Burnley, which couldn’t have been more appropriate really. Those who know the geographic layout of Melbourne will know that to get from Hawthorn to Richmond, you only have to travel through one suburb, Burnley. And clearly something happened to the Hawks as they made this journey on Saturday morning; they evidently suffered some sort of blackout or outage, experienced some sort of non-connectivity event that obliterated their collective will and ability. We weren’t just beaten; we were thrashed! By Richmond!


Optimistic Hawks fans will look at this result and find a positive omen in the fact that the last time Richmond beat Hawthorn was in 2008, a year when we went on to win the premiership.  A more pragmatic Hawks fan might point out that on that day we lost by five goals, not 10. Far from seeing omens in defeat, I would argue that that no team which loses to Richmond by 10 goals can be a realistic chance to win the flag. I’ve searched the records back to 1971 and there's not a single instance of the eventual premiership team losing to Richmond by 10 goals or more during the season. In fact in all those 40 years, there’s been only eight occasions when the eventual premier has lost to Richmond at all – and in many of those years the teams met twice. The only happy precedent here is that on four of those occasions (1971, 1976, 1983 & 2008), the premier over which the Tigers triumphed was Hawthorn.



"The horror, the horror"


What to say about the match? Well the warning bells gave a preliminary tingle with Richmond’s first goal: after a Hawthorn miss (Buddy), the Tigers brought the ball through the centre, where Foley grabbed the loose ball and could have passed to the Richmond player on his own on the Member’s flank, or the bloke on his own on the outer flank, but instead he passed it Dustin Martin on his own about 25 metres out directly in front. That’s right, between the centre circle and the Richmond goals; there were three Richmond players and not one Hawthorn player. Not one.  Whatever zone, cluster or press we were playing, it hadn’t taken Richmond long to unpick it.  


Thus the pattern was set. The Hawks were awful all over the ground all afternoon.  Of our pitiful haul of 10 goals, five were kicked from the goal square, which is significant because from any further out we were missing. Cotchin, Deledio, Tuck and Martin thrashed Lewis, Mitchell, Sewell and Shiels. If Cotchin intercepted one of our dinky short passes, he must have intercepted 20. Just as it is tempting fate for a defender to go for a run when Cyril is in his vicinity, it is surely just as dangerous to kick laterally when Cotchin is lurking.


In the third quarter while Richmond ran free to present, passing cleanly and confidently, and Hawthorn fumbled and scrambled about to the exasperation of Hawks fans, my friend turned to me and said, “The way we’re feeling now must be how Richmond fans always feel.” 


Overall, Richmond ran harder, faster, and was more desperate. Even though it seemed at times like the ball was bouncing for them, it was essentially because they had players on the move and getting to the right spot. Despite all this, when Cyril kicked our eighth goal in time-on of the third, we were only 3 goals down and in with a chance, until of course Richmond added one more before the break, followed by seven in quick succession, or was it eight (I lost count or stopped watching), in the final term. Even Daniel Jackson kicked two goals to outscore Buddy!


Buddy


It is a favourite source of enjoyment among opposition fans to jeer and cheer at Buddy’s errors. While he does make a few, they somehow seem magnified when it’s him. But on Saturday, no one ran further, faster or harder to turn the match in our favour. In the first quarter he saw a Tiger by himself and ran 150 metres at full pace to effect a contest, then having won it, ran 150 back at full pace, eventually regaining possession and delivering the ball to Savage. Who then missed.


Of course he’s having his own well-documented troubles in front of goal and seems to have lost all confidence – kicking 1.3, including hitting the post from 15 metres out, but if all of the other players exuded the same effort as Buddy, we might not be in this predicament.



Premature evacuation


On the way home I received a text from a friend to say she’d left early, and while she rarely does, she was somewhat more relaxed about it when saw John Kennedy Snr ahead of her beating an even hastier exit.


Footy convention frowns on leaving the match early when your team is down, but I think this is wrong, and just a little sanctimonious. I don’t see it as turning your back on the team so much as simply not being able to watch anymore – like long-time Elvis fans that had to turn away from the bloated embarrassment that was the Elvis of the final Hawaii shows. They wanted to maintain the memory of the lithe, rockin’ ground-breaking Elvis, not sully it with this crude simulacrum – this ersatz Elvis. Likewise with the Hawks; it hurts to watch them being humbled. Besides, sometimes you’ve got something on later that night and you might as well get a head start. Or you just don’t want to hear the opposition theme song: “Oh we’re from Liquorland, frightening piss-pots we’re from Liquorland…”


For Hawks fans, I think that once John Kennedy Snr has left, then it’s ok for the rest of us. In fact I think they should flash a message on the scoreboard to let us know when he’s making his way to the exit. Leaving early is fine by me, and even though I did stay to the end this week, I wish I’d left about two hours earlier.


This was a truly terrible loss. A ‘season-is-over’ type loss. A ‘Caroline Wilson will be more unbearable than usual’ loss. (To say nothing of my Tiger supporting brothers, although they at least know that despite the occasional whiff of triumph, Richmond is eternally crap and there’s no point gloating too much.) Certainly it was a loss like we don’t experience all that often.  When I got home and switched on the news I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that someone had put out the eternal flame at the Shrine of Remembrance with a fire extinguisher – I too felt like the eternal flame of premiership hope had been doused.


As for Blackout on Burnley, well, they rocked and for a fleeting moment, perhaps during 'Gorecki' or 'No Surprises', I nearly forgot that we’d been through an awful, miserable ordeal just a few hours earlier. 


Final scores: Richmond 21 11 137 d Hawthorn 10 15 75

Buddy goal tally – 1 = total, 21

Buddy behind tally – 3 = total, 36