The Twilight Saga
It’s a strange, eerie time, twilight; no longer daytime but not quite night, not yet dark but no longer light. It’s a time when petals close and dew descends (not Stewart Dew either), the cold moon rises and the day’s warmth ends, when wild birds squawk and the undead walk. It’s an inbetween time, an interval that opens a crack in the continuum, a crack through which evil sprites slip to weave their spells, and mystical spirits transform men into beasts, and vampires turn veins into deep spring wells. Whatever otherworldly events might hold sway at twilight, it's a timeslot that doesn’t suit Hawthorn. Weird things happen at this hour, unexplained phenomena occur; Max Bailey becomes our most dangerous crumbing forward, snagging three early goals, Mitchell can’t get hold of the ball in the middle, Guerra repeatedly kicks on the full, Hodge seems to vanish, one of Breust’s kicks is ‘touched’ retrospectively, Buddy drops chest marks, spills handballs and misses easy shots (okay, so not all that weird).
Sure we still won, but it was far from convincing and if not for Cyril, it might not have been a win at all. And even then, some evil twilight hex tore his hamstring and laid him low before the end.
You’ll recall that last year’s Preliminary Final against Adelaide – another game when we struggled to assert our natural superiority and barely fell over the line – was also played at twilight. Can you spot the pattern?
But perhaps our inability at this particular hour of the day has less to do with the mystical nature of twilight, the moon rising and vampires stalking the earth, than it does with more mundane matters like ‘bodyclock’ adjustment.
Is it perhaps that the game starts at the time it really should be ending? Are the players’ bodies winding down naturally when we need them to be warming up? Is it that it’s too late for an afternoon match and too early for a night match, leaving the players in a state of disequilibrium? I know I’m usually enjoying a quiet alcohol fuelled snooze at about that time on a Sunday, so I can’t blame the players if they’re less than fully alert.
Blood sucking vampires
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| The umpires take the field for Sunday's twilight match - photo: 2all.co.il |
A trio of blood sucking vampires…hmm, sounds familiar…perhaps something like Luke Farmer, Heath Ryan and Matt Stevick, the trio of field umpires officiating on Sunday evening who seemed determined to suck the life out of the match. They certainly seemed to be of some otherworldly genus.
One notable factor in the Hawks’ victory this week was that according to all the key statistical data, North Melbourne was by far the superior team, winning the inside 50 count 63 to 47, contested possessions 149 to 126, hit-outs 47 to 26, kicks 216 to 204 and handballs 134 to 126.
These figures alone would normally equate to a comfortable North victory, but another statistic revealed an even greater discrepancy between the two sides; free kicks. The free kick count was 30 to 15 in favour of North – that’s double the number of free kicks. Double! This includes 10 in the final quarter alone, including a passage of four free kicks that took the ball from Hawthorn’s forward line to North Melbourne’s without any other type of intervening disposal, culminating in Lindsay ‘Melissa Wu’ Thomas kicking his final goal – his second at least from a free kick. It’s great that Lindsay has fixed his kicking from last season, now we just need the umpires to improve in equal measure and get better at spotting some of his blatant staging.
Despite these evil portents, good ultimately prevailed. And just as Edward and Bella thwarted James (Brayshaw?) and his evil coven in Twilight, Hawthorn thwarted North, winning by 3 points.
The third thing
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| Hawk fans look away - photo: Herald Sun |
The experience of lying back in the dentist chair undergoing emergency root canal surgery with its drilling and scraping, its grating and grinding, was not unlike watching Hawthorn struggling to get the ball forward and maintain possession, with its fumbling and bungling, its botching and blundering. It was excruciating - the football that is. At least the dentist administers an anaesthetic.
As we know, catastrophes and ill luck run in threes, so after the hernia and the root canal, I’ve been waiting for the third curse to strike, wondering what diabolical form it might take. And then it happened; with the Hawks trailing by two points, Gunston put the ball out in front of Cyril who was one-out with Atley on the wing, and as Cyril set off in pursuit of the ball his hamstring tore just as he got his boot to it. There it was; the third thing. Sure, it didn’t happen to me, but this was even worse, it happened to Cyril.
With our indifferent form and Cyril’s hamstring injury, Hawthorn’s Twilight saga certainly belongs in the same horror genre as its literary equivalent. And just like the books, there’s a series of sequels, as we play Adelaide at the same cursed time next week.
Final scores: Hawthorn 14 15 99 d North Melbourne 13 18 96
What we learned: Brian Lake is going to be good for us. He played a great game in his Hawthorn debut. He spoiled marks and maintained his composure with the ball, working well with Gibbo, Goo and Birch. North’s statistical dominance, particularly in the inside 50 count, actually highlights how well our defence played.
Majak Daw is going to be a champ. He’s an exciting player and again he showed great promise – his first quarter tackle on Burgoyne, while unwelcome, was spectacular. And whereas last week he took a soaring high mark, this week he took an equally distinctive grab, though at the opposite end of the marking spectrum, when he clearly dropped it yet was paid anyway.
What we already new: Without Cyril we’re the walking undead.
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