AAMI Stadium, Saturday 4 May 2013
AAMI Stadium - High premiums, low payouts
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| The soon to be 'Abandoned Home of football', AAMI Stadium - photo: aamistadium.om.au |
With Adelaide and Port Adelaide set to relocate their home games from AAMI Stadium to the Adelaide Oval from next season, this could be one of Hawthorn’s final visits to a venue where we’ve rarely enjoyed success – with perhaps our Round 16 game against Port being the last. I’ve never been there, but I still won’t miss it and I’m sure I speak for everyone at Hawthorn when I say that the move can’t come soon enough.
It’s well documented that we’ve never played well here, from our inauspicious debut in Round 1, 1991, when the newly minted Crows team whipped us by 89 points, through numerous other humiliations over the past 22 years.
To be specific, the Hawks have lost on 19 occasions at AAMI stadium and won just 8 times prior to Saturday’s match. There was a famous semi final win against Port in 2001, a narrow win over the Crows in our premiership year of 2008, consecutive wins over Port in 2011 and 2012, when the Power were barely competitive, and, well, only a handful of others.
It’s hard to account for our problems in Adelaide – is it the ubiquitous churches distracting our boys with the call to religious devotion, the award winning wineries leading wine-buff Hawks to think about laying down reds rather than laying tackles, is it the cultural distractions of a famous university town and arts-loving community? Or is it just that the ground’s use has coincided with our least successful period since the 60s?
Either way, with the disasters we’ve encountered at AAMI Stadium, the cost of our Travel insurance premiums for these trips is prohibitively high.
Even so, hopes were also reasonably high for the chance of victory this year with the Hawks going well and the Crows having started slowly. It is also the 20th anniversary of a famous Hawks win in Round 6, 1993. On that occasion Dunstall bagged nine, and while we couldn’t look to target him one out in the goal square this week, we had Buddy, and surely he couldn’t go goalless again…could he?
Of course no Hawthorn fan is confident when our boys step onto the AAMI stadium turf and working against us this week were some compelling forces: the match was being played at AAMI stadium for one, it was commencing at the spooky and cursed time of twilight, we were turned out in our clash strip, Cyril was injured, our three goal hero from the previous week, Max Bailey, was a late withdrawal, and as it turned out, we were also virtually without Buddy who again didn’t kick a goal.
All bad portents, so our eventual triumph, although narrow, was all the more heroic for it.
Hawthorn 2008 – the perfect vintage
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| Cheers to 08 - photo winesellersdirect.com.au |
Being Adelaide, we thought about picking up a bottle of the newly released Penfolds Grange 2008. As a wine bottled in a Hawthorn premiership year, it reveals rich, nuanced flavours and boasts a complex nose, which roughly translates as the smell of success. The 2008 vintage is considered the perfect wine, which comes as no surprise to Hawks fans, as lots of things went right that year, but as it’s priced at around $700 a bottle, we plumped instead for Little Creatures Bright Ale at around $7 a bottle. Not as complex, true, but also not as costly. And a step above West End Bitter.
Fox Footy likes to have a legion of commentators and expert analysts in the box and ringing the boundary. Like a footy team packing the backline, Fox Footy crowds the box with a veritable throng that on this occasion included Eddie Maguire, Anthony Hudson, Dermott Brereton, Mark Ricciuto, David King and possibly one or two others. Perhaps like the ABC’s political coverage, Fox Footy’s charter obliges them to give equal time to each side; hence, Dermie was there to provide an informed Hawthorn perspective to offset Ricciuto’s blatant Crows bias.
Alongside the great Dermie, however, was Eddie Maguire. I haven’t heard Eddie call a game since Channel 9 had the television rights, so it struck afresh just how irritating he can be. Overexcited over the incidental, he sees a melee in every jumper tug and a momentum shift with every goal. I could question the ethics of having a serving club president calling games, remembering that when the match review committee sits down to view an incident, the voice they hear is that of the Collingwood president trying to heighten the drama of every scuffle and accidental collision. Or I could draw a connecting line between Eddie’s regular pronouncements on how the AFL compromises the integrity of the competition through salary cap inequality and the lack of goal line technology, yet sees no apparent conflict of interest in the president of one club being the official broadcast voice of a game involving opposition teams. Or worse, his own. But I won’t, because really, it’s not so much that, more that he’s just irritating to listen to.
The perfect scenario would be to have ‘Press red for Ed’ every week so that you could watch Fox Footy safe in the knowledge that he was marooned on another frequency.
Jordan Lewis - Ironman 3
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| Ironman 3 |
The narrative arc of super hero movies follows a fairly standard template. Early on you establish the identity of the heroes and the baddies; the hero will be wisecracking his way through an untroubled, uber-cool lifestyle, probably with water views and a beautiful companion, while the bad guy will be unassuming, perhaps grossly and distinctively deformed in some way, but industriously going about his evil ways.
In setting the scene you should show an environment in which life is unruffled and everything runs smoothly. Then you shatter that tranquillity with a violent and disruptive criminal act by the baddies. A battle ensues. The baddies establish an ascendency and land a seemingly killer blow, leaving no realistic chance of escape or redemption for the hero, who has quite likely been severely debilitated or sustained a critical injury. Then drawing on some special power or resolve, or receiving assistance from an unlikely source, the hero fights back, gains the upper hand, and despite a flicker of a revival for the evildoer, ultimately prevails!
Certainly that’s the template that Ironman 3 followed and it also describes the pattern of the Adelaide Hawthorn match.
The first quarter opened into an idyllic land where the sun shone, daffodils bloomed, children squealed with delight, kittens and fluffy bunnies romped, and Bradley Hill skipped freely down the wing to kick a couple of goals.
Our first goal in fact came from Ironman Lewis, then Hodge squeezed one through after a strong mark and even the Poo got on the end of one. Five goals to one in the opening quarter and the good guys had established their place in happy land.
When Michael Osborne added another in the first minute of the second quarter, the storyline looked like it might develop into the Disney version of a fairy tale. But then the evildoers struck, taking over the narrative and terrorising our happy land by controlling general play and kicking four unanswered goals. Our debilitated and struggling heroes were out of energy and ideas, and barely hanging on by two points at half time.
An even third quarter saw the Hawks regain some of their powers with two goals to Gunston and one to Smith, but then Adelaide laid us low with two late goals to Jacobs and Douglas, leaving the Hawks gasping for life with a 5 point three quarter time lead. By this stage Dangerfield was completely dominating the midfield and tearing the Hawks apart – just as he had done in last year’s Preliminary final.
When Scott Thompson goaled three minutes into the final term to put the Crows in front, it looked like curtains for our heroic Hawks with the hometown crowd baying for the Crows to finish them off. But then we received help from an unlikely source. As Thompson marked within range, the umpire paid a free kick against him for a push on Hale. It was more of a brush really, or a caress, but it is umpire appreciation week and we certainly appreciated this thoughtful gesture. From the ensuing 50 metre penalty for abuse - don't you love the way a bad decision is compounded - Hale got it forward and the Rough soccered through a goal to re-establish our lead.
And as is the way with such stories, the heroes mustered one last herculean effort with Hodge, Mitchell, Burgoyne, Roughead, Sewell and Gibson coming to the rescue, and Breeuuust went on to deliver the killer blows by bursting through packs to bang home two decisive goals in a minute - a brace from Breust. This was followed by Rough creating an interception and getting it forward where Gunston marked strongly and goaled.
Sure there was the usual last gasp flicker from the baddy as Scott Thompson and Kerridge added late goals, but this was like a wounded henchman regaining consciousness just sufficiently to grab his gun and fire off some random shots. These amounted to nothing but a flesh wound and the good guys prevailed, the stirring theme music swelled in the theatre and we all went home happy that justice had prevailed.
And as in a traditional post-script, the hero got the girl. The day after the match Cyril tweeted the news of his engagement.
Despite our woes at AAMI Stadium, we’ve now won our past three in a row there. Perhaps they shouldn’t move to the Adelaide Oval after all.
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| Skate Bush (in blue) prepares to burst the pack, Breust style. - photo derby newsnetwork.com |
What we learned: If not for the risk of an ankle injury, Luke Breust should get into roller derby. The first of his final quarter goals came straight from the Skate Bush roller derby playbook: Sewell delivered high to the goal square, Breust flew from behind but couldn’t quite bring down the mark, however he kept control of the ball when it hit the ground, put his head down and burst through a pack of three Crows plus Burgoyne in a style reminiscent of Skate Bush racking up the points in a derby jam, and banged it home.
What we already knew: that the first seven weeks of draw would be tough – so at 5-1 with just Sydney to go, we are doing ok. Some big wins and some close ones – and not necessarily the ones we might have thought. But 6-1 or 5-2 puts us in a good position.
The free kick against Thompson was the wrong call, but only if you look at it in a narrow football sense. If you look at it from a Utilitarian perspective, where the consequence of a given action is the only test of whether it is the right thing to do, then the outcome - a Hawthorn victory - completely justifies it.
Besides, everyone is going on about this free kick without any forensic examination of some of the howlers awarded to Adelaide in front of goal. In the first quarter Dangerfield scored after a very dodgy free, Vince got one in the second quarter, and in the final quarter hill was penalised for deliberate out of bounds after being pushed over the boundary line.
Given that it's umpire appreciation week, however, we just have to be big enough to let these go.
Apropos of nothing: I notice the TV guide in today’s Age for Channel 9 at 9.30 tonight lists 'Footy Classified (includes Crimestoppers)' – presumably this refers to the segment on Essendon.
On another point with Footy Classified, it was good to see Garry Lyon highlight his error in Saturday's Age, where, referring to Sam Mitchell, he wrote, "Sam Mitchell won his fourth best and fairest for Hawthorn last year. In the history of this famous club no player has won the award more than him" Well except for Leigh Matthews of course, who won it eight times. But then that is really just winning it four times twice, so perhaps Garry was correct after all.
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