AAMI Stadium, Saturday 16 July 2013
Winter Masterpieces – Hawthornism
 |
| Monet's design for new Hawthorn home strip - Claude Monet, The Japanese Footbridge circa 1920-22 The Museum of Modern Art, New York Grace Rainey Rogers Fund |
Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that originated in Paris with Monet as one of its earliest and most celebrated practitioners. It is characterised by pictures that focus not so much on formal lines, detail and realism, but an overall visual effect capturing changes in light and movement. The artists used short brush strokes and intense colours to convey a sense of bristling energy. Colours bleed into one another, creating a blur or shimmer of movement.
Not unlike watching Hawthorn play Port Adelaide en plein air really, with brown and gold stripes mixing with teal, white and black over a verdant green field and the crowd dotting the background: the quick ball movement, morphing bodies and polychromatic palette all combining to create a convergence of vivid colours and effervescent, vibrant action. And that’s just the first five goals which came in an audacious brown and gold blur from Rough, Gunston, Savage, Lewis and Gunston again.
To complete the illusion, it had been raining heavily in Adelaide during the week and the surface of AAMI Stadium was nearly as damp underfoot as Monet’s famous pond.
Of course Monet did more than paint waterlilies and haystacks – here is his design for the new Hawthorn home strip.
A drink at The Linc
It was the day after my visit to the Monet exhibition and I was back at my old haunt, The Linc, for the Port v Hawthorn match.
Port’s recent resurgence after beating both Sydney and Collingwood, our flaky records at AAMI Stadium, Ken Hinkley in the box for Port – architect of many Geelong victories over Hawthorn in recent years, and no Sewell (dropped) or Buddy (injured), gave cause for unease going into this match. Even watching in a pub I felt as nervous and jittery as an Australian middle order batsman about face Jimmy Anderson or Graeme Swan.
The first quarter may have dispelled these nerves somewhat, with Hawthorn playing slick, clean footy to lead by 22 points at quarter time, but the second served to reinforce them as Port upped the tempo. Playing a quick, attacking game, Port moved the ball swiftly, spread well and created multiple scoring opportunities through Robbie Gray and Brad Ebert. Even Monfries was getting the ball. When Jay Schulz kicked truly, Port was within 4 points. And then Cyril hobbled off. Time for another pot.
Happily Gunston snapped a nice, dare one say, ‘Buddyesque’ goal on his left to restore our advantage. Then The Rough took a strong mark and passed to Savage who kicked truly to stretch our lead to a slightly more comfortable 12 points at half time.
Not much has changed at The Linc. The bar staff seem surprised, even a little put out, to find you waiting to order a drink. And it being a fairly miserable afternoon outside, the lounge was gradually filling and little knots of people stood at the bar for minutes on end with no one being served.
And it’s not like staff are Gen Y’s busy texting, taking selfies or trying to advance to the next level of Candy Crush, they’re simply not around. Perhaps they’re just trying to recreate the genuine footy experience of making people wait five minutes to get a drink. One thing for sure, you certainly can’t accuse them of ignoring their obligations with respect to the responsible serving of alcohol.
“Nothing untoward there”
Despite this I secured a fresh pot and sat down to take in the third quarter. And it began with a bang, at least for Port’s Logan who was flattened by Burgoyne – a play that led to the opening goal of the quarter as hill kicked forward where Breust gathered, handballed to Cyril whose slick hands got it over to Smith who slammed it through.
 |
| Booooooo! - photo: m.afl.com.au |
While no free kick was awarded at the time, Burgoyne ended up taking a two match ban for the incident. Tom Harley’s commentary after viewing the incident in replay was “Nothing untoward there; just good, solid contact from Burgoyne.”
If nothing else the aggression intensified after this, with Mitchell going down behind play. Stratton also went down, but this was through his own doing more than anything else. The Poo put it out in front of him in space. Stratton gathered and ran towards an open goal, but his bounce went askew and as he bent to retrieve it, ducked into the knee of Wingard who had by then caught up to him. Stratton collapsed on top of the ball, making no attempt to dispose of it. Well, yes, he was unconscious, but even so…Amazingly however, the umpire paid Stratton the free kick. For in the back!
If Wingard touched his back, it was only after Stratton had been lying on the ball for several seconds. Being too groggy to take his kick, The Rough obligingly stepped in and duly slotted his third to give us a 24 point lead. You can imagine how graciously the Port fans took it.
Hamish’s homework
The most revealing part of the third quarter came soon after when Angus Monfries took possession on the forward line, duly panicked, and handballed to Boak who had Duryea right behind him. Our boy Duryea immediately brought Boak to ground and earned a free kick.
As ill-thought as Monfries’ handball was, Hamish McLachlan’s commentary was perhaps even worse. Trying to find an apt analogy to elucidate the action for viewers, Hamish delved into his considerable life experience, scanned his store of literary antecedents, turned over a few phrases in his mind to get a sense of their heft and tone, let his inner raconteur off the leash and expounded, “He was put under pressure. He was asked to write a really hard essay.”
‘Write a really hard essay!’ Hamish illustrating here that his grasp of metaphor is as unsure as that of a player trying to gather the Sherrin cleanly on the slippery surface.
It is perhaps also revealing of Hamish’s relative youth or an utter lack of incident in his life if the greatest sense of pressure he can imagine is that of doing his homework. Has he heard of Afghanistan?
The remainder of the quarter was string of Hawks goals: Rough for his fourth, Gunston, Simpkin and Smith giving us a handsome 37 point lead at the final break.
Boooooooo!
The final quarter was largely uneventful once Hodge dribbled through the quarter’s opening goal to establish a 40+ point lead.
Two noteworthy points however; Hodge in particular, but really the entire team, exerted exceptional pressure (like having to write a really hard essay) and created multiple turnovers through smothers or interceptions.
Also with each free kick to Hawthorn (and admittedly, we did receive a few), the booing extended from Burgoyne to the umpires, to such a degree that it almost became white noise. I thought the umpires’ only chance of survival might be to seek asylum in Ecuador.
Savage kicked our 19th and final goal for the match after a strong mark 50 out. This was his third to go with Smith’s three and Gunston and Roughead’s respective bags of five each. Our 45 point victory was fairly convincing and gave predictable rise to chatter about us being better, or at least as good, without Buddy. Seriously, what nonsense. If you lined up the Hawthorn team and went pick for pick as per the longstanding school selection formula, Buddy would be picked among the top four with Hodge, Mitchell and Roughead every time. To suggest that we’re better off without Buddy is like saying that Monet’s oeuvre is better off without waterlilies.
Final scores: Hawthorn 19 10 124 d Port Adelaide 12 7 79
What we learned: At the NGV I read with interest the plaque explaining that late in his life Monet suffered from cataracts which “diluted contrasts in his vision and filtered it through a yellow-brown film...” Much like my own vision really. I’ve been seeing life through a yellow-brown film for years. I thought this simply reflected my Hawthorn bias; I didn’t realise it was a medical condition. Lucky one of our major sponsors is a health care fund.
No comments:
Post a Comment