Round 1 - Hawthorn v Brisbane

Hawthorn - Forever in Fashion

Hawthorn v Brisbane Lions
Aurora Stadium - Saturday 22 March 2014

The 2014 AFL season dawned in a very literal sense for me. I was happily ensconced on a plane watching the sun rise from above the clouds as we straightened out on our way from Melbourne to Launceston. Not just literal; the sun’s bright, effulgent glow seemed an auspicious way to start the new season and Hawthorn’s defence of its 2013 premiership.

Round 1 of the 2014 season was spread over nine long days and we were just dragging ourselves into the eighth of those. The two weekends of the round bookended the Melbourne Fashion Festival, and if the couture of those aboard my Jetstar flight was any indication, then brown and gold are definitely ‘in’ this season. Two out of every three people on board were wearing either a Hawthorn jumper or jacket, in some cases both, or accessorising with scarves and badges.  Of course this is not a seasonal fad; in my mind Hawthorn is forever in fashion.

It wasn’t just Round 1 that was dragging on. It seemed that season 2013 was still going, and not just because Hawthorn fans continued to gloat over the premiership, but the newspapers I flicked through inflight were full of the Essendon supplements scandal. Tania Hird, in an interview on ABC’s 7.30, had re-aired her gripes about Andrew Demetriou and how he made her husband James a scapegoat (for what, exactly?).

Essendon Chairman Paul Little’s subsequent comment that James needs to control those around him is, you could argue, the cause of the problem in the first place. If Hird had more control over those mixing the cocktails and wielding needles, then perhaps the supplements program might not have gone as far as it did.

I saw this interview not so much as a re-opening of old battles, but an orchestrated event to stir the emotions of the Essendon faithful and create the ‘us against the world’ spirit that served them quite well for long stretches of 2013. And it seemed to work because they won quite handsomely against North Melbourne on the Friday night. Not that the Hirds saw it - they were winging their way to Paris where James was set to commence an all-expenses-paid study program while Tania and the kids enjoyed a holiday. If that’s their idea of persecution, then pin the blame on me.

At large in Launceston

My decision to go to Launceston for the opening game was hastily arranged in the week of the match, so accommodation in Launceston was as scarce as Brisbane fans. I ended up in a single room at the TRC Hotel, which is essentially an old pub transformed into a sports bar – which actually just means it’s a TAB. The room was rudimentary – single bed, table, chair, wardrobe, television, sink, toilet and shower stall – but pretty good value at $60 a night.

Brisbane Street mall is festively decorated with Hawthorn bunting and banners, and many of the shop windows feature brown and gold displays. It’s just after 9am and visiting footy fans wander aimlessly about and fill up the cafes. Birchalls (the shop, not the family of Hawthorn’s Grant) has a great display of my book, ‘High on Hawthorn’, so I introduce myself and sign some copies. Petrarchs, also in Brisbane Street mall, is a good book shop also carrying stock of the book, so I chat to the store owners about books and football.

The match isn’t until 4.40pm so some time in mid-afternoon I walk to the ground. I’m quite early but decide not to pop into a pub, thinking I’ll grab a beer at the ground and sit in the afternoon sun to drink it. Here I discover an unpleasant truth – the bars aren’t open! The match is only an hour away and for reasons which aren’t clear to me, I can’t get a drink. I can’t watch the flag unfurled without raising a drink in toast.

Happily the natural order is soon restored and the bars open. A queue forms immediately. The beer, however, is served in mid-strength cups.

Birchalls window

Cyril - there in spirit - or at least canvass

Something off the back of a ute 

As far as flag ceremonies go, Hawthorn’s unfurling of the 2013 flag must rank as a masterpiece of understatement. In the Olympics Games opening ceremony, half a dozen former sporting champions take about an hour and a half to slowly march the full perimeter of the arena before handing it to a white-gloved general to hoist it slowly up the pole. In military ceremonies, canons are set off, or bugles blown as the flag is unfolded one inch at a time in a bizarre choreographic textile display, while regimented ranks of uniformed personnel stand at stiff salute. In 2011, Collingwood had a guard of honour, laser shows, fireworks, anthemic music, a parade of past champions, possibly even a priest, plus Simon Prestigiacomo looking down from the roof of the Great Southern Stand like Spiderman. I think it was directed by Baz Luhrmann. At Hawthorn, we had the players in their training tops and Brian Lake in the back of a ute.

The flag unfurling extravaganzas!

It’s a quaint tradition – unfurling the premiership flag at the first home match the following season. I’m sure premiership coaches who have spent all summer trying to get their players to forget the past and focus on the forthcoming season don’t appreciate this ceremony of looking back. Perhaps it would be better if it was done at the same time they present the cup, in the rooms after the Grand Final or at the best and fairest dinner. Or in any circumstance that involves it being wound tightly around Kylie’s shimmering body. Brian Lake could grab the pointy bit at the end (of the flag that is) and give it a good tug to send Kylie into a fast spin so that the flag unwinds until she’s deflagged. Like the dance of the seven veils, but with just one flag.

One time honoured ceremony we shouldn’t mess with is the team bursting through the banner to enter the arena. This is a tradition that adds colour and provides an inspirational message to players and fans alike, or at least an ad from the major sponsor. The banner, or run-through, serves as a formal welcome to the team. It’s a crepe paper membrane, the liminal barrier between society and the sporting arena. Like white line fever, but gold crepe fever. But it is more than that. You don’t have to be Freud to see that on a much deeper level the act of bursting through the banner is the re-enactment of the birth moment. The players move down the race, or birth canal, and then break through the banner in a manner reminiscent of parturition. It is a metaphorical rebirth for the team each week. So when Brisbane ran out with no banner, did it mean that they remained unborn – and therefore without a chance – or was it a caesarean? Or was it just that there weren’t enough Brisbane fans at the ground to hold up a banner?

Footy is back!

There are certain signs that football is back. The leaves are beginning to turn, the shops are full of Easter eggs and Sam Mitchell is getting flattened behind play – this time by Brisbane’s Tom Rockliff in the very first passage of play. This early in the season and the Hawks are a little rusty; our dinky kicks are being regularly picked off and the Lions score the first goal.

For several years it’s been a fair bet that our first goal will come from the boot of no. 23, and this was to be no exception. Not Franklin this time, but new boy Tim O’Brien playing his first game. T.O.B.  took a fine mark and slotted a set shot from 50 metres. When Big Ben McEvoy kicked our third goal for the quarter we were left feeling grateful that these new boys were on hand – where would we have been without them?

The second quarter was marked by a great running goal to Liam Shiels, followed by Burgoyne setting up first Rough and then Shiels again. When Gunston marked it looked like we were going to romp away, but The Gun, or Gunstall, as I’ve heard him called, missed. Then he missed another set shot. When Langford and Shiels also missed set shots, we’d gone from 7.3 to 7.6 and our chance to wrap up the match early dissipated.

One thing that became apparent in the second quarter was Clarko’s much vaunted new game plan. All summer there has been talk about how he would tweak the game plan to suit our new personnel and avoid the trap of 2009 where the other teams picked apart our ‘cluster’ with great success. We weren’t going to let that happen again. The new game plan is so simple it’s beautiful: if in doubt kick it high in McEvoy’s general vicinity, a strategy we employed very successfully all day simply because he kept marking it.

A 22 point half-time lead seemed comfortable enough, especially when Breeeuust slotted another one just after the break. But then Brisbane started to get on top. They were playing with energy and endeavour, particularly Daniel Rich. You can forget how good he is until you see him again.  After a fantastic goal to Breust from the 50 metres out on the boundary, the Lions added the next three to close the margin to just two points.  One of them after a Hodge tried a dinky kick with his right foot out wide that only travelled only as far as a Brisbane forward who was just standing around minding his own business when the ball suddenly appeared in front of him at marking height. He calmly took it and slotted the goal.

This was one of a few miskicks of Hodge’s. Watching from Melbourne, Chan-Tha and Pete posted that his new fluro orange boots were to blame. A few of the players were sporting them. They were so bright that perhaps the act of bringing his leg up to kick the ball momentarily blinded him and affected his kick.

We were starting to shift a little uneasily. I had been to Launceston only once previously, in 2009, and that was also to see us play Brisbane. That too was the year after winning the premiership and we lost on that occasion. Surely not again…

…which must have been more or less what Jarryd Roughead was thinking. He yawned, stretched and bustled his way into the action where he snagged a couple for the quarter. As did Breust and Sammy and we were back out to a good lead. In between all this, Jonathan Brown took a classic Brown mark running back with the flight of the ball. As heroic as the mark was, I was still grateful when he missed the kick.

The three quarter time lead was back out to 25 points, but as the final quarter got underway the Hawks started to break clear. Brisbane’s Trent West kicked the first of the quarter but then Gunston regained his aim and slotted a couple, Roughead added another and Breust got his fifth. Hawthorn’s next goal came from Matthew Suckling, playing his first game back since the 2013 pre-season. Suckling’s extraordinary kicking was back to the fore and both he and Taylor Duryea had played well rebounding off half back. Duryea had even competed strongly against the taller, stronger Jonathan Brown.

By this stage twilight was turning to evening and the clouds massing on the mountain overlooking Aurora were shot through with a purple tinge, courtesy of the sunset. Was it nature’s beauty or simply that the Hawks were maintaining a 45 or so point lead that suffused me with a Zen like calm as I sat and watched the final minutes of the match? Roughead added a fifth himself near the end and then Smith popped one through to complete an eight goal final quarter and help hawks fans find oneness.

It was good to see the boys back in action: Bradley Hill, Luke Breust, Liam Shiels, Grant Birchall and Ben McEvoy all played well, as did Sam Mitchell, Shaun Burgoyne, Jordan Lewis and Isaac Smith.   Debutant Derick Wanganeen had a bit of a run late and Langford flaunted his surname.  All in all a satisfying win by the Hawks, one befitting my bright dawn vision.

It was like Grand Final night in Launceston after the match, i.e. the streets were full of packs of drunk Hawthorn fans just wandering about. Perhaps there was a good reason why Aurora serves mid-strength and delays the opening of the bars.

Final scores: Hawthorn 21 13 139  d  Brisbane 13 13 91

Ladder position – 4th

Attendance: 12,430

What we learned: People watch ABC’s 7.30 in larger numbers than we might have suspected. That’s if the furore created by Tania Hird’s appearance on the show is any indication of viewing figures.  Who knew? I only watch it when Leigh Sales is hosting. Perhaps other low rating shows might consider having Tania on to boost their ratings. She could be a guest judge on The Voice or Masterchef. Then James wouldn’t have to work at all.

What we already knew: Age columnist Martin Flanagan is an old softy. In his regular column for the Saturday Age he never fails to highlight, using the prism of football, the plight of the poor, sick and downtrodden. There’s always some story about a bloke who loves a yarn or doesn’t mind a drink, who fought at Gallipoli and returned with just one leg, but still played in a forward pocket for Fitzroy; or war widow Mabel who has barracked for Footscray since 1925 and was in the original Hyde Street band to play at the Western oval, or Wazza who used to sell the Footy Record at Victoria Park and knew John Wren, but whose inner city cottage was forcibly claimed to allow the Eastern freeway to be built, after which he suffered a long illness, clinging to life only just long enough to see the Pies win the 1990 premiership…you know the sort of thing.

This week, however, Marty hints that he might be retiring. He doesn’t say it in so many words, but he’s managed to find a sob story to fit every team, even the Giants, and provide him with a heart warming tale no matter which team claims the flag. I fear that he’s gone too early – that’s a whole season’s worth of material and he’s blown it at Round 1.

What we didn’t know but should have suspected: The Essendon supplements scandal is all Eddie’s fault! At last the truth comes out. One of James Hird’s media advisers, Ian Hanke, in the midst of a Twitter outburst about Andrew Demetriou and the AFL’s handling of the investigation, suddenly suggested that club presidents such as McGuire should go. Now I’m no apologist for Eddie, but whatever faults he may have, I fail to see how he is implicated in this saga. To give Essendon their due - one of the first people they sacked was their unwitting president, Ian Robson, so they are at least walking their own talk. But it does seem that every few weeks Hird’s camp anoints a new public enemy number one. So far they’ve so far tried to blame Age journalist Caroline Wilson, AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou and now Collingwood president Eddie McGuire. Quite possibly James Hird is innocent and Tania is justified and correct, but whoever is responsible for whatever did happen at Essendon, it seems a tad far-fetched to level the blame at this trio.

What we therefore don’t understand: If James Hird and ‘those around him’ hate the AFL and everyone involved in running the game so much, why is he so adamant about returning? For the rest of us - if we don’t like our workplace, our boss, our clients or the industry we find ourselves working in, then the normal course of action is to consider an alternative career.

Really, everyone should stop moaning and give thanks that, for this week at least, Collingwood is on the bottom of the ladder.

Hawthorn Haiku

Orange fluro boots

The flag unfurled in a ute

Clouds on the mountain