Hawthorn Beach Party
Round 4
Gold Coast v Hawthorn
Metricon Stadium, Saturday 12 April
The Hawks were off to the Gold Coast to play the Suns and although I couldn’t attend the match, I did my best to simulate the experience by going to Tootgarook on the Mornington Peninsula for the weekend. Sure the gentle lapping wavelets in Port Phillip Bay didn’t quite match the curling pipelines and majestic breakers of Surfers Paradise. Nor did the creaking Ghost Train and stalled dodgem cars of the Rye Foreshore funfair rival the thrill seeking exhilaration of Gold Coast’s Worlds. But to be honest, I’m not much of a beach person and I get a bit scared on fast rides, so I was quite happy just to take it easy and watch the game on television.
Showing a distinct lack of foresight, in describing Hawthorn’s commanding victory over Fremantle the previous week, I drew an analogy of Hawthorn cutting through Fremantle’s defensive flood like a team of uber cool goofy footing surfer dudes on boards. I even compared Hawthorn to bronzed skegs and cast Fremantle as our skeg molls whose sole reason for being was to wax our boards and fetch us Chiko Rolls. It seemed to fit the bill at the time, but a quick glance at the fixture in advance would have told me that I should hold back on the surfing analogy until this weeks’ game against the Suns on the Gold Coast.
So the problem is that I went a week too soon with the surfing analogy and it’s left me with nowhere to go this week. I used up my best stuff too early. Much like the Suns in this match actually. When Channel 7 ran its ‘Best Stuff’ anthology of weekend footy highlights the next day, the only bits from the Hawthorn v Suns game that made the cut were Jaeger O’Meara’s goal – the opening goal of the game – and Sam Day’s mark, both of which happened in the first five minutes. The Suns barely rated a highlight after that, but anyone watching this Channel 7 highlights package alone might have thought they’d won.
I thought it was bit rough that none of Hawthorn’s 23 goals were deemed worthy enough to make the package – not even Gunston’s soccer volley from the line between the goal and point posts – but perhaps I’m just being picky and parochial.
Anyway, having used the surfing analogy last week, I’ve been casting about for another theme associated with the Gold Coast to add colour to my description of the match. Theme park rides presented an obvious possibility, but this fell down due to how the match panned out. A roller coaster, for example, might be a useful analogy for a match in which fortunes fluctuated, where a team struggled through tough periods akin to climbing a steep incline, only to then hit the peak and race away with a burst of exhilarating, hair-raising speed, before again encountering a tight angle or another slow climb. But such a description has no relation to what transpired in this match. Basically the Hawks hit the first ascent quickly and then the carriage simply took off in a thrilling, adrenaline-charged rush of sustained speed and regular goals that lasted until the end of the match. No such roller coaster exists in which there is only one short climb at the beginning, followed by a long, uninterrupted flight to the finish.
Without surfing and theme parks to work with, the only other cultural event synonymous with the Gold Coast on which I might draw is schoolies week, and although Hawthorn wore tight, white shorts, glistened in the heat and played with liberal ease, free from any sort of restraint, I think that’s where any sort of analogy might end. For a start I can’t explain the love-bites or vomiting, and even footballers on end-of-season trips don’t behave with the wanton and outlandish destructiveness of schoolies with fizzing hormones and electrified libidos – well except for Campbell Brown perhaps, and the Suns had ended his career after just such an exhibition in LA over summer.
So free from any form of artificial scaffolding then, we can just get on with the looking at the match.
Sun block
The Suns started brightly and O’Meara kicked a good goal after winning the ball from Matt Spangher, but then the Hawks piled them on: Gunston, Roughead, and Sam Mitchell. From one centre bounce Mitchell won the ball, handballed to Rough who banged it long where Cyril took a great mark and goaled. It was a perfect illustration of how simple footy can be once you stop banging on about game plans, pressure acts, structures and set plays. Of course it helped that Mitchell, Roughead and Cyril were involved.
The first quarter was relatively even, although watching it you felt the Hawks always had the edge and seemed to be pacing themselves. Even so, at 6.4 to 4.4, the commentary team of BT, Darce, Richo and Lingy were not entirely out of place talking up the Suns’ chances.
The second quarter was bookended by Gunston’s miraculous volley goal from an improbable, if not impossible, angle at the start of the quarter, and just before half-time, a trademark Matt Suckling left-foot kick that tracked low and fast like tracer fire to land right on the goal line. Perfect. Two kicks that might have scored nothing from lesser feet had helped give the Hawks a decisive break.
At half-time the commentary team were still peddling the official line that the match was anyone’s to win, but with the score at 11.7 to 6.4, their optimism seemed to have less of a solid foundation.
Darce piped in at one point to say that the Suns would be right back in this match if they were to string together four or five goals in a row. Which was true to a point, but given they’d barely strung together four to five passes in a row during the second quarter, it seemed more of a hopeful comment than one based on any sort of empirical data. It was a bit like observing that if mankind stopped using fossil fuels we might be able to reverse the effects of global warming. Yes, we might, but we won’t.
Then within the first minute of the third quarter, when Breust gave off an impossibly slick handball to Gunston in the goal square, any thought of a Suns revival was looking a bit delusional. The Hawks at this point seemed to grow weary of trying to score, and given the Suns couldn’t, the match entered a period of stasis. There was a long 15 minutes or so when neither side scored a goal until Brad Hill and Breust banged on two in quick succession.
Premature speculation
Such was the inaction that towards the end of the third quarter, Darce dared to wonder aloud if Hawthorn might go through the entire season undefeated. He even set up a viewer’s poll. Um, Darce, it’s Round 4 – there were still 18 games to go – including Geelong the following week. Now I know I can get ahead of myself sometimes with my Hawthorn fantasies – I’ve already suggested that we may as well leave the temporary flag pole standing at the MCG because we’ll be needing to unfurl another premiership pennant this time next season – but even I haven’t run ahead to that absurd degree. As far as fantasies go, there’s nearly as much chance of Hawthorn enjoying an undefeated season as there is of me participating in a three-way with The Block Twins, or with and Taylor Duryea. Did I say Duryea? Sorry, I meant Swift. Of the two options I’m not certain which has the more erotic appeal.
Roughead (twice), Jonathan Simpkin, Liam Shiels and Gunston - for his fifth - all goaled in a short space of time in the final quarter to keep themselves, and us, interested. The only matters of intrigue remaining were the final margin and which Hawthorn players had been best. In the end it was 99 points and I plumped for Mitchell, Lewis, Gunston, Burgoyne and Hill. It was another strong team performance and our undersized makeshift backline with Kyle Cheney and Taylor Duryea again played strongly.
Sometimes you don’t need to draw on analogy to illustrate an event or give it meaning; sometimes the raw spectacle is enough. And on this occasion watching Hawthorn in full flight was every bit as exciting and spine-tingling as riding a wave or a theme park ride. Nearly as good as schoolies week.
Final scores: Hawthorn 23. 10. 148 d Gold Coast 7. 7. 49
What we learned: Brian Taylor, the man who gave us “BIG BASTARD GOAL!” when Isaac Smith steered through his 75 metre bomb in last year’s Grand Final came through with the goods again – this time coining the phrase “a dearth of depth” to describe Hawthorn’s seemingly ongoing talent pool. Intoned with the right amount of menace it sounds like an instrument of torture or a hardcore metal band.
Not to rest there, during the discussion on whether Hawthorn could go through the season undefeated, he said of our match against Geelong next week, “If we assume they get over that…” Now I know we defeated them last time we played, but given it was by only 5 points, and that we hadn’t beaten them on the 11 preceding occasions, it’s a bit like assuming that the Ukraine will hold off Russia’s evil empire.
What we already knew: Much was made before the game of the match up between Gary Ablett Jnr and Wil Langford, mirroring the famous match-ups between their respective fathers, Gary Snr and Chris in the 1980s and 1990s. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this contemporary head to head battle between Ablett, the best player in the AFL and Langford, playing in just his fourth game, was in no way reminiscent of the battles of their famous forbears, except perhaps that what the Langford genes may lack in natural football talent by comparison to the Ablett genes, they make up for it in the hair stakes.
Elsewhere: Carlton’s loss to lowly Melbourne, leaving them 0-4, and in a trough of self-reflection and recrimination has united the rest of the footy public in good cheer and bonhomie, in the same way that the United Nations must snigger as one when the USA creeps home in abject defeat from a foreign theatre of war.
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