Wednesday 28 May 2014

Round 10 - Port Adelaide v Hawthorn

Adelaide Oval, Saturday 24 May 2014


A Night at the Opera


Hawthorn's rooms before the match
Hawthorn matches are currently viewed in light of which players are not playing rather than the players that are.  It’s a bit like the forthcoming Queen tour announced this week – the band that is, not the monarch – who will take to Australian stages later in the year with only 50% of their first choice players. Missing will be Freddie Mercury, who died in 1991, and John Deacon, who has retired. That leaves only guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor from the original line-up.



For this top of the table clash the Hawks were missing Jarryd Roughead (suspension), Sam Mitchell (hamstring), Cyril Rioli (hamstring), Brain Lake (calf) and Josh Gibson (pectoral). So that’s our best forward (Roughead), our best half-forward (Rioli), our best midfielder (Mitchell), our best half back (Gibson) and our best backman (Lake).  And then our ruckman Ben McEvoy limped off after half-time. In truth, Hawthorn’s predicament is more akin to Queen without even Brian May, and with Roger Taylor having one hand tied behind his back.

Gibson’s case is the most intriguing. With the Hawks having a bye after the Sydney game, Gibson took the chance to fly to LA to visit his girlfriend, American TV host, Renee Bargh. He left with a sore shoulder and returned with a torn pectoral muscle, which makes you wonder exactly what they got up to…and how often. And if it was as much fun as it sounds, why he returned at all. The most interesting aspect of all of this is that the slightly built, but beautiful Ms Bargh managed to hurt Gibson in ways that neither Travis Cloke, Buddy Franklin, Tom Hawkins nor any of the AFL’s supposed power forwards could.

Port started the match as strong favourites, but most Hawks fans were just hoping for no further injuries. I wasn’t able to watch the match as, to cite the name of Queen’s fourth album; I was spending ‘A Night at the Opera’. Well not quite the opera, I was at Howler, a bar in Brunswick to see American songstress, St Vincent play. Normally I’d have been torn between the two events, but I didn’t give the Hawks much chance with so many senior players missing and playing at an unfamiliar venue. Besides, I’d set the record function so the plan was to go to the gig, keep a check on the scores and watch the match back later.


Is that a hawk in the Queen logo? 


The Game


I saw snippets of the first quarter as I was getting ready and after Port kicked the first few goals it looked like we might suffer a big defeat. I was confident that the Hawks would work their way back into the match, but I was going to have to follow it via the AFL Live app. Rather than have the app on at all times, I elected to check in every 10 minutes or so. This wasn’t a battery saving decision, just a vain hope that there’d be a sudden improvement in the scoreline. However, each time I checked in we were four goals or more behind.

When I heard that McEvoy was hurt, the song ‘Another one Bites the Dust’ from Queen’s eighth album ‘The Game’ immediately sprang to mind.

A half-time scoreline of  8.3 to 4.4 as I arrived at the venue wasn’t promising. I met my friend John, got in some beers, Hawthorn Pale Ale seemed fitting, and we grabbed a seat to take in the support act, D.D Dumbo. He was pretty good actually. A sort of one man band, he started each track by setting up a beat or a riff on a loop and then proceeding to add multiple layers over the top as he played guitar and sang. It was interesting enough to distract me from the game at least.

It’s a curious experience following the match via app. It’s like playing online pokies; every time you press refresh or check the screen you’re at the mercy of some technological algorithm just hoping for the right numbers to appear. You get your hopes up as you click for the update, only to have them dashed when you see the score is 11.5.71 to 6.5. 41. I felt as deflated as an online gambler down to their last $10 of credit.

The Miracle


At that point I focused more on D.D Dumbo’s performance and thought how useful he’d be in the Hawks right now – someone who could do it all. Like Roughead I suppose. Then I put in my last $1 and refreshed the app, and couldn’t believe it – my numbers had come up! The Hawks were coming back. It was 11.7 to 10.6 and we were back in the game at three quarter time.

I fired off a quick “Come on Hawks!” text to Chan-Tha who was also taking in the game via digital means from a beer expo.

By the time the final quarter started I was in the crush of St Vincent fans waiting for her to come on stage. The electric buzz of her opening track, Rattlesnake, reverberated in the room as she appeared and I strained for a good view. Chan-Tha texted back “losing again”. I got a score update as St Vincent began her next song, “Birth in Reverse” and the opening lines of the song, “Oh what an ordinary day” summed up my mood as I noticed that Port had added two early final quarter goals.  We pulled one back, but when I next checked Port had bagged another. To call on another Queen title, we required a ‘miracle’ to bring this one home. I hadn’t given up, but I focused my attention on St Vincent who was putting on a dynamic and powerful performance. She was singing “I want all of your mind” and while I couldn’t quite give her all of it, as I was keeping an eye on the score until the end of the match, I was certainly happy to lose myself in the show.

The final score suggested that Hawthorn continued to fight hard and kept coming back. I’ll probably watch the game during the week just to see how it actually unfolded and who played well. It’s difficult to know to what degree our injuries contributed to the outcome, but in the end I wasn’t too disappointed; playing Port Adelaide in Adelaide is always difficult, and with the crowds packing out the Adelaide Oval, it has become a hostile environment for visiting teams. With the loss to Sydney and the bye, however, it’s now been a month since we won! Thank God we have GWS next week.

With most of our injured players out for extended periods, it is going to be tough to maintain our momentum through the middle part of the season, but if we can hang in there and win enough games to make the finals, and we have all of our players fixed, fit and firing – and we can keep Gibbo away from his girlfriend - then we might just become the first team to win the flag from outside the top four. At that point we can join in with Freddie to belt out Queen’s great anthem, “We are the Champions” when they do their lap of honour. I noted during the 2013 lap that the recording is a bit scratchy and wondered if perhaps they’re still using the original 7-inch single.

That’s something to look forward to at least, because surely nothing else could go wrong…


Final scores: Port Adelaide 15 10 100  d  Hawthorn 13 8 86

Ladder position: 4th

Attendance: 

…well, as it turns out a lot more could go wrong. Our main ma, coaching maestro Alastair Clarkson has been admitted to hospital with Guillain-Barre syndrome, an inflammation of the nerves in the spinal cord. He’ll be out of action indefinitely. This is a very serious condition – not just something he picked up from drinking the water in Adelaide. You wonder if Clarko isn’t just trying to show up all those overpaid pretty boys with their soft tissue injuries, wellness forms and rehab coaches as the hypochondriacs he suspects them to be.

Our season may well be in jeopardy now, but Clarko’s recovery is more important than Hawthorn’s current premiership campaign. Alastair Clarkson is one of Hawthorn’s great coaching figures and while we want him back at the helm, first and foremost we want him to be healthy and well...and then back at the helm.

One measure of a coach is how many premierships they win – Clarko has two. Another measure is how many of their assistants are poached for senior coaching roles with other clubs. At present there are three: Damian Hardwick (Richmond), Adam Simpson (West Coast) and Leon Cameron (GWS). Four if you count Brendan Bolton, or ‘Bolts’ as he is inevitably known, who will be stepping in for Clarkson.

A less tangible but possibly more important measure might be the degree of esteem and adoration in which he is held by Hawthorn fans. We love him. We love that he describes Sam Mitchell getting 40 touches as ‘pleasing’ rather than ‘awe inspiring’, that every other club is a ‘formidable opponent’ and that whenever we lose he refers to ‘licking our wounds’ – which given the current rehab list will require some fervent slurping. We love that he punched a hole in the wall of the coaches box when we let Collingwood get within 40 points; we love that he had to be physically restrained from punching a hole in Matthew Lloyd after Lloyd had ironed out Brad Sewell in 2009; we love that he called a reporter a ‘knob head’ for being, well, a knob head. These incidents that have others questioning his temperament are among the very reasons he has endeared himself to Hawks fans, although the two premierships have certainly helped…

Get well soon Clarko!




What we learned: if we didn’t already know it, we learned that some things are more important than football and whether your team wins…and that is the health and well-being of those who are directly responsible for making your team win.

What we already knew: that Gary Ablett would escape any sort of punishment for ‘allegedly’ elbowing Liam Picken from the Western Bulldogs in the head (see how I used the proper legal term ‘allegedly’ meaning he did it, but we’re not allowed to say so). I suspect the AFL is also pleased that they will be spared the embarrassment of having to present the Brownlow medal to someone who has finished 20 votes behind Ablett. Not that I’m alleging a fix of any sort, but the only match review or tribunal decisions to rival this as foregone conclusions are those involving Sydney players, who as part of their cost of living allowance, are entitled to knock players or indeed umpires unconscious without any repercussions. Just as in the 2005 Preliminary Final when Barry Hall was judged not to have ‘punched’ Matt Maguire of St Kilda, despite his fist going directly into Maguire’s midriff.

Monday 12 May 2014

Round 8 - Sydney Swans v Hawthorn

ANZ Stadium, Friday 9 May 2014


Long on injuries – short on salary cap


In the end it was exactly what we always feared; Buddy was the difference. Not that he was the most outstanding player on the ground, or that he was even dominant, but he kicked 2.7.19, which, as it happens, is exactly what Sydney won by.

It was a similar story in his Hawthorn years - we would often win by more or less the score he kicked, so it was fitting, if depressingly predictable that he would reverse that when playing against us. Even at three quarter time when he had no goals and seven behinds to his name, most Hawthorn fans knew what was coming and sure enough, his two final quarter goals gave the Swans the advantage we couldn’t overcome.

With Tippet kicking four goals, this was a victory for Sydney’s bloated salary cap and the different rule sunder which they operate.

I took in the match with Chan-Tha, Alex and Jason at the Duke of Wellington Hotel the city. The Duke may charge a fortune for drinks, but they do cater for sporting enthusiasts with plenty of screens each clearly labelled as to the sport that will be shown. So you don’t waste your time securing a prime spot with a good view and a convenient ledge or table only to discover that you’re watching the Melbourne Rebels or the Wellington Nobodies falling about in some approximation of a game, and having to decamp to another screen. Weirdly, they turn off the music for the commentary, which in a crowded pub with lots of chatter, is inaudible anyway.

The other thing about the Duke - they serve the best pub chips in Melbourne. So Hawthorn and hot chips - can’t beat that.

With Sam Mitchell and Brian Lake already missing, along with Brad Sewell, the banner along the foot of the screen announcing that Luke Hodge as a late withdrawal gave me a sick feeling in the stomach, and that was before I’d had a bag of chips and several pints of Kosciusko Pale Ale.

In fact I’d given up on the match at this point. Regardless of the Buddy factor, I didn’t see how we could match Sydney with so many of our key players missing. And so it seemed early on as Sydney did all the attacking and had 3.3 on the board before we’d even strayed forward. Josh Kennedy, Daniel Hanneberry and co ran amok with no Hawthorn strong bodies to compete against them in the middle.

Sydney’s lead got out to more than four goals half way through the second before Jonathan Simpkin, Luke Breust and David Hale added the last three goals of the half to get the Hawks back in the match.  At this stage, however, Buddy was doing as much as anyone in the brown and gold to keep the Hawks in the match. His six first half behinds could have settled the match already, so it was good to see signs that the guilt was kicking in, just as his kicking was going astray. Perhaps the universe was telling him something.

The Twang and the Tongue


You couldn’t hear it over the chatter but Cyril Rioli’s hamstring twanged in the first minute of the third quarter. Cyril snaps his hamstring with more or less the same frequency that Keith Richards breaks guitar strings. So no Mitchell, Hodge, Lake and now Rioli off - if the universe was telling Buddy something, it was beating Hawks fans sadistically about the face and head with an unwelcome message.

Then Roughead collected Sydney’s Ben McGlynn with a bump and it looked like we’d have virtually an All-Australian line-up on the sidelines for our next match.

Riloi’s exit brought new boy Billy ‘The Tongue’ Hartung into the fray and The Tongue continued with the fine form he showed on debut the week before. The Hawks even began to get on top, or were at least breaking even, largely due to Burgoyne and Gibson, and when Suckling, Breust and even Taylor Duryea banged through goals Hawks fans were able to momentarily believe, or at least get in another pint of Kosciusko.

A new crew joined us in our corner, including some Hawks fans. One of them, Scott, impressed me immediately with his willingness to shout abuse at the television and his utter lack of compunction when it came to shouting the C-bomb loudly in public. It made mine and Chan-Tha’s behaviour seem measured and reasonable by comparison. It also egged us on to get more involved, despite being several hundred kilometres from the action.  And we had to get involved because from early in the final quarter it was obvious the Hawks boys were exhausted and hurt, and the Swans were getting back on top.

Teams often finish matches the way they begin, regardless of what has transpired in the intervening quarters, so it wasn’t a surprise when the Swans kicked away. Nor was it a surprise that Buddy’s two goals were instrumental in Sydney winning.

The final margin was 19 points, but the real margin was the million or so dollars difference between Sydney’s annual salary cap and that which is afforded the rest of the competition.

Final scores: Sydney 15  17  107 d  Hawthorn 13  10  88

Attendance:

Ladder position – 2nd


What we learned: the complexities of the Match Review Panel have now been clarified. Last week Melbourne’s Jack Viney was originally suspended and then ultimately cleared after he bumped Adelaide’s Tom Lynch who sustained a broken jaw.

This week Jarryd Roughead was suspended for one match for bumping Sydney’s Ben McGlynn, who barely felt it and continued playing. Had Roughy broken McGlynn’s jaw he could have escaped sanction. The lesson from the tribunal is simple: Roughy didn’t hit him hard enough.


What we already knew: You can’t take Hodge, Mitchell, Sewell, Lake, Rioli and Shiels from the team and not expect some backwash. Take out Roughead for the next match against Port and watching the Hawks over the next few week will be a little like seeing one of those bands that reunites without the singer or lead guitarist from the original line-up, like the Rolling Stones with just Ronnie Wood from the current line-up.


What we knew but didn't realise the extent of: That the beard is back is nothing new, you only have to look at the players from Sydney, but tuning into Eurovision on the weekend made me realise just how far this trend has reached when I saw a bearded lady take the trophy and belt out the winning tune. 'Conchita' would fit nicely into the Swans line-up with that beard, and she could replace that old guy who leads the singing of their club song after victories. Plus, I suspect, take Oxford Street by storm.









Wednesday 7 May 2014

Round 7 - Hawthorn v St Kilda

Round 7 – Hawthorn v St.Kilda
MCG, Saturday 3 May 2014


The Biggest Loser



Despite belting the Saints by a massive 145 points on Saturday, it is arguable that Hawthorn was the biggest loser, with Sam Mitchell and Brian Lake both sustaining injuries that will see them sidelined for prolonged stretches. Mitchell’s injury in particular is a serious blow, perhaps catastrophic.

The Mitchell Effect


At least it is brown and gold
In Chaos theory, the Butterfly Effect describes the situation whereby a minor event in one place can have exponential repercussions that cause a major event in a distant location. The theoretical scenario from which the phenomena derives its name involves the situation where a butterfly flapping its wings in one place sets off a series of events that eventually cause a cyclone to form in a distant locale, with the potential for mass devastation.

Sam Mitchell’s injury is the same - a seemingly minor inconvenience in a contest causing a major tear in his hamstring that will see him miss eight crucial matches during the season, potentially hindering his conditioning and effectiveness when he returns, thus affecting our midfield clearances and onfield strength, with the upshot that it could disrupt, even derail our premiership campaign catastrophically, which may plunge Hawks fans into some sort of existential crisis that could see them questioning the point of going on, which might draw them into a downward spiral of depression that could lead to widespread social problems including domestic disharmony, loss of faith, drug dependency, psychotic episodes, or even a mass suicide pact. Not that I want to be alarmist. Perhaps we should rename it the Mitchell Effect for Sam Mitchell, though much shorter, leaves a bigger gap in our team than Buddy.


The Comeback Kid


Of course as one man goes down, another comes back in…and the man in question had been out of the game for some time, but slotted straight back in looking fitter and stronger than ever. And he hadn’t lost his touch, nailing three or four by half-time. It was like he’d never been away. Of course I’m referring to my friend Jason who has been living in London. This was the first live Hawks game he’d been to in three years and there he was in the Bullring bar in the Member’s sinking schooners of Matilda Bay’s finest as effortlessly as Hawthorn’s forwards were slotting goals.

For the remainder of his visit we’re playing a match in Sydney followed by a bye, so this was his only chance to see the browns and gold in action. And we virtually kicked a season’s worth of goals, it was just that he saw it all on a monitor in the bar while we sat upstairs applauding goals.

Of course Ryan Schoenmakers was also playing his first game back for 12 months after a knee reconstruction. Unlike Jase, he was sinking goals and not only did he look fitter and stronger, but a tad poncier with one of those stupid looking blonde buns.

Those watching Channel 7’s broadcast of the match at home, or indeed in the bar, would have known him as the Comeback Kid, as Hamish McLachlan and Basil Zempalis insisted on calling him.  Meanwhile Jordan Lewis, playing his 200th game was referred to as the Milestone Man. I was waiting for them to refer to Billy Hartung playing his first game as the Debutant Dude, or Ben McEvoy and Shane Savage who had swapped clubs over the break as the Changeling Chaps.

Schoenmakers received a welcoming cheer when he got his first touch, and after Rioli ‘put one on top of his head’, as they say, the Cobbler duly converted and the first of several group hugs ensued. This routine was repeated when Hartung kicked one in the third quarter and Lewis slotted one in the final quarter.

Turncoats and raincoats


left to right: Rachel, Chan-Tha, moi & Oscar
wearing the heritage jumper
I was at the game with my son Oscar and had donned for the occasion my special number 3 jumper to celebrate Jordan Lewis’ 200th game. It’s from the heritage range a number of years ago and woven from nice warm wool that keeps me nice and toasty on cold days. How the players used to play in these doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s the sort of garment that would come in handy on a trek to the South Pole.

By the time Chan-Tha arrived with Alex, Jason and Rachel, the rain had begun and we’d moved undercover.

The result of the match was more or less clear half way through the first quarter when Hawthorn had almost effortlessly kicked five goals while St Kilda had barely crossed the centre.

Interestingly, the day after Dale Thomas, playing for Carlton against his former team Collingwood, had been booed and jeered relentlessly by Magpies fans, St Kilda fans were far gentler with former Saint Ben McEvoy playing his first game against them. I didn’t hear a single heckle, just an exasperated moan of quiet despair late in the third quarter from a Saints fan sitting behind me as McEvoy took his umpteenth uncontested mark. Most likely they didn’t blame him for coming to Hawthorn, and there were probably a few fans who wished they’d done the same.

It also has to be said that Hawthorn fans did not boo Shane Savage, although this may simply have been because he wasn’t getting any possessions.

St Kilda was barely competitive in the first quarter and simply non-combative in the second, unless you’re talking about head high tackles. They dished out two early, in front of our goals, one to Jarryd Roughead and one to the Poo which was so crude he didn’t even have to accentuate it with his usual theatrical flourish.

The rain grew heavier and the conditions worsened in the second quarter which made scoring difficult, or at least less easy for Hawthorn and downright impossible in St Kilda’s case. Hawthorn added a few more for the half, but St Kilda didn’t score a single behind for the quarter, and didn’t even get it inside their own 50 metre arc until the time-on period.

By half time the margin was 58 points and it looked like only rain or Hawthorn’s disinterest would prevent the margin from doubling.

Hawthorn Porn


Tempting as it was to stay in the Bullring bar, where it was surprisingly easy to get served, most of us headed back to the seats to take in the third quarter and I’m glad we did, for the Hawks romped. It was like Hawthorn porn.

The first goal of the quarter went to Jack Billings of the Saints, who took a free kick deep in the Member’s pocket from where he slotted a very nice goal. He also took a strong contested mark and tackled well during the match. In a search for positives, that might otherwise yield as little as the United Nations search for WMDs in Iraq, St Kilda can at least look to young Billings.

From there though, it rained Hawthorn goals, a deluge in fact – 10 for the quarter to none. Brian Lake joined Mitchell in Casualty but despite being two men down, the Hawks just clicked into gear and went for it. Much has been made of our spread of goal kickers this year, and this quarter served to highlight it, with eight separate players bagging a goal with Roughead and Cyril getting two each. Cyril’s were both from the ‘delicious’ playbook and generated the biggest roar, while the next biggest roar came when debutant Billy Hartung snagged one.

Hartung looks like he’ll be a good player, although it might be difficult to judge him against this opposition. He’d have faced tougher teams playing for Box Hill in the VFL.

In fairness St Kilda also had an even spread of goal kickers; it’s just that there were only four of them.

When Burgoyne, Breust and Gunston each added a goal in the first three minutes of the final quarter, the lead was out to 131 points and at this rate the final margin looked like it might get beyond 200.  But then the rain started again, so we stayed put in the Bullring, where we took in the few remaining highlights, most notable among them being a goal to Jordan Lewis.

The final margin of 145 points was a fair indicator of the difference between the two teams. I’ve rarely seen a starker mismatch. What most amazed me was St Kilda’s unwillingness to change the game. Hawthorn was executing a fairly predictable pattern every time they gained possession backward of the centre or the wing; that was to bring it around the backline in an arc with a series of passes to players who were always free. Then they’d take it up the opposite wing until a clear target was freed up.

If I could spot the pattern, surely the St Kilda coach could, or some of their experienced players, and work so that they blocked it off. But they never did and the margin simply continued to grow, nearly trebling in the second half.  The following day my youngest son’s under 12 soccer team was 0-6 down at half time, which in soccer terms is about the equivalent of 58 points, but these U12 boys with no subs kept fighting and actually won the second half 2-1. Sure they lost the game 2-7, but they showed more spirit and fight than
St Kilda.

Final scores: Hawthorn 27. 13. 175. d St Kilda 4. 6. 30.

Ladder position: 1st

Attendance: 32,924




What we learned: We all know Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson's routine at the end of the match when the Hawks win; he takes one of the little footballs, jogs to the fence and points to a fan to single them out and signs the ball for them. It is of course invariably a young fan so you can imagine my blushes when he seemingly pointed at me and motioned for me to join him at the fence. In my heart of course I knew he was signalling the young girl just to my right, so I graciously let her through.

What we learned however is what he writes on the ball. We’ve all seen that Clarko takes a bit of time over this procedure, so I always assumed he scrawled a personal message, perhaps a dedication, an inspirational motto or even a line of poetry, but no, he writes the score. Look, Chan-Tha got a photo. 175 to 30 - I suppose you can't get more poetic than that. We also found out the girl is in the same class as Clarko’s daughter at school. So even in this it comes down to who you know…



What we already knew: Clarko takes it seriously. As Jack Steven kicked St Kilda's fourth goal for the game, deep into the final quarter, a shot of Clarko in the box with his head in his hands in seeming anguish, despite the Hawks holding a lead of 139 points, drew an audible laugh from around the ground.


Thursday 1 May 2014

Round 6 - Richmond v Hawthorn

Round 6 – Richmond v Hawthorn
MCG, Sunday 27 April 2014


Saint Sam and Saint Shaun


The crowd gathers to pay tribute to
Sam Mitchell and Shaun Burgoyne
On the same day that the Vatican held a double canonisation ceremony for Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, Hawthorn celebrated its own double canonisation of sorts with the 250th game for both Sam Mitchell and Shaun Burgoyne, whose good works have engendered much devotion, and arguably far fewer sex scandals than those of the Popes.

Not since the day in 1984 when Leigh Matthews played his 300th game and Michael Tuck played his 250th has there been such cause for double celebration.

Such is the reverence in which these men are held that even adherents of opposing faiths tried to join in the celebration. The spectator who jumped the fence in the final quarter may have held up play while security apprehended him, but he was still the only person in a Richmond jumper who looked likely to take clean possession in Richmond’s backline. He was certainly the only one to successfully break through Hawthorn’s forward press.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to the match due to junior sporting obligations. The main cause for disappointment is that normally I would attend a Hawthorn-Richmond match with my brother Graeme, a Tiges fan. The past two years he’s been able to belt out the “yellow and black” refrain in their song and gloat as each surprising Richmond goal sailed through. This year, coming off a loss and smarting from our recent poor record against Richmond, I had a sneaking suspicion that we’d smash them and I wanted to be the one high-fiving fellow supporters and belting our own “yellow and brown” refrain.

Sure enough, by the time I got to a television half way through the third quarter the Hawks led by a satisfying 43 points. And even though the first moment of live action I saw was a goal to Richmond’s Brandon Ellis after Luke Hodge was penalised 50 metres for crossing the mark, the game was effectively over. 

From that moment on I saw the Hawks add nine goals straight to Richmond’s 3.7 to mark a 66 point drubbing and end any fanciful notions Tiger fans might entertain of extending their two-game hoodoo over Hawthorn.

Once more from the top


As soon as the final siren sounded I summoned the miracle of modern recording technology and started from the beginning. As exhilarating as it is to take in a game live, I’ve always found it wholly satisfying to watch a match with advance knowledge of victory. There’s a reduced thrill factor perhaps, but at least its angst free. 

Hawthorn opened the scoring in the first minute of the match with a goal from Jack Gunston after a strong mark. From there, for the entire first quarter, the ball rarely strayed from Hawthorn hands, or indeed from our forward 50. It was as if there was a bias inside it.

On the rare occasion Richmond did go forward, Sam Mitchell simply retrieved it and fed back to our midfielders and runners to send it back in. Indeed, Mitchell patrolled the half-back line like a school bully protecting his patch of the playground, or one of Immigration Minister Scott Morrisson’s frigates protecting the borders of Australian waters, not letting anything through, or towing back anything that unexpectedly slipped past.

Even now Buddy and Hawthorn's inaccuracy
are synonymous
The only reason the match wasn’t over as a contest by quarter time was that Hawthorn’s kicking was as erratic as Buddy Franklin’s driving. Where Buddy drove his girlfriend’s Jeep into parked cars during the week, managing to miss the middle of the road entirely, Hawthorn’s shots on goal also swerved wide to miss the middle. Much has been made this season of Hawthorn’s impressive ‘spread’ of goal kickers, as if our attack were some sort of condiment, but in this first quarter alone, we had six different players kick behinds: Birchall, Hale (twice), Roughead, Mitchell, Duryea and Hodge.

Still, with 11 scoring shots to two at quarter time, and with Jeep being one of Richmond’s major sponsors, it looked like the car maker was in for its second big crash of the week.

When Hale marked strongly and goaled within the first minute of the second quarter, it was beginning to look like a pile-up might be forming. From thereon however, Richmond tried a containment plan, slowing the play and swarming around the ball to make sure Hawthorn didn’t get it out. It worked to a degree in that it stopped Hawthorn from scoring, but inevitably, it also prevented Richmond from making any headway into the deficit. Hawthorn’s second of the quarter came when Breust penetrated Richmond’s off-side trap and put the Poo through to score a big goal. This gave us a second quarter scoreline of 2.2 to 1.1 which meant that despite the containment, Hawthorn still effectively doubled Richmond's score for the quarter.

Saint Cyril


Better than a "Lloydy" tatt
Hawthorn kicked two goals in the first minute of the third quarter to turn a handy 26 point half-time lead into a commanding 38 point lead. The first came from Cyril within 16 seconds of the restart, but he also kicked three more for the quarter, the second of which came after an audacious vertical leap to intercept an attempted handball over his head from which he landed cleanly, scooted around a dumbfounded Ricky Pettard, and goaled.

Just the day before Matthew Lloyd had written an article in The Age criticising Cyril’s output – four goals in a quarter enough for you Lloydy?

The Hawks kicked eight goals to one for the quarter and Cyril couldn’t have been more scintillating.  So he’s not as consistent as Gary Ablett as Lloyd argues, well who is, and he doesn’t do this every week, well who could, but he did do it against Essendon, and he did it again this week. That’s two match winning quarters in six rounds. I’d say that’s a reasonable strike rate. Besides, you don’t need to pump it out for four quarters if one quarter of brilliance is enough.  

The final quarter was largely marking time, though Breust kicked a good soccer goal, Langford passed cleverly to Gunston for another, Hill bounced one through and Rough also slotted one. The final quarter was also Richmond’s best on the scoreboard, or least worst, for they added 3.4, but even then, the ground invader was the sole Richmond highlight.

The "McLachlanism"


In a game where the action is less than totally compelling, other than whatever Cyril is up to, those calling the game have more time to fill and less content with which to fill it. The usual result is meaningless prattle. In this case we had Bruce with his stats of course, and Cameron Ling with his astute reading of the game, but we also had Hamish McLachlan with what might be called his observations, but are really more like random thought bubbles that would be better if they burst before they reached his tongue.

A malapropism is a figure of speech that describes an occasion when the speaker uses an incorrect word in the place of a similar sounding word. Some of Hamish’s less thought through utterances could occasion the coining of a new figure of speech, the McLachlanism, defined as when a speaker uses a term that is not actually a word, entirely the wrong word, or an anecdote so irrelevant that non-sequiter doesn’t fit the bill and so uninteresting that boring doesn’t quite do the job either. Hamish provided examples of all three in Saturday’s call.

Even before the match began, when Jonathan Simpkin appeared on screen wearing the green substitute vest, Hamish McLachlan let slip the bombshell that his old chemistry teacher always used to wear a vest. Amazing! My guess is it wasn’t a fluro green vest, unless the teacher also doubled as the school crossing attendant or the general maintenance man in whatever exclusive school Hamish calls his alma mater. If Hamish was as fluent in science as he was in English, it is likely that the garment was some sort of protective vest to mitigate against whatever young Hamish might be doing with the Bunsen burner.

Then in the first quarter as Luke Hodge lined up a goal Hamish thought to highlight some of Hodgey’s leadership attributes, saying that he is often seen “generaling” the troops, thus introducing a new verb to the lexicon. And this ‘generaling’ apparently takes places while he is “paroling” the half-back line - from what misdemeanour Hodgey is on parole Hamish didn’t specify.

In the final quarter as the ground invader took to the field dressed in a Richmond jumper and long shorts, Hamish could be heard more than once referring to him as a “streaker!” A 'streaker' is normally associated with nudity. True, he had bare feet, but any other visible flesh was entirely in Hamish’s imagination.

In truth one of the more curious examples of the McLachlanism came from Bruce, but it was about Hamish and therefore possibly revealing in ways that we may never fully understand. As Richmond’s Sam Lloyd took possession of the ball, Hamish provided the information that Richmond is Lloyd’s fifth club in five years, and added the caveat that he’s like Elizabeth Taylor and husbands, having had “plenty of them”.

Is that Lizzy and 8th hubby Larry Fortenski...
or Robert Smith and Dermie?
Watch out Hamish, you're next!
Bruce took up the analogy highlighting that Lizzy knew how to “find a fella” and that she “got to eight didn’t she Hame?” See how Bruce even worked a stat into this exchange, although unusually for Bruce he was incorrect, if only on a technicality, for although Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times, she only had seven husbands, having married Richard Burton twice. Most bizarrely, however, was Bruce’s next quip when he remarked to Hamish, “You know, I reckon you were probably the next on the list by the way.”

It might have been interesting to know why Bruce thought Hamish could possibly be Elizabeth Taylor’s next husband, given that her last marriage ended in 1996 when she was 64 years old and Hamish 21, and she died in 2011, but sadly no one had time to unpack this observation because the umpire paid Gibson a free kick for holding the ball and the Hawks were away.

Even more interesting, or possibly scary, is that Hamish’s brother Gillon has this week been appointed to take over the role of AFL CEO from Andrew Demetriou. For the sake of the AFL let’s hope Gillon was the one who paid attention at school.  

And in Hamish’s defence, at least he didn’t drop the C-bomb on air as polished media performer Eddie McGuire did when interviewing Port’s Kane Cornes.


Final scores: Hawthorn 18 10 118 d Richmond 7 10 52

Attendance:52,990

Ladder position 2nd


What we learned: Even  more controversial than Eddie’s gaffe perhaps was the bombshell from the Western Bulldogs cheer squad, whose banner for their match against Adelaide this weekend carried the directive, “Time to come out” which could have meant that the team had been in the rooms for so long that the kids were getting impatient and changed the message while they were on the ground. Or was it an exasperated plea for the first openly gay player to finally reveal his identity? Is there a Western Bulldog with an explosive confession perhaps? My guess is it isn’t Bob Murphy; his taste in music - Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash et al - doesn’t sound like the soundtrack to any gay gatherings I’ve ever been to. I think we can also rule out Luke Dalhaus on the basis that gay men don’t do dreadlocks, or any other hairstyle not requiring product. Whoever it is, it is good to know that there is one area of the game in which the Bulldogs might take the lead.


What we already knew: that the last small forward to win the Coleman medal (even though it didn’t exist by that name at the time) was Leigh Matthews. Well we knew it at least a full minute before Bruce McAvaney worked it out.

The question was posed by Nick Maxwell in the commentary booth after Luke Breust volleyed through a goal in the final quarter, his 17th for the season keeping him among the leading contenders so far this season. All Hawks fans listening immediately said the name Leigh Matthews under their breath, but it took Bruce a full minute to work it out. Impressively he got the goals (68) and the year (1975) correct.


Elsewhere: We also knew that Melbourne and Sydney would put on one of the dullest games not involving Ross Lyon. With Paul Roos at Melbourne’s helm and John Longmire in charge of Sydney, a dour defensive struggle doesn’t begin to describe how the inaction unfolded.

The buzz topic in footy circles in the week leading up to the match was ‘congestion’ – and I’m not referring to traffic congestion or at least the density of parked cars that Buddy rammed his girlfriend’s Jeep into in suburban Sydney – but to the rolling pack of players around the ball at all times. So a match involving teams marshalled by two coaches who were the principal architects – along with Ross Lyon – of the bore years of 2005/06 was only ever going to underline the problem. 

In the end, the game was so boring and uneventful that congestion was the least of its problems, and once Buddy injured his knee, that story took over as the only topic of the game under general discussion.