Friday 29 August 2014*, MCG
* My apologies for the delay in this post. I was preparing for a talk and didn't quite get around to finishing this one - Qualifying final post coming soon!
Hawthorn - Guardians of the Galaxy
In the build up to our final game of the home and away season against Collingwood, the prevailing view was that the match was meaningless: from a football perspective that is, rather than an existential one, although I’d be inclined to question whether there’s a difference.
Regardless of the result we were likely to end up with the same outcome, at least with respect to the finals. Kind of like the forthcoming Victorian election really, no matter who wins the end result will be the same. And it was true to a certain point: a Hawthorn win meant we would in all likelihood finish second and play Geelong in the first week of the finals. If Hawthorn were to lose, we would in all likelihood finish third and play Geelong in the first week of the finals.
But this is to ignore the other half of the equation: if Collingwood were to win, they might make the finals - assuming Richmond were to be defeated by the Swans, whereas if Collingwood were to lose, they would definitely miss out on the finals. So this gave Hawthorn plenty to play for. It’s not every week you get the chance to kill Collingwood’s finals chances.
Of course in predicting the outcome of this match you have to take into account Collingwood’s recent catastrophic run of injuries, which saw not only most of their best players missing, with the exception of Scott Pendlebury, but most of their playing list missing. There was some chance Hawthorn might have to lend them a couple of players, other than Clinton Young that is; we’d lent him to them the year before.
Hawthorn was missing players too. Despite our reported position of not resting players ahead of the finals; Luke Hodge, Ben Stratton, Matthew Suckling and Brad Hill all found themselves out of the team with various complaints and types of soreness - that’s half of our back six plus our main runner, so not insignificant exclusions.
Even so, there was very little realistic chance that an undermanned Collingwood would defeat Hawthorn on the eve of the finals, a position borne out by a disappointing crowd of 48,973 - this for a Friday night Collingwood home game they needed to win to make the finals. Perhaps the injury curse was sweeping through their membership ranks as well as the playing list.
Guardians
The number one movie in the week of this match was the latest Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy. The film tells the story of a group of disparate warriors who come together to protect the galaxy against threat of destruction by the evil Ronan the Accuser. The group become known as the Guardians of the Galaxy and in their noble quest, the Guardians are perhaps fulfilling a role not that dissimilar to Hawthorn’s. Keeping Collingwood out of the finals surely equates to saving the galaxy from destruction, or am I overstating it?
Extending the analogy, the guardians themselves bear similarities to some of the participants in this match. Quill the Star Lord is the captain, so most obviously equates to stand-in skipper Jordan Lewis, as long aswe overlook the bald spot; Gamorra, a deadly assassin with a sense of righteousness is Gibbo, if only because she’s the best looking of the guardians, despite having green skin and purple hair; Groot - a tall, tree-like humanoid whose height gives him a Ceglar-like appearance; Rocket, a genetically engineered raccoon who is a dynamic little fighting machine is clearly the Poo; while Drax a vicious thug who starts out working against the guardians but eventually joins them can only be Brian Lake. The evil Ronan the accuser meanwhile, must therefore be Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury.
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| Guardians of the Galaxy - that's Poo in the middle |
The Eternal Question - Ball, Hodge or Judd?
I met up with my friend Julian, a Collingwood fan, and we took our seats in a largely vacant members’ section. Julian wasn’t particularly optimistic about the game, but then neither was the cheer squad, whose banner farewelled Luke Ball, despite the fact that a win might have seen him playing next week.
With Luke Ball’s retirement, Julian and I were able to take one last chance to indulge in the 12 year long conversation comparing the three top picks from that famous 2001 draft and wonder for the umpteenth time who has had the better career: Ball, Judd or Hodge? Naturally I plumped for Hodge, two fewer Brownlows than Judd, sure, but both won Norm Smith medals while Hodge has one more premiership medal. Ball on the other hand did get a premiership medal with Collingwood in 2010, but as my friend Jason once observed, Ross Lyon’s decision to leave Ball on the bench in the second half of the 2009 Grand Final possibly cost St Kilda two premierships: the 2009 one plus 2010, after he left St Kilda for Collingwood and was instrumental in them defeating the Saints. Probably not the legacy he wanted, but a great player nonetheless.
The game? Well it was largely forgettable. Collingwood came out gallantly and held Hawthorn goal-less for the majority of the first quarter, while kicking the first couple themselves. So in this sense it followed a similar trajectory to a Marvel movie with the bad guys seemingly taking the early advantage. Jack Gunston kicking our first goal was the first sign that there was life yet in the good guys.
As it turned out it took a little more time than one might have expected for Hawthorn to gain the upper hand in this match. The scores were still level as we entered time-on in the second quarter at four goals apiece. Worryingly at this point, three of Collingwood’s four goals had been kicked on Ryan Schoenmakers, including two to Corey Gault playing his first AFL game. This didn’t bode well for Schoenmakers’ chances of playing finals.
Steele Sidebottom was playing an outstanding game for Collingwood. I’ve always thought Sidebottom was a good player, and as my friend John says, with a name like Steele Sidebottom he was either going to be a great footballer or a male porn star.
Despite Collingwood’s and Sidebottom’s best efforts, the Hawks exerted some of their special powers and stole a late lead with two goals to Roughead, one to Gunston and one to Ceglar all in the final few minutes before half-time. A 26 point lead at half-time was likely to be sufficient, so I enjoyed my half-time drink in the Hugh Trumble bar more than Julian.
At this stage in the movie the Guardians were still in trouble, so it could be that the Hawks are a superior force, or that our opponent Collingwood was weaker than Ronan and his evil army.
For Collingwood to win from here was going to take a comeback even more unexpected and triumphant than Kate Bush, who took to the London stage during the week for the first time in 35 years.
When Liam Shiels won the first clearance and kicked it directly to Jordan Lewis, who goaled, any chance of a comeback was pretty much over. A minute later Rough took a strong mark and also converted, and the fat lady, or better yet, Kate Bush, started to sing.
And the rout hadn’t even begun yet.
David Hale kicked a goal on the threee quarter time siren. Then four goals in the opening six minutes of the final quarter took the leadout to nearly 70 points from where it barely budged.
In the end Gunston kicked 5, Rough 4, Hale and the Poo 2 each. As well as this quartet, Lewis, Gibson, Burgoyne, Smith, Mitchell and Birchall were all outstanding. Saving the galaxy proved less problematic than you might think, but importantly for our guardians, they tuned up nicely for even more important battles – the finals!
Final scores: Hawthorn 18 13 121 d Collingwood 8 8 56
Attendance: 48,973
Ladder position: 2nd
What we learned: At the post match press conference, one journalist posited the theory that Jack Gunston must be going to Sydney next year because like Buddy in 2013, he spent a fair bit of time up the ground getting kicks on the wing and half back line. As far as whacko conspiracy theories go, it was right up there with the fake moon landing. Clearly the journo in question hadn’t registered Gunston’s 5 goals, or the fact that he plays that way every week. Clarko, I thought, showed admirable restraint in simply saying that he didn’t understand the question. He could have been excused for morphing into Mick Malthouse and letting the journo know exactly what he thought of the comment, and I’m almost sorry he didn’t. It was nealy as daft as Mike Sheahan’s comments in Grand Final week last season that Clarkson would be coaching West coast this season.
What we already knew: Kate didn’t play ‘Wuthering Heights’ in her comeback concert, and this match didn’t scale them either, but in saying that, Hawthorn did win convincingly, knocked Collingwood out of finals contention, and kicked off Spring Fashion week nicely with the ever stylish brown and gold verticals.
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