Sam Mitchell’s Hawthorn Hawks showed their toughness, along with their talent in a comeback win over the Sydney Swans on Thursday night
Sam Mitchell’s Hollywood Hawks have a blue-collar advantage.
This Hawthorn team arrived on the scene with plenty of glitz and glamor, but under the Thursday night lights of the MCG they rolled up their sleeves to neutralize Sydney’s run-and-gun, sellout game and win by 17 points – 14.15 (99) to 13.4 (82).
The most obvious difference occurred at opposite ends of the court, a product of the Hawks’ appetite for challenge when the ball was between those areas.
The Swans’ high-priced prized squad made zero impact after two first-term goals, with Jack Gunston, Mabior Chol and Mitch Lewis taking on key roles, with their total pay packet matched only by Charlie Curnow’s. He touched the ball only once in the second half.
Gunston, a key figure in the Hawthorn teams that broke Sydney hearts in the 2010s, has inflicted further pain on a new breed of Swans. His fourth goal was to secure a win that looked unlikely as the Swans took a 20-point lead early in the third quarter.
This was a good night for Mitchell and the coaching staff. The absence of Isaac Heeney and Errol Gulden has undoubtedly made their job easier, but it is doubtful what impact the Swans superstars will make in the arm wrestle created by Mitchell.
After an exciting first period in which 11 goals were scored, the match changed with the introduction of an extra player behind the ball.
The slower ball movement suited the Hawks, who had more ways to score due to their contested possession. The number of contested possessions favoring Sydney in the first half increased to 26 by the end of the game, and Swans coach Dean Cox said this was a major factor in his team’s defeat.
Due to the inaccuracy, Hawthorn were unable to convert their re-entry into 50 in the second term, but the Swans cashed in late as they were tired coming off a five-day break.
“When you look at our GWS game and the Sydney game and just look at the intensity around the ball, the speed of the bodies and the pressure we applied tonight, the difference between those two games was quite significant in terms of our behaviour,” Mitchell said.
“And if we can withstand the pressure and intensity we had tonight, we’ll be a really tough team to beat. But if we go down, we won’t have to look too hard in the rearview mirror to realize how vulnerable we can be.”
The substitution behind the ball was a bold tactic from Mitchell as there was a risk of allowing the Swans to create overlap from the defense through their extra players, the often damaging Nick Blakey or Callum Mills.
But the pressure applied by small forwards Connor Macdonald, Nick Watson and the unlikely Chol forced the Swans to play long, high balls against the outnumbered Curnow; Curnow was unable to bring the ball down often enough to allow his team to stop the winger.
“There was intensity throughout the game until the last five seconds,” Mitchell said. “My son texted me and said, ‘I wasn’t sure we were winning until eight seconds in,’ and that’s how I felt in the game.
“I thought it was a good sign that our players put together 120 minutes of really high, intense football.”
The Hawks’ control of the contested ball left the Swans facing a narrow path to victory; running the ball at high speed without defending.
Their addiction to speed has reached dizzying heights this season. They scored 18 goals in the first half against Carlton. They reached seven points in the first period last week. Here, six players came in the first 22 minutes and four players came in the eight minutes of the third quarter; But this style is difficult to maintain, especially against high-quality opposition.
“We don’t want to be so reliant on one method of scoring goals and you can’t do that from your back half,” Cox said.
Curnow was a handful for Josh Battle in the first quarter when the game was open and on the move, but he was impotent when locked in a wrestle with the bigger Tom Barrass.
Although he is expected to excel at the very talented Swans, Curnow’s five goals from his first three games is more in line with his performances in his unhappy and injury-plagued final year at Carlton than his back-to-back Coleman Medal campaigns.
His post-quarter ineffectiveness was a repeat of his previous game at this venue last July, when he was stifled by the Hawks’ key players. Curnow’s only excuse, which continued his pre-season preparations in full, was that he was not familiar with the new system, but Cox stated that he could not halve the aerial competitions as in the first two games.
“Charlie’s ability to be a consistent performer continues to work its way through our football club,” Cox said.
“The one thing we try and say is always compete as hard as possible and try to read the cues when putting the ball in.
“There may be some inconsistencies on this from time to time and this will be a work in progress. We will take our time on this.” [it].”
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