Hawthorn’s hubris plain to see in loss to Western Bulldogs
Hawthorn tried so hard to get into the Bulldogs’ heads that they got into their own heads.
The Bulldogs played like they wanted to win the game, the Hawks played like they wanted to win an argument. Arrogance defeated them.
“Let’s see if he (Michael Sellwood) can walk in the second half,” Nick Watson told the broadcaster at half-time. And it was good for him, it was enjoyable and it brought more bite to a game that already had some grudges.
Also, small men who show off and are not afraid of big men need to be encouraged. But they also need to support this, but Watson did not support it that day.
“As long as he’s walking, I don’t care if he talks or not,” Watson added of his run-ins with the fringe brawler Sellwood, a player who had none of Watson’s talents but played every game as if his career was about to end. “I would love to see it in the second half”
Watson had a kick and a handball in the second half. One of the men was out for a walk and the other was Watson. For the most part, Watson has kept his word before. But sometimes it gets hit when you hit it with your chin. (It didn’t help that he was stuck on the bench for a long time in the final quarter for some reason and couldn’t return).
Earlier this year, Hawthorn co-captain James Sicily told me in an interview for this masthead that he had reined in his emotions so much in recent years that he felt numb in many games that he wanted to get back to feeling things, playing closer – so probably over the line. He felt he played better that way. It does this most of the time. He didn’t do that in this match.
It was easy to understand what he meant, but what makes him come alive isn’t always true for his team. It didn’t help that he was distracted by a leader getting into an argument with Will Lewis, who was there to distract and stop him.
Hawks coach Sam Mitchell encouraged individuality in his team. Young players are allowed to be punk against their opponents and enjoy expressing themselves. If it suits the opposition, so be it. But there comes a point where the better way to express yourself is to kick and kick directly.
Hawthorn is a good team, but not a team to be complacent. They led this game by 29 points early in the third quarter and then played like a complacent team waiting for someone else to get them there. But there was no Jack Gunston who could kick directly when others couldn’t. There was no one on the ball to stop Marcus Bontempelli or Ed Richards. There’s no stopping Tim English or Aaron Naughton. No young Hawk wants to own moments like Jordan Croft did for the Dogs.
Battler Nick Coffield came to the contest in the final seconds, fumbled the ball and killed the game. Dylan Moore waited for the ball and the game to come to him.
The Hawks shouldn’t have lost this game, but they went 1:11 in the second half and didn’t get going.
Trolls don’t like football
What you need to know about Carlos is that he is a family man. She needs you to know that, which is why she’s smiling in the photo with her little boy sitting on her lap. He is a loving, caring father. A great role model.
He loves his football, he is a passionate man. As long as these people are white, he is a man of the people. Carlos doesn’t seem to like black people. Carlos’ real passion is not actually football, but sitting bravely behind the keyboard and trolling football players.
Of course, Carlos, who was accused of being a coward and a bigot, took action to prove his cowardice by closing his social media account. I hope he continues to hide under his bed and never touch another keyboard.
If police can identify Carlos, he will face possible criminal charges.
Carlos was called out by Mabior Chol for his racist anger. It was also rightly condemned by AFL chief Andrew Dillon and Hawks boss Ash Klein; herself was particularly harsh towards his vile comments.
All three are right, Carlos is sorely wrong.
All fans know the views of the AFL and the clubs – because no matter which club you go to, they all have players of different races and universally condemn racism – and yet people who claim to be supporters of football and the clubs persist in their dirty intrusion into players’ social media feeds with this nonsense.
But this de ja vu message from the AFL begs the question of whether calling out bigots reinforces their dirty views. The league and the clubs choose not to remain silent and risk amplifying opinion because the standard you apply is the standard you accept and no one wants to accept that standard. They also don’t want to give the player the feeling that they are alone, that the game tolerates them being treated this way. And so they are right to do so.
Carlos needs to understand that he is alone despite the constant comments from others.
Collingwood’s paradox
Collingwood have decided to go through the season without a new head of development this year to replace Josh Fraser, whose stock is rising by the week as Carlton’s interim coach.
The club tried to find a replacement but could not find a suitable player in time. So they turned the job over to other development and assistant coaches.
This method of installing assistants or development coaches rather than hiring a head of development to oversee the entire program and players’ needs has been tried unsuccessfully before. One of the clubs that tried this was Collingwood under Nathan Buckley. It lasted one season before being scrapped. He does not appear to be working at Collingwood at the moment.
Collingwood coach Craig McRae on Friday bemoaned the poor form of the club’s VFL squad, said he had spoken one-to-one with all 25 academy players last week about where they stood in the back half of the year, and warned time was running out on their careers for some to progress at AFL level.
It is difficult to separate the two points. Of course, a development officer can only do so much, and the first and foremost concern is the quality of lower-level players. But not having a leader in development and being concerned with the pace of development of your young players would seem like a pretty obvious connection.
sale of the north
This was a match played by Kuzey at home. They were getting paid to be there, which was the only good thing about going across the Nullarbor and playing the top team and taking lessons in football and economics.
North aren’t good enough right now to beat Freo wherever they play, but they could be more competitive at home at Marvel. They would probably lose there by 10 goals, not 20. So in a sense, take the money and be done with it.
But paying a very good team to play where they prefer, in their home state, and allowing them to stay at home, destroying their chances of finishing top of the standings and making things even harder for yourself for a team that finds climbing the ladder difficult enough, is a particularly cruel form of economic rationalism.
They will play West Coast next week. We are in Perth again and the North’s home game is fully paid for. In their first match against the Eagles in the second round, they lost again in Perth.
The North already had draft concessions of the kind Essendon wanted. They received variable funding at a level similar to that of expansion clubs. After years of working with a revolving door of coaches, they hired a coach with multiple premierships. And they are still making it harder for their teams to climb the ladder by selling out their home games in WA.
Yep, after being in the bottom four for six years in a row, they’ve now made it into the bottom four.
But this week they play West Coast, another long-term resident of the bottom four, and have gifted the Eagles a home game. The North may be the favorites to beat the Eagles at Marvel, while they could still beat them in Perth, but the task is a much friendlier one for the Eagles at home.
After the Eagles, Richmond, Essendon and Port Adelaide are below them. They’ve already won five games this year, so if they beat the Eagles and those three they’ll have a minimum of nine wins, their best result in a season since 2012.
But the Eagles beat them earlier this year and although Port are one win behind them in the standings, they also have a percentage of 101; that’s 14 percentage points better than the North’s and arguably a better metric for the respective seasons.
North were unlikely to be a team that would seriously threaten the finals this year, so in that sense, take the money. But all of this has a price. And the $2 million cost per season sends the message to your own players that we don’t expect you to win and that giving you the best chance to win isn’t important to us.
The Hierarchy didn’t believe that was the message they sent, but it certainly looked similar to the message received. North played like a team expecting to lose and was there as a witch’s hat for Freo’s practice run after halftime.
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Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specializing in AFL and athletics.Connect with: X or email.
