Warren Tredrea: Tom Hawkins and Toby Greene’s unsavoury acts could cost them and their Geelong and GWS teammates a flag
The potential suspensions of Geelong forward Tom Hawkins and GWS star Toby Greene will have huge repercussions on their sides’ hopes in this weekend’s preliminary finals. Which makes their avoidable acts even more baffling, writes Warren Tredrea.
Warren Tredrea
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Tom Hawkins and Toby Greene, what were you thinking?
Clearly not much.
The two incidents from last weekend where Toby Greene made unnecessary contact with Lachie Neale’s face and Tom Hawkins delivered a high, off-the-ball hit on Will Schofield have made me struggle to fathom why they did it in the first place.
It’s little wonder Match Review Officer Michael Christian felt they had a case to answer.
First and foremost, I’m a huge fan of both players, they’re the very reason why hundreds of thousands of fans flock to the footy each weekend.
And while both players are hard at it and play for their life, they often sail very close to the line.
But what I can’t cop is unsavoury incidents off the ball, and it has the potential to cost not only themselves, but also their teammates a premiership so deep into the finals race.
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It’s not as if both Greene or Hawkins had laid an ill-timed bump or clumsy tackle in the heat of the contest. What they did was avoidable.
Hawkins’ roundhouse on Eagle Will Schofield 50m of the ball was poor.
And Toby Greene has now had two questionable incidents in the past fortnight.
Last weekend he made unreasonable and unnecessary contact to Marcus Bontempelli’s face resulting in a public apology and a $7500 fine. And only a week later he’s been cited by the MRO on the same charge for making contact with Lion Lachie Neale’s face.
Irrespective of whether he is suspended or not, he’s treading a ridiculously fine line so deep in September.
And as much as senior coaches will publicly support players who’ve had lapses in on-field discipline, I can guarantee you both Leon Cameron and Chris Scott would be livid and no doubt would have made their feelings well and truly felt behind the scenes.
The loss of Hawkins and potential loss of Greene is immense to both their clubs.
For the Cats Hawkins has kicked a club-high 56 goals in 2019, but his measure of value is better explained by this statistic: He is responsible for one of every five goals the Cats have kicked this year.
Greene’s influence was clearly obvious in the Giants’ three-point semi-final win over Brisbane with a 30-disposal, 10 score involvement, five-clearance, five inside 50 and two-goal best-on-ground performance.
Of course, we’ve seen a lot of worse incidents on the footy field, but let’s face it neither Hawkins’ cheap off-the-ball hit on Schofield or Greene’s contact with Neale’s face needed to happen.
In a game of risk and reward this was clearly a case of ridiculous risk and absolutely no reward.
And with only four teams — Richmond, Collingwood, GWS and Geelong — left jostling for position to win a place in the final dance, having your best players available and fit and firing can be the difference between claiming premiership glory and falling short.
Preliminary finals are often the best games of football for the year, it will be a shame if undisciplined acts rob us of the spectacle we all deserve.