By Michael Gleeson
Luck plays its part. Luck played its part when Carlton suffered injuries and saw their season disappear down the toilet. Luck played some part when the oval ball skidded and didn’t pitch sideways for Heeney’s brilliant momentum-driving goal for Sydney. And luck has played some part for the Hawks, as it does all finalists, as they surge with their irresistible brand of carefree football.
Not all luck goes your way – the loss of key defender Sam Frost is an unwanted turn – but on the most part, you make your luck. Hawthorn have certainly made theirs.
Calsher Dear of the Hawks celebrates a goal with teammates.Credit: AFL Photos
Luck helps deliver its own momentum. Collingwood had it in 2023, that idea that the ball would fall right when it needed to. And it did, in ways that it didn’t for the Magpies this year. Now, it is falling right for Hawthorn, and creating this irresistible drive.
No, I am not saying their season is just down to luck for they are far better than that, nor that they have just got lucky and have not been the architects of their reconstruction. But luck must play its part for all finalists.
Lloyd Meek was a fringe player last year. Then the change to the ruck rule swung the game in his muscular favour. That wasn’t foreseen at the time, but he has now become one of the great recruits.
He has been slightly overlooked out of Friday night, but he was instrumental. Rucking largely solo with minimal relief, he beat an All-Australian in Tim English. He saw off Sam Darcy who is a generational talent but didn’t have his best night. And he accounted for the athletic Aaron Naughton. Meek had more hitouts than the three of them combined, five clearances of his own and took more marks than any of the three Bulldogs.
The biggest unforeseeable windfall of the year, and one of the key reasons the Hawks not only won Friday night but made it to the finals in the first place, was Calsher Dear. There was not a better, more important player on the ground on Friday night, and the kid is in his first year. He is plainly as undaunted by the finals moment as his Norm Smith medal-winning father.
The Hawks have been pleasantly surprised by the rapid progress of the precocious Dear, who as a father-son was despite the nominative determinism, ironically cheap in a draft sense.
Hawthorn might have hoped Dear would get to this level of performance but they could not have anticipated he would get there this quickly.
Dear has already done more than No.1 draft pick and target forward Aaron Cadman in two seasons, and far surpassed the output of last year’s key forward at pick three, Jed Walter, in his first season. That is not to say Dear will ultimately be a better than those two, but right now he is. The comment is made as a measure of how good Dear’s first season has been. Were Mitch Lewis fit he would not be pushing the 19-year-old Dear out of the semi-final team.
Nine of Hawthorn’s 14 goals were kicked by players not at the club last year, seven of them from first-year players, Nick Watson and Dear, while the premiership Jacks, Ginnivan and Gunston, kicked one each. You might expect goals out of seasoned players, you don’t expect seven from first-year players.
There was a further serendipity of the fact Dear and Watson booted seven. Knowing that they had dibs on Dear as a father-son later in the draft comforted Hawthorn when they considered using such an early pick on a small forward in the mercurial Watson.
Watson was the earliest selection for a small forward since Izak Rankine was taken at No.3, and Rankine is now blending time as a midfielder. In his first season, in which he played 12 games, Rankine booted 12 goals. Watson has played 22 games this year for 22 goals, albeit 6 came in the last two rounds against the bottom teams.
Sam Mitchell has been rightly lauded for encouraging his Hawthorn players to express themselves, not that some of them look like they need a lot of encouragement. They play with joy, if not humility.
As Andy Gowers, another of whom it seems the siege of six months ago feels years away, asked before Friday night’s game, does fun begat winning or winning create the fun? What came first, the Hawk or the egg?
Swans master momentum
This wasn’t a battle of the bridge, nor for a bridge. It was far bigger than that.
This was a battle of hearts and minds. And it wasn’t a confection. This was the most consequential game ever played in Sydney.
Swans coach John Longmire celebrates with Braeden Campbell.Credit: via Getty Images
They have played bigger finals there – a one-point win over Collingwood in a preliminary final just two years ago had more at stake – but the Swans coming from behind against the “other” Sydney team in front of a packed SCG was a moment that will shape football in the city.
Sydney’s Isaac Heeney takes a spectacular mark against GWS.Credit: AAP
This was a game and result of code-shaping consequence for a generation.
It only reinforced the disappointment it was not on Friday night. That the MCG was nearly full on Friday night is beside the point. That crowd would have come on Saturday. Sydney, the city, deserved prime time.
The match saved the first week of the finals. While Hawthorn played thrilling football, the game was not a thriller. Port failed to turn up on Thursday and Carlton still looked on Saturday night like they did last Sunday night – they couldn’t believe they even got there.
In Heeney the Swans have the most influential player this year. Straight out of casting for Bondi Rescue, he personally rescued the Swans on Saturday. They had no right to win this match when down by about five goals with less than a quarter to play – but their stars were more influential than the Giants’ giants.
Veteran Jake Lloyd will not have kicked a more significant goal than his one in the last quarter after keeping his feet in a one-on-one duel on the flank and running inside 50.
Outnumbered, Tom Papley’s effort to spoil Connor Idun and handball over to Heeney was just as important as Heeney’s chest shove to Lachie Whitfield that bought him the metre to give him a break and skim through his long shot goal.
And this all came after Cal Ward looked to have staved off the onslaught with a wonderful goal. There was no shame in the Giants’ loss, but there was heartburn.
It was the sort of momentum-shifting win that said the Swans can win this from anywhere. They will find a way.
Blues predictable
Carlton’s season and trajectory should not be judged by the finals. Nor even the last month when they won one of their last four games. The team was in tatters by then and patched together.
They are better than that. If they could get their hands on Dan Houston they should, even if it requires some skilful salary cap negotiation. But outside of that the Blues need to stay the course. They are much closer than a first-week elimination final (even taking into account the quarter-time scoreline).
Patrick Cripps fought hard but Carlton were swamped early in their elimination final.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Even still, they need to ask questions of a few things out of this otherwise predictable finals result. Why did they roll the dice on Sam Docherty and leave out Alex Cincotta? And why pick Tom De Koning then make him the sub?
With De Koning you either play him or you don’t. Voss said they were worried about managing his minutes. What if he had to be subbed on in the first minute? He would still have been better playing permanent forward than as sub. When they needed to inject run and energy all they had to bring on was a two-metre tall ruck and forward.
Bevo and the Bont
Luke Beveridge said Marcus Bontempelli was fit. He didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time off the ground when the game disappeared. He was just quiet.
Marcus Bontempelli talks to coach Luke Beveridge.Credit: AFL Photos
And yet it remained intriguing why probably the games’ best player remained at centre half-forward while his team was smashed in the middle of the ground in the third quarter.
Across the second and third terms he had just four touches. That’s ridiculous. In large part that was due to Conor Nash who beat him in the first half.
After the long break Beveridge evidently tried to shake the tag by forcing Nash to follow Bont forward. It might have worked if the ball ever got forward, which it didn’t.
You can sympathise with the thinking. When you are getting beaten everywhere it’s hard to fix all problems at once. The surprise was he was left forward so long when it was doing nothing to get Bontempelli, nor his side, back in the game.
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