The Tackle: Hawks team to beat, while Richmond finally has its finals destiny in its own hands
UPDATE: DON’T know what to call it, but the Hawks have it. Meanwhile, Tigers the masters of their own fate. Relive Robbo’s chat.
Mark Robinson
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DON’T know what to call it, but the Hawks have it.
Is it self belief or resilience or do they simply have superstar players who never know when to give up?
They are a mighty team and when they surged back into the match on Saturday night, a comment directed at Ron Barassi came to mind.
Barassi was such a fierce competitor for the Demons through their glory era in the mid to late 1950s, he became a player who drew great admiration.
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It is said that Barassi never played in a game in which he believed the Demons couldn’t win, even if they found themselves down by 50 points.
After one such match which Melbourne lost, Barassi was asked why they lost.
He answered: We ran out of time.
That was Barassi’s mindset. No matter the margin, it could be reeled in.
On Saturday night, the Cats led by almost five goals. The Hawks kicked the next 10 goals. They made a rampant Geelong appear pedestrian and only one other team has done that this season.
RELIVE ROBBO’S CHAT FROM THIS MORNING, BELOW
It was a powerful performance. Barassi-like in attitude.
Any performance is underpinned by attitude and when you have an ability to kick goals, it is a monster combination.
Scoring is the point of difference.
The Hawks can do it. So can Sydney. Fremantle is better with Walters back. Port Adelaide can if they are allowed to run. The Cats are solid and North Melbourne can also kick quick goals.
That’s why there is a question mark over Essendon, while most of the rest in the hunt haven’t been consistent on the scoreboard.
The Hawks kicked 14 goals on Saturday night and there were nine goalkickers.
Down by six goals, they had something to play for.
It made it an interesting post-match for Cats coach Chris Scott who didn’t particularly believe his team was poor.
“It sounds funny to say, but it was a step forward in our preparation. We always went into the game wanting to play well, we certainly didn’t put the cue in the rack — not consciously — at half-time after a good performance,” he said.
“We’ll learn some things from tonight. In that respect, it’s kind of “mission accomplished”; a little bit, but the competitor in you and in our boys would clearly liked to have performed better after half-time.”
Scott knows his team better than anyone, but it’s a curious offering when his team allowed 10 consecutive goals to a team they play in a fortnight’s time.
Maybe too much is made of psychological impact, meaning what happens in one game doesn’t necessarily impact for the next game, that every game is a new start.
Still, the Herald Sun led the match coverage in the Sunday Herald Sun with this: Not having anything meaningful to play for may have contributed to Geelong’s 23-point loss to Hawthorn, according to Geelong coach Chris Scott.
“We were really playing (tonight) for the right to play the other team in Melbourne in the first week of the finals, so the stakes are clearly different to where they’ll be next time,’’ Scott said.
Yes they will be, but can’t believe a lack of motivation could be a reason, however small, for the second-half fade out.
Remember, North Melbourne had nothing to play for against a hungry Adelaide and did the job.
We’ll find out soon enough where the Cats sit.
If they turn around the result in a fortnight, Scott could well be the master of psychology.
OVER TO YOU, TIGES
HOW motivating can it be to have your destiny in your own hands.
We’ll find out next Saturday at 4.40pm, when Richmond plays Sydney at ANZ Stadium.
If the Tigers win, they play finals. If they lose, they’ll fret over a poor first half of the season and, less seriously, probably be the butt of Ninth-mond jokes.
Or this year, 10th might be the new ninth.
What a delightful final round. This season has been as eventful as the 150-odd seasons which preceded it, but few of them will have produced the final-round drama which is expected.
There is certainty and uncertainty.
The Swans will finish top.
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Hawthorn and Geelong will finish either second or third.
Fremantle and Port Adelaide play at 3.10 next Saturday to decide who finishes fourth and fifth.
North Melbourne is locked in at sixth and Essendon, if they beat a dispirited Carlton, will finish seventh.
That leaves eighth spot.
Traditionally, eighth spot is cannon fodder in the first week of the finals, but that ain’t the point.
Richmond, Collingwood, Adelaide and West Coast will throw the kitchen sink at everything to fill the final position.
Even Gold Coast is a zephyr of a chance. They need teams to lose and they have to beat West Coast by a margin somewhere approaching 160 points.
It’s crazy isn’t it, that seasons for up to five clubs will be determined a success or failure depending on what happens next weekend.
Don’t matter that it is only eighth spot, and the opponent will be either Port at Adelaide Oval or Fremantle at Subiaco, which is like asking how do you want to die, eaten by a shark or eaten by a crocodile, the fact a team plays finals is good for their soul and bloody great for their fans.
The Tigers continued their fairytale finish to the season with a win over St Kilda at the MCG.
They kicked the first three goals inside four minutes and the game was over. Well, there were a few midgame jitters, but that’s Richmond.
Much has been said about how Sydney will approach Round 23, whether they’ll rest players or not, but what Sydney does cannot be relevant to how Richmond plays the game.
They are playing slick, aggressive footy and better still, they know they can beat Sydney.
In what is pure Richmond fragility, they have trouble beating teams like Melbourne, Gold Coast and Carlton, but in recent seasons have beaten the two best teams in Sydney and Hawthorn.
In Round 14, the Tigers lost by 11 points to the Swans at the MCG.
It was a stinker of a match if you were to judge it by entertainment. The Swans crowded the contest to avoid a run and gun shoot out after an arduous match against Port Adelaide the week before, and the Tigers couldn’t get any substantial run going.
The positive was they matched Sydney’s grunt, only to have Lance Franklin tip the game in Sydney’s favour.
The fact is the Tigers and Swans have won three matches each of their past six outings, and curiously none of them were played at ANZ Stadium.
Two of Richmond’s wins were by more than five goals, and the other was four-point thriller at the MCG.
The Tigers are a better equipped team than what they produced in Round 14.
Matt Dea, Shaun Hampson, Aaron Edwards and Matt Thomas played in that game and didn’t play on Sunday. They have been replaced by Chris Newman, a re-engineered Shaun Grigg as a run-with player, and a couple of kids in Gordon and Lennon.
Ivan Maric, Bachar Houli, Alex Rance, Troy Chaplin, Anthony Miles, Ricky Petterd and Brandon Ellis are in career-best form, or close to it.
The personnel might be neither here or there, but clearly the Tigers are solid in all facets of the game, from contested ball, to ball movement from the back half, to shared goalkicking and to winning on the road.
They need all of that and more to beat Sydney this weekend.
Of course, the motivation couldn’t be any higher, but at the same time motivation doesn’t win you matches
Over to you, Tigers.
Originally published as The Tackle: Hawks team to beat, while Richmond finally has its finals destiny in its own hands
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