Hawthorn slips to 0-4 for the season after being smashed by Geelong
ALL alone at the bottom of the ladder, the once-powerhouse Hawthorn cannot fall any further following its 86 point loss to Geelong.
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IF the door was shut before, it has now officially been dead-bolted and boarded up.
It was said by some that a phoenix — or is that a Hawk? — could rise from the ashes in an Easter weekend resurrection.
This was more like torture, Hawthorn crucified by Geelong to the tune of 86 points.
There have been epics between these two foes — this wasn’t one of them.
GAME RECAP: CATCH ALL THE ACTION HERE
Winless, their wings clipped and a few men down, this season has been unfamiliar territory for the once-dominant Hawks.
It only continues, with decade-long droughts — the ones you don’t want to be breaking — now being smashed.
The Hawks are 0-4 for the first time since 1998.
For the first time since 2006, Hawthorn has recorded consecutive losses of more than 10 goals.
It was the first time the club has failed to register 50 points since Round 4, 2012.
It was also Geelong’s biggest win over Hawthorn since 1949 — then also an 86-point victory.
How the mighty have fallen. Alone at the bottom of the ladder, the one-time powerhouse cannot fall any further.
When Geelong key forward Tom Hawkins ran off his man to snare the spoils of a Daniel Menzel contested mark and boot his 10th-straight goal from a set shot within the first minutes of the game, it seemed like it had begun.
They would have wished they had stayed home to consume the haul from Sunday morning — the Cats would make sure of that.
Come crunch time, there was a flicker of hope.
That steeliness — the Hawthorn will. It was there for 15 minutes in the third term but was quickly extinguished as Geelong powered to its punishment of the former ruler, ramming the point home with an 11-goal — straight, mind you — to two final term.
It wasn’t pretty, from either side for the first three quarters. There was 29 minutes without a goal as it looked like these two old foes would arm-wrestle like they used to.
No one could find a man inside 50, and both appeared to be overusing the ball.
If there’s one thing on Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson’s agenda this week at Waverley Park, it has to be kicking.
“I’ve never seen a Hawthorn side kick it so badly,” AFL great Matthew Lloyd declared on 3AW in the first term. Things didn’t improve.
When Zach Tuohy kicked long out of the backline in the second term, Billy Hartung was there to gobble it up, only then to turn it over immediately. The Cats ran it from defence to attack — including a Menzel tap-on to Harry Taylor — for a Mitch Duncan goal.
James Sicily showed promise after his late inclusion for Ty Vickery (back), but when he lined up straight in front as the Hawks surged in the third quarter and missed, Clarkson could do little but put his head in his hands.
This was a long way from the precision, one-step kicking that Patrick Dangerfield lauded in this newspaper a week before last year’s Easter Monday meeting.
Come the last quarter, not many Hawks fans could bear to stay and watch as Steven Motlop and Tom Hawkins ran riot.
Clarkson — now facing one of the biggest tests of his coaching career — could have been forgiven for not even looking up.
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