AFL 2021: Latest Hawthorn news ahead of Round 5 clash with Melbourne
It’s been a long road back from injury for Hawthorn’s Jarman Impey. But he’s, arguably, in career-best form. Here’s how he found balance in his life.
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He’s not a property mogul yet, but Jarman Impey is working on it.
When the Hawks’ defender feels he needs an escape from football, Impey loves to delve into the world of real estate.
Revealing one of his key outlets away from the football field, property podcasts are on high rotation on Impey’s phone.
“I really like real estate so I listen to podcasts about that,” Impey said.
“I listen to a guy in Sydney - his name is Ravi Sharma - I have just been big on him of late these last couple of months, just getting educated around real estate.
“It’s just something I have really liked I suppose and if I could grab a couple of properties while I am playing it would be super cool.
“Real estate is a very cool market and a very big market so it’s nice to be involved and educated around it.”
Ahead of the Hawks’ annual Beyond Blue Cup match on Sunday against Melbourne at the MCG, Impey felt strongly it was important for the wellbeing of all AFL players to have outlets, like his property passion, in their lives away from the game.
The outside interests helped Impey, who also has a passion for cars and motorcycles, deal with the challenging road back from his anterior cruciate ligament injury in Round 18, 2019.
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Having largely escaped serious injury in his football career to that point, the season-ending knee injury hit hard for the Hawthorn playmaker.
His road back was complicated by having to complete his rehabilitation in an interstate hub during last year’s COVID-ravaged season.
“I’d been lucky enough to not have too many injuries and then, bang, you’re out for a good solid 12 months,” Impey said.
“At the forefront of my mind was wanting to get back to playing some good football again and being reliable and wanting to help the team. My goal was to come back where I left off.
“It was a bit hard with the hub and coming back and probably not the best training coming into the season. It did have its ups and downs.
“But I just kept the focus on coming back to my best and helping the team as soon as possible, which was on my mind.
“You just go through ups and downs, ‘I’m close but I’m not so close’ and you want to be out on the field and all these kinds of things.
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“I just stayed connected through teammates and my partner (Annabelle) and once again having that outlet looking at real estate and cars.”
Impey made his comeback in Round 9 last year, but his return was short-lived. He managed just five games before a rib injury in Round 15 forced him out for the rest of the season.
“It was frustrating,” Impey said. “To get back to playing some football and get some confidence was good, but then I broke a little rib there.
“I wanted to play the last couple of games because it was some of the boys’ last games in terms of Paul Puopolo and the captain in Benny (Stratton) and it ended up being (the last year for James) Frawley as well at the club.
“I was shattered that I could not play and it was sort of near the liver that’s why I could not play because these days you can get through a few games with cracked ribs.
“That was difficult and I just had to wait the season out and get ready for a good pre-season.”
Impey has capitalised on a strong summer to make an impressive return to action for the Hawks this year.
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Featuring in every game, Impey has succeeded in picking up where he left off in 2019.
With his dash and drive off half-back, Impey boasts an elite ranking for disposals (23.5), kicks (16.8) and marks (6.3) and also rates above average for handballs and metres gained so far this season.
“I didn’t miss much of the pre-season which was good. That was good for my confidence,” Impey said.
“Now that I’m in the season, and happy in the backline, I can just keep building each week.
“I am happy where I am and how I’m feeling and how the body is pulling up so not too many complaints from me at the moment.
“I do feel like I’m seeing the game better. I’m 25, turning 26, but I feel like I’ve got some good years to come and very confident in me playing some good consistent football.”
Despite Hawthorn’s 1-3 start to the season, Impey was confident the Hawks could still ignite their season.
“We have been - I don’t want to use the word slack - but we have just given a head start to the opponents that we’ve played,” Impey said.
“We have given them a head start in the first quarter and I think we have just got to bring that edge from the start. The games that you’ve seen we’ve always narrowed it back to less than a goal and giving these head starts doesn’t really help.
“Internally we are very confident and we are still building … we are very confident and we have great belief within the group that we’ll bounce and our time will come.”
The unbeaten Demons present a significant challenge in turning that around.
“They’ve been in great form which is good to see but hopefully we can jag a win and create an upset,” Impey said.
“Back at the ‘G for us, I feel like we do play the MCG quite well. But they are in ripping form and it will be nice to get a win against them especially in the Beyond Blue Cup.
“This is the 16th Beyond Blue Cup …. I have always been a big advocate for shining a light on mental health and getting your head and your mind right because I believe that is one of the most important things to have right in terms of the body.
“Especially playing the sport that we do and going through injuries, you have a lot of ups and downs and it’s important to have someone to talk to and have that release.”
Shrewd Clarko already has makings of flag line
- Jon Ralph
Sam Mitchell was not telling the footy world anything he had not already told seven-game defender Changkuoth Jiath on the eve of the AFL season.
To his mates, Mitchell is great company because he is straight shooter, but the Box Hill coach chose his words wisely when asked to describe CJ’s development in 2020.
“His best is phenomenal but his worst did cost us fairly regularly and as a defender that’s quite tough,” Mitchell said.
“The thing he has worked on and credit to him is doing the simple things well.”
Four games ago Jiath’s career looked at an intersection.
With a one-year rookie deal and Alex Rance-style brain fades that seemed to cancel out the positives — intercept marking gifts, roaming runs up the field — his future was in his own hands.
Yet a month into the AFL season, it is apparent that Jiath might be an AFL star in the making.
And while Alastair Clarkson’s rebuild for his next bit of “silverware” still seems very much a work in transition, if you peer hard into the future, you can see the makings of a premiership back six.
Hawthorn fans, who have got used to Clarkson trashing the national draft — despite it being the bedrock of his four flags — and seeing recruits such as Michael Hartley and Kyle Hartigan enter the club, still aren’t quite sure.
The Hawks still need another star midfielder and a bona fide key position star alongside 29-year-old Jack Gunston before anyone gets too excited about their premiership claims.
But consider Hawthorn’s Round 1 side next year and the talent that Clarkson will call on in his backline.
James Sicily, still listed as indefinite after an August 2020 ACL tear, will command that backline with CJ as his intercept-marking back-up.
Will Day, out with a fractured ankle, has already established his bone fides as a special talent who can play half back or wing.
Last year’s No. 6 overall pick Denver Grainger-Barras, out with a knee hyperextension, has the junior pedigree but not yet the senior performances to show he can be an intercept-marking defender for 200 games.
Blake Hardwick, 24, and swingman Jarman Impey, 25, have pace and potential and No. 7 draft pick Jack Scrimshaw continues to put in the kind of 22-possession, 10-mark games against Geelong that show his upside is significant.
None of it guarantees anything, but if the Hawks are to build from its defence up it is an excellent starting point.
In the past fortnight 197cm marking forward Emerson Jeka has kicked 11 goals in a pair of VFL practice games, including six straight two weeks ago.
Jeka, a former No. 9 rookie draft pick from the Western Jets with an Albanian heritage, can’t be too far away from his AFL debut.
Pre-season revelation Connor Downie lost momentum when made the medical sub in Round 1 and Tyler Brockman might need a rest despite six goals in four games.
But it is Jiath who is shooting up the charts quicker than any of them.
Remarkably, he has coaches votes in every single game so far this year, and it isn’t about favouritism given Hawthorn’s coaches mark his weaknesses harder than any media pundit or umpire.
Jiath is averaging the third-most marks in the AFL this year (8.5) and third-most intercept marks (4.3) behind only Liam Jones and Darcy Moore.
Is it a flash in the pan?
Possibly, but look at the consistency for a player with only 11 AFL games under his belt.
In four games he has churned out remarkably consistent performances given his possessions (22, 25, 23, 24), intercept marks (one, five, four, seven) and intercept possessions (seven, 11, five, nine).
He would also be in for some kind of pay rise off his rookie salary if not for a games-based clause that will see him signed on for 2022.
But the Hawks would be wise to renegotiate anyway given a speculative pick from Xavier College looks a piece of that premiership side, however long it takes to mature.
Whether it is Clarkson or Mitchell or someone else entirely at the helm in the medium-term future, the challenge to rebuild without a long list of premium draft picks will still be immense.
Yet as Clarkson goes about it his way the future looks immeasurably brighter than even four short weeks ago.
Clarko‘s message to potential suitors
- Chris Cavanagh
Hawthorn master coach Alastair Clarkson says he is prepared to see through a third rebuild as he seeks to further “defy” AFL equalisation measures and secure a fifth premiership flag.
After winning just five games last year, the Hawks find themselves 1-3 to start this season and the club has not played finals since 2018.
However, Clarkson — who has been at the helm since 2005 — said while he might be out of contract at the end of 2022, he was fully planning to see through the current rebuild.
“I’d trust the history,” Clarkson said when asked about his future on Fox Footy’s AFL360.
“It’s been 17 years. Trust the history. Loyalty’s pretty strong, both at Hawthorn and me.
“I’m excited for it (the rebuild) and I’ll do it for as long as the club and I see fit that we’re making progress.”
Clarkson said he had entered the coaching ranks with the belief that teams needed “seven or eight years” to rebuild in order to challenge for a premiership, but the Hawks had shown that time frame could be a lot quicker by winning the premiership in 2008.
“That was the forecast I gave to the players and the club and everyone and we were all invested in that but we turned it around in four years,” Clarkson said.
“The competition is geared, really, for every team in the competition to win once every 18 years is the idealistic model that the AFL would love. That would suggest that you are going to win four flags in 72 years, idealistically. We’ve won four in 15 years or there abouts.
“So there would be some in the competition that would say, ‘Bye, bye Hawthorn, that’s you for 60 years’. But that’s the competitive juices of what we’re in. We’re trying to defy what the competition is and they’re trying to regulate it in a matter that gives everyone an opportunity.
“But we also understand that within that it provides some challenges, because it’s difficult to get access to high draft picks and equalisation gives you equal opportunity to get some talent when you’re not such a good club.
“Then also, if you’re not getting the talent in then you might fall away a bit.
“So we’re just trying to work out that balance of injecting talent from draft, free agency, trading with other clubs to get that mix that we think can help us win a flag.”
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