North Melbourne showed it wouldn’t be intimidated but Hawthorn had the last laugh

THE AFL trialled four umpires in Friday night’s North Melbourne-Hawthorn clash, but eight would have struggled to police this smash fest.

THOSE who saw it will claim they went to a fight and a game of footy broke out.

The AFL trialled four umpires in Friday night’s North Melbourne-Hawthorn clash, but eight would have struggled to police this smash fest.

Kangaroos coach Brad Scott had whipped his players into a frenzy pre-game. Scott is said to have demanded his men get after Hawthorn after the Hawks bashed them — literally and physically — in their only meeting last year.

The result was the most volcanic match of the year. Niggle, trash talk, wrestling and jumper punches raged on and off the ball in a frenzied battle that left its witnesses not knowing where to look next.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that during almost every break in play it was “on”. North Melbourne veteran Michael Firrito had nearly as many jumper punches than kicks.

The man known as “Spud” made Luke Breust his early target, verbally and physically attacking the Hawk goalsneak at every opportunity. At half time he took a detour away from his teammates, following Breust into the Hawthorn huddle to give him another gob-full.

Michael Firrito took on anyone who was interested in a scuffle. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

At three-quarter time Firrito went toe-to-toe with Jordan Lewis, James Siciliy and whoever else was interested. Lewis, who with Luke Hodge was suspended in that spiteful game last year, was in the thick of it again last night.

Former Kangaroo Nathan Grima told radio listeners pre-game that Scott had a “long memory” for these sort of things. Scott’s men showed they don’t exactly suffer from amnesia either.

The fire was lit only two minutes into the game when Jack Ziebell collared Sam Mitchell in an incident that the MRP will look at. Mitchell ran away from the ensuing melee and set up Isaac Smith, who goaled and clashed with, you guessed it — Firrito.

Lindsay Thomas had his jumper shredded, Majak Daw clashed with Smith and when Lewis dropped a simple mark and Ziebell goalled, Thomas came from 20m to smash into him and it erupted again.

The AFL trialled four umpires in Friday night’s game. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

And on and on it went. It was brutal off the ball and it was tough-as-nails over the ball.

Trent Dumont locked onto Sam Mitchell and Taylor Duryea did likewise on Brent Harvey, sledging him all the way to the bench in the second quarter.

Cyril Rioli and Luke McDonald exchanged jumper punches, Ziebell and Lewis exchanged more words and then Drew Petrie cleaned up Mitchell after he’d kicked, prompting Jonathon Ceglar to crash into Petrie from behind. Ziebell then took issue with Smith and they slung each other around in circles.

But if North Melbourne started mad, they ended mad too. The undermanned Roos lost by nine points despite having six more scoring shots, 27 more contested possessions and six more inside 50s.

It was the one that got away.