Why coach Alastair Clarkson put blowtorch on Hawthorn midfield after heavy loss to Geelong
There was a glaring area of Hawthorn’s game which capitulated in the second half of the club’s heavy Round 2 loss to Geelong. If it happens against Richmond — which plays a similar style to the Hawks — look out.
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The COVID-19 restrictions have forced AFL clubs to review their Round 2 matches in small groups.
At Hawthorn the backs and forward might have breathed a sigh of relief on Monday. It was the midfielders coach Alastair Clarkson wanted to bake after the 61-point loss in Geelong.
“Our midfield lowered their colours,” Clarkson said.
“When you get smacked around the ball like we got you’ll (media) find all sorts of reasons.
“Too slow, too tall, too old — they’ll all come our way, we know that. The bottom line is we need to get in and hunt the footy a lot better than we did.”
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Clarkson refused to deviate.
Lively forwards Gryan Miers, Gary Ablett, Luke Dahlhaus and Tom Atkins combined for nine goals.
Had Ben McEvoy made the defence too top heavy?
No, it was the midfield’s fault for gifting Geelong premium entries, Clarkson said, pointing out the same backline contained Brisbane’s smalls in Round 1.
What about the skinny dimensions at GMHBA Stadium?
“It had nothing to do with the width of the ground, they just hunted better than what we did and they ran better than what we did,” Clarkson said.
In the second half Clarkson’s clever system had been disabled by his very own midfield.
The Hawks lost contested ball by 31, clearances by 18 and ground balls by 31, which was the worst differential since 2018.
That paints an ugly picture, especially for an engine room led by Brownlow Medallist Tom Mitchell, best-and-fairest James Worpel and an in-form Chad Wingard.
However here is the silver lining — the fix is easier than many would suspect.
Under Clarkson the Hawks have never been dominant in contested ball. They don’t need to, like Geelong did on Friday night, win the count by 31 to win the match.
Therefore the message will probably be to minimise the damage and try to break-even, rather than convert a minus 30 count into a plus 30.
Take Hawthorn’s first six quarters of the season for example.
In Round 1, Mitchell and O’Meara’s 28 contested possessions cancelled out Lachie Neale and Jarryd Lyons.
Overall clearances were equal, Hawthorn won contested ball by two and lost ground balls by 11.
Yet the Hawks cruised to a 28-point win.
Against the Cats the scoreboard only got out of hand when their grunt completely disappeared.
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But from the 10-minute mark of the first quarter until the 20-minute of the second the Hawks competed on the inside (won contested ball by 12) and fought back on the scoreboard (won by 19).
“By halftime we’d evened (contested ball) up, and ironically we’d almost evened the scoreboard up by then too,” Clarkson said.
The Hawks aim to play a style that's very similar to the Tigers.
Incredibly, over the last four years the Hawks and Tigers are the AFL’s worst two clearance teams.
It’s not as if they would set out to get beaten on the inside, but that wouldn’t be their No. 1 priority.
Instead both teams rely on setting up their systems to defend opposition ball movement and score heavily from turnovers.
Since 2017, the Hawks have allowed just 16.9 per cent of their opposition’s defensive 50 chains to result in an inside 50, ranked No. 2 in the AFL.
The Tigers are fourth (17.4 per cent).
At the MCG on Thursday night it is likely to be a game of one system versus the other. Unless, of course, Clarkson’s midfielders hit the “OFF” button, as they did last week.