By Andrew Wu
Hawthorn are a team on the rise. They should improve further with time, and be an even bigger threat in the years to come – but they may never get as good an opportunity to win the flag.
These brash, young Hawks are as good as any team in the race this season, and they know it. Rarely will a club enter September in such white-hot form and with their list in such strong health as Hawthorn. Of those who have played regularly, Will Day is the only member of their best 23 unavailable for the Hawks’ first final in six years.
Hawks players celebrate with a selfie after their thumping win over the Roos.Credit: AFL Photos
Coach Sam Mitchell, in his third season at the helm, is not a man who gazes too far into the horizon, but even he is not pulling the handbrake.
“The great challenge for us now is what’s the ceiling,” Mitchell said after the Hawks’ 124-point trouncing of North Melbourne on Saturday.
“We’ve never put one on. We’ve always said while we’ve been building towards these moments that there’s no speed limit on how quickly we want to achieve the things we wanted to achieve.
“Hawthorn is a club that has had success consistently over a long period of time, 60 to 70 years now being a consistent competitor.”
Happy Hawks: Coach Sam Mitchell and forward Mabior Chol embrace after the game.Credit: via Getty Images
The confidence is well-founded. No matter how the numbers are sliced and diced, the men in brown and gold cut the mustard, and this after finishing 16th last year. Fourteen wins from their last 18 games, 11 from their last 13, and seven of nine since their bye.
Their last five wins have been by 66, 66, 74, 63 and 124 points – numbers that any Australian Test batter would take. Flat track bullies, you say? Their scalps also include the Brisbane Lions, Greater Western Sydney and Fremantle, plus they ran Port Adelaide to a point and on their second meeting, the Giants to two points – both on interstate soil.
As clubs such as Essendon, Adelaide and Gold Coast, who embarked on rebuilds well before Hawthorn, watch on in September, the Hawks are back in premiership contention – a familiar mode for a club that has won more flags than any other club in the AFL era.
It’s not easy to identify the face of this team. Perhaps it’s reigning best and fairest Day, who missed the Hawks’ 0-5 start, but the load is being spread far and wide.
Dylan Moore celebrates a goal with his teammates.Credit: AFL Photos
Against North, it was Jai Newcombe who caught the eye in the middle, but any other week it has been James Worpel, Conor Nash or Massimo D’Ambrosio, the latter surely the recruit of the year, just to name a few.
As a unit, they destroyed North in the midfield, winning clearances 51-29, so the ball spent long periods in their forward line. If the initial foray inside 50 did not produce a goal, the repeat entries would.
A trait of most premiership sides, even those more geared to defence, is their ability to score quickly. The Hawks have it. Goals came in flurries: six in 14 minutes in the second quarter, seven in 15 in a 10-goal final term.
Mabior Chol is no Lance Franklin or Jarryd Roughead, but Chol the Hawk is a more robust footballer than he was at Richmond or Gold Coast. He competes hard enough to bring their bevy of small forwards into play.
Dylan Moore, Connor Macdonald, Nick Watson and Jack Ginnivan have been likened to mosquitoes, though a Hawks supporter suggested on social media platform X that a wildebeest was a more apt comparison given that animal’s power.
The speed at which that group attacks ground balls backs that up – and wins them free kicks for high contact, much to the chagrin of rival supporters. They booted 12 goals between them.
In 2008, former coach Alastair Clarkson masterminded an unlikely flag for a Hawks team who won ahead of schedule. Now coaching North, who have finished in the bottom two for a fifth year in a row, he senses a similar opportunity for his former club.
“We know there’s no easy fix, never has been in this competition, but nor has there ever been a glass ceiling on where you can go either,” Clarkson said.
“That’s why for the Dogs and Hawthorn, try and ride this wave for as long as you possibly can because when the opportunity sits right in front of you, you need to take it while it’s there. Both those sides have got a great chance through September.”
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