“I was born to play grand finals!” the Hawthorn wingman, Robert DiPierdomenico, would tell anyone within earshot in his heyday. Today, a new generation of Hawks arguably surpassed Dipper and his Hawthorn immortals, winning their third premiership on the trot. “Play your role” and “Leave your ego on the hook” are the mantras at Hawthorn these days. But even the no-fuss Hawks could be forgiven for tooting their own horns tonight. If ever a bunch of footballers were born for the final Saturday of the season, it is this lot.
On one of the hottest days ever at the football, the Hawks physically and mentally did the Eagles over, leading at every change and running out comfortable 46 point winners. The Norm Smith Medal for best afield was awarded to Cyril Rioli, though he could have raffled it among any number of team-mates. James Frawley, who completely blanketed Josh Kennedy, had legitimate claims, as did the esteemable trio of Sam Mitchell, Luke Hodge and Jordan Lewis. Mitchell’s possession count for this finals series reads 35,33,35 and 34 – astonishing figures.
Given that the Hawks had steamrolled the hitherto indestructible Sydney Swans 12-months earlier, pretty much nixing the deal by quarter-time, the opening minutes of this game were always going to be decisive. Would the inexperienced and lightly-framed Eagles be looking over their shoulders?
When Sharrod Wellingham, not always known for his voracity for the contest over the years, hit Hodge with a bone jarring shirtfront, the early signs looked promising. But the Eagles were wasteful in front of goal. And several key Hawks were off the leash. With their customary Swiss precision, they capitalised on all their chances. Rioli kicked two and Isaac Smith had acres of space on his wing. On the wide expanses of the MCG, West Coast’s much-vaunted “web defence” looked decidedly shaky.
The x-factor, of course, was the weather. In was one of those Melbourne days better suited to building sandcastles than winning premierships. Who would wilt in the enervating conditions? Minutes into the second quarter, the answer was obvious. The Eagles looked cooked. There was a glassy fragility to their defence. Their key forwards weren’t sighted. They were missing sodas. Meanwhile, everything was going right for Hawthorn. Hodge banana-kicked a preposterous goal from the boundary line. Rioli zeroed in on defenders like a guided missile. Mitchell, as always, was treating the MCG like his personal pond. Only a goal after the siren to Ellliot Yeo gave the Eagles a glimmer of hope.
When Jack Darling marked and converted early in the third term, the Eagles had kicked the last three majors. But two certain goals went begging, with Luke Shuey butchering the ball streaming into goal and Darling then spilling the easiest of chest marks. You can’t give Hawthorn breaks like that. They feast on opposition errors. They nail set shots. They always lower their eyes and pinpoint a better option.
In the end it was a rout. West Coast got some late consolation goals but the horse had bolted. Brian Lake in his footballing dotage smothering a certain Josh Hill goal pretty much symbolised the game.
Wooden spooners five years ago, bedevilled by drug scandals several years before that and written off by all and sundry earlier this year, the Eagles would have nonetheless expected to put up a better show today. The team that dismantled Hawthorn a fortnight ago added Chris Masten and Matt Priddis – the latter coming off successive top-two finishes in the Brownlow Medal. But he was a peripheral figure today. So too were ruckman Nic Naitanui, Coleman medalist Josh Kennedy and small forward Mark Le Cras. The story of their day, when the contest was still hot, was their inability to take their chances.
Just 39 years old, coach Adam Simpson is possibly the calmest and most undemonstrative man to ever coach a football team. But he shed a tear in the rooms afterwards, admitting that he feels the emotion as much as anyone. “We’re all emotional,” the shattered coach said. “When the sun comes up tomorrow, we will all reflect on this and learn from it. There was a moment there in the third quarter, where I thought it was on. But they make you pay when you don’t take your moments.”
If he wasn’t already, coach Alastair Clarkson is a Hawthorn hero now. He moved ahead of John Kennedy and Alan Jeans for the most number of Hawthorn premierships as a coach, and joined such luminaries as Sheedy, Matthews, Hafey, Barassi and Parkin with four.
The coach of a club that once eschewed recruiting Indigenous players, Clarkson paid tribute to the likes of Rioli, Burgoyne and Bradley Hill, all of whom were in menacing touch on Saturday. “We are rapt that we have five Aboriginal boys at our football club and they just bring so much life and love to our club,” he said.
“We’ve had to do some really hard yards as a football club,” he said. He’s not wrong. Hawthorn’s official history was titled “The Hard Way” and like last year, they overcame innumerable obstacles to secure this flag. The son of one of their assistant coaches died in a car crash. Clarkson was involved in a much publicised scuffle with a drunken birdbrain in Adelaide. They lost six times, including to GWS. They had to travel to Perth twice in three weeks. They are now, by any estimation, one of the greatest teams we have seen.
Best
Hawthorn: Mitchell, Rioli, Hodge, Frawley, Gunston, Lewis, Smith, Burgoyne, Lake
West Coast: Gaff, Butler, Hutchings, Shuey
Goals
Hawthorn: Gunston 4, Smith 3, Rioli 2, Hodge, Roughead, Birchall, Schoenmakers, Hill, McEvoy, Suckling
West Coast: McGovern 2, Darling, Hill, Hutchings, LeCras, Shuey, Yeo
