121 minutes, 40 seconds in front
Port Adelaide's great escape breaks Hawthorn's heart 💔
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ROUND 10: YARTIPUULTI (PORT ADELAIDE) 11.14 (80), HAWTHORN 12.7 (79)
📝 Main recap:
Sometimes a loss can feel like a win.
Sometimes a win can feel like a loss.
But sometimes a loss can feel like utter heartbreak, and more than 24 hours later this one still hurts.
In front for 121 minutes and 40 seconds. Up by 41 points. Sunk by two goals in 33 seconds. It seems unbelievable to even type those words, but it happened and it’ll sting for quite some time.
Many will point to the fact we kicked a solitary point in an entire quarter of football, but we managed to kick just four in the final term against the Saints and we still hung on. And for those thinking it was a directive to save the game, Sam Mitchell has already shot down those suggestions in his post match presser:
"It wasn't our plan to play in a defensive manner. We would've liked to continue to score and find a way and that's our growth. I'm sure one of the learnings from the game will be thinking about how we can find ways to score and get in front because the natural instinct is to tighten everything up and play conservatively.”
So what went wrong?
While losing that game in the manner we did is almost inconceivable, it’s worth looking at some other numbers, too.
10 players under 50 games.
4 players under 10 games.
Average of 74 games (vs Port’s 105).
Average age: 24 years, 114 days.
Add to that the absence of some much needed leadership and poise down back — in the form of the injured James Sicily and the suspended Jack Scrimshaw — and is it really surprising the Power were able to chase us down?
One of the worst things about losing a match in the dying embers is it erases all of the good work that preceded the result.
We’ve had a year of poor starts so it was nice for a change to see the Hawks come out of the blocks and put Port to the sword. We set the foundations for an unlikely victory off the back of elite pressure and clearance work, not to mention five first half goals to swingman Blake Hardwick. FIVE.
But Port were always going to come at us, and while the young Hawks needed to hold on for just a few seconds longer to ice the game, a frantic 30-second finish was all Port needed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Their total time in front: 58 seconds.
Losing in this manner would test the patience of any supporter, but perspective is required. As HI’s own Simon Morawetz said moments after the game: “Hawks fans are currently gutted not to have won a third game in a row. Let that sink in.”
🧐 Things we like to see — Will Day the beast
Will Day the confident beast has returned. How great was it to see him in full flight — picking up the wet ball off the deck, a side step here and a 360-spin there before slamming it home on his right boot. See Ball. Want Ball. Get Ball. Absolute Baller.
🧐 Things we like to see — Chol’s repeated efforts
Much has been said this season (and often rightfully so) about Mabior Chol’s efforts this season, and his perceived lack of interest at times. But there was no disputing his endeavour against Port chasing, hunting and flying for the ball. This was our favourite effort — putting in the hard yards to put a defender off his kick — reaping the rewards with a laser pass coming back to him from James Worpel. More of this please.
🧐 Things we like to see — Mids banging them home
Credit to the Blake Hardwick pick up and handball. But more credit to Cam Mackenzie who collected, took a few steps and then banked one home from outside 50. Sublime skills all round, and another showcase of this kid’s elite talent. You love to see it.
🕵🏻♂️ Eight observations from Ash
Nearly 24 hours on, the feeling is a bit more sanguine. I posited on the Safe Space last week that the Port game was potentially the toughest game remaining for the year and had the hallmarks of a blow-out loss. If we had been offered a one-point loss this time last week, who would have said ‘no’?
Moving Blake Hardwick to the backline after his five-goal haul has attracted much commentary. Less so that this has been a Sam Mitchell move on a few occasions this year. Depending on the ebb and flow of the game, he will play forward or back.
His goalkicking was magnificent. Straight out of the text book. The same can’t be said for Calsher Dear. The third-gamer has the makings of a sensational player, but his set-shoot goal kicking is all over the place. What’s wrong with a drop punt from 20 metres out? It was good enough for his old man.
If the focus is on the first three quarters, then the Hawks were magnificent, playing with dash, dare and genuine hardness at the contest. It looked as though the Power thought they just had to turn up to win. Sadly, they were proven correct.
As started on the HI Twitter feed, critics of Mabior Chol can get in the bin. Some of his off-the-ball work was outstanding and his finishing sublime. If he keeps bringing that on a weekly basis, he is a major upgrade on what the Hawks had before. Scratch that. He already is.
Nothing wrong with Ethan Philips’s debut. But the cool heads of James Sicily and Jack Scrimshaw were missed in the crisis.
Next step in the development of Josh Weddle? Deal with a tag.
The psychology of football is always interesting. And will be on show next Sunday against the Lions. How will the Hawks respond?
⭐️ Best on ground — Will Day
Some will say this award should go to Blake Hardwick or Lloyd Meek but we say that the most valuable contributor on the day was in fact, Will Day. Back to his best, Day gathered 27 disposals and converted a ripping snap for goal after taking on and beating the whole Port Adelaide backline. Four marks, five clearance, three rebounds and three inside-50s — it was a commanding performance from our A-grader. More importantly his five tackles were monsters — easily our best tackler and increasingly confident putting his developing body to good use.
💫 Rising star — Massimo D’Ambrosio
Would you believe that Massimo more than qualifies for this gong still aged only 20 (he turns 21 in a couple of weeks on June 5). Tried his guts out all day and was often important in just making sure he found someone with the footy who could then slow the tempo of the game down. Managed 28 touches, four clearances and four inside- 50s as he benefitted from an increased amount of time on the ground (83%). Great performance.
👼 Unsung hero — Blake Hardwick
Four goals in the first quarter alone and finished the match with five straight, Hardwick again showed that he can be more than just handy wherever he is asked to play. Spent 46% of the game in our defensive half and racked up 23 disposals, nine score involvements, four tackles, four rebounds from defensive 50 and four one percenters. Excelled wherever he went - the true definition of an unsung hero.
🤯 Under pressure — Calsher Dear
The pressure is justified. And that may disappoint some. But Calsher has looked a little lost over the past two outings — particularly in front of goals. We are not having a crack — he clearly has the makings of a fine fine footballer in the future and has an enormous amount of growth and development to come. It may just be time with the Brisbane game this week to bring Jack Gunston back into the fold, and to let Dear spend some time banging them through for Box Hill.
👀 Box Hill watch — Bye bye bye
What a shocker of a week for Box Hill to have the bye. CJ was managed in the final term knowing that he’d likely run out of gas, no game time for the likes of Chad Wingard, a returning Ned Reeves or even Denver Grainger-Barras. And no chance for Finn Maginness, Josh Ward, or Harry Morrison to stake claims of a return to the senior lineup to take on the Lions. All eyes will be on Fenjiu Stadium in Box Hill this Saturday when we take on the Lions at 1:05pm.
😡 Brad’s early call
🧐 The burning question — Were we robbed by the timekeeper?
If being robbed at the death by an opportunistic goal wasn’t bad enough, Jon Ralph from the Herald Sun has broken the news that we may’ve been robbed by the umpires as well.
An on-field umpire had inexplicably decided to stop the clock for 19 seconds when match winner Darcy Byrne-Jones was lining up for a set shot.
But no worries — the AFL has apparently “ticked it off”. Shocked.
🪜 The ladder check-in is back!
We’d be sitting pretty at 13 and looking up had the result gone our way.
🎤 Sammy said what!?
“Disappointment mostly — probably a whole bunch of other things in there, but we are enormously disappointed.”
“I thought the players left it all out there.”
“There’s three close ones in a row and we’ve won two — could easily have been a similar situation but we’ve handled those close games pretty well.”
“The rational part of my mind thinks I am sure there are some positives in there somewhere but the emotional part of me is just not feeling any of them at the minute.”
“I think they just ran us down at the end and there will be a lot made of the last minute or two minutes or three minutes, but probably even the last 45 minutes of the game — you know, how could we have just found a way to score again and kick a couple more?”
🗣️ Final words — Ethan Phillips
“I was stoked to be out there and loved being out with the boys — but there are mixed emotions right now because it was probably the happiest day of my life but a really tough loss.”
“All the work through the years, all the numerous knock-backs and being told I’m not good enough — it was all worth it in the end because I absolutely loved it out there.”
“I just want to try and lock down a position in the backline and just be someone that is reliable — that your teammates trust you whenever the ball comes in your area and know that you’re going to get the job done.”
“I’m just going to keep working my arse off to try and lock down that position in the backline.”
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The path we’ve chosen is tough going – At the end of the 2022 season, there was a very bold decision taken by our club – we traded away Mitchell and O’Meara, our two most experienced midfielders and club leaders, delisted / force retired a number of experienced players including Liam Shiels and Kyle Hartigan and lost Gunston to Brisbane. We made a commitment to acquiring young talent and developing the existing youth and the acquired youth. Aside from what Clarko did on arrival 20 years ago, I can’t think of a club that’s decided to strip the list back so heavily and go down that path. And there are plenty of nay sayers, including Chris Scott, Beveridge and no end of ‘experts’ in the media such as Damien Barrett who say that such an approach can’t be successful. Any assessment of our on-field performance has to be made in that context.
Sam’s approach defies conventional wisdom – Sam has not followed what is seen to be the preferred development path of focusing on defence first (eg. Paul Roos and his acolytes), he has added defence this year to the focus on attack that was the premise of our 2023 game. In the first 8-9 weeks of 2023, we played with a team that had Fergus Greene as its key forward. When Lewis returned, there was a noticeable improvement with a game style that was focused on scoring. In the second half of that season, we had several good wins including against the two grand finalists and the Bulldogs. All of which were based on attack. This season, there is a marked improvement in our defending and the key statistics on this area of the game bear that out. There have been blocks within games where we’ve had both the attacking and defending elements working together and the results have been impressive – as the first 3 quarters of yesterday showed. But you can add the second half against Collingwood, Q2 against Geelong, chunks of the Essendon, Dogs and Saints games and the second and third quarters against Melbourne as examples where we’ve had a well-rounded game that has matched it with the best teams. We should be confident that as this playing group matures, those periods will become longer and we will be more consistent within games. The end result of that should be more victories. That will take time though.
Sunday’s result is therefore largely irrelevant – Of course, there’s still plenty to do, and that was demonstrated very clearly in yesterday’s last quarter. However, the real take away from that game was not what happened in Q4 but what happened in the preceding three quarters. Late in Q3 against an interstate team that is seen to be a contender on their home deck, we led by 41 points, and dominated the key statistics including a 41-14 inside 50 advantage. Yes, Q4 was very disappointing, but the key point from yesterday was that our game more than stood up for the majority of the game. What happened in Q4 will be the basis of some key learnings for our inexperienced playing and coaching group. I’m not suggesting that we’re about to go on a run like Richmond did in 2017, but in that year they had a three week stretch where they lost by 5, 2 and 3 points. They frequently referred to that three-week period as providing priceless learnings – just as yesterday’s experience will be the same for our boys. Yesterday is testament to the old adage that you learn more from your losses than your wins.
Star power – it was telling that in the last quarter, Port’s star player was the driving factor in their win – Zac Butters. It was no coincidence in last year’s GF that it was Nick Daicos that was instrumental in big moments. Players that can single handedly turn a match are hard to find – in the current game we’re talking about the likes of Bontempelli, Petracca, Nick Daicos, Dangerfield, Butters, maybe Heeney and more recently, Dustin Martin (think of the 2020 GF) and Shaun Burgoyne (think of the 2013 prelim). We don’t currently have that kind of player and in some respects, it is a missing link. Perhaps we’ll land that player in this year’s draft. Or perhaps, he already exists on our list – Josh Weddle. It was a very interesting discussion on last week’s podcast about Weddle’s role. If Weddle can become the midfielder that we can see, we will have that ‘star power’ that is currently missing. If he remains as a high-quality intercepting and rebounding defender, that’s ok, but a midfield anchored by Weddle, Newcombe and Day is a beautiful mix, with Weddle the real wild card. Whether this happens will quite likely depend on the development of Will McCabe who shapes as the player most suited to taking on the Weddle role across half back. Of course, you can win a flag without star power – West Coast a good example in 2018, but from time-to-time, it’s that star power that swings a big game. At some point, this is something that we ought to try. And in Sam Mitchell, Weddle couldn’t have a better person to teach him how to play as a midfielder – his impact on Day and Nash, neither of whom were midfielders, has been profound.
What do we want / expect from season 2024 – At the start of this season, I believe that there were four key areas of achievement / outcomes that we wanted to see:
- Improvement as a team – I think that’s undeniable. We’ve won 3 from 10 and lost 2 by less than a kick and just watching us play, there’s visible improvement
- Growth in individuals – Scrimshaw, Impey, Meek, Mackenzie, Weddle have all made good advances from last season and hopefully, we see more players make clear progress in the remaining 13 matches
- Recruits to make us better – Ginnivan has been excellent, Massimo has been solid, Mabior has done pretty well (with Lewis’s injuries, having Mabior has been invaluable) and Watson and Dear have given us cause for optimism that we’ve got two long term quality players. It would be great to see McCabe play (even if just with Box Hill), and see Hustwaite and Ward emerge from 2024 with real potential as genuine senior footballers
- A nice high-end pick in the 2024 draft – at this stage we have pick number 4, which is ideal, and far more advantageous than picks in the range of 10-12, which is the draft selection 10 or so wins will land us. This is not an argument for losing, but we know that with Tasmania coming in, the draft is going to be terribly compromised, which makes high end picks this season and possibly next year even more valuable.
What was learnt:
1. It was the “best of times” – With Jiath back in the team, the fans had a sight of the style of play that had been a feature of the pre-season with Hardwick as a forward target. A key missing piece of the midfield thus far had been the (outside) line breaking leg speed to complement Mitchell & Weddle out of the back 50, along with Watson and Macdonald inside forward 50 – the leg speed creates opportunities for others with the opposition caught out either coming forward or being turned around chasing tail. The first three quarters of the game showed how the style of play would work.
2. The midfield set up was tweaked early – From the screen, it looked as though Worpel was coming off half forward into the centre square contests to assist in nullifying and in fact dominating the early clearance count. The pre-game concern for us was the breakaway leg speed of Butters, Horne-Francis and to a lesser extent Drew. This strategy was supported by the clean hands of the midfield as well as the pressure put on the Port mids which didn’t allow them to dominate until late in the day.
3. It was the “worst of times” (about 26 seconds) – For a team that had played out close games in the past two weeks, looking at how game played out from the centre bounce to the last goal again shows work has to be done. In the previous games, when there had been ball ups around the ground, the ruck & mids had been able to kill clearances – as to why when the ball is in the centre of ground the same principles weren’t applied is a dissection of game management. Just because there is a circle on the ground doesn’t mean that the ruckman has to hit the ball clear of it. Whilst not a fan of ruckmen taking it out of the ruck and banging it forward, there is always a time and place for every strategy and it’s a matter of knowing when to apply it appropriately. The alternative was to make it a no contest by grabbing it out of the ruck and taking the tackle, which would allow a defensive zone to be set up. Similarly, with the ball deep inside their forward 50, D’Ambrosio had to take the tackle and settle for a ball up rather than play “hot potato” and pass of the responsibility to Amon with a handball below his knees, which left him vulnerable to the Port forwards surging at him.
4. Aligned with this is: “Don’t get beaten by what you know.” – Sam had noted the impact of Horne-Francis on the game and had Nash go to him later in the game when on ball and Hardwick when he went forward. However, in putting Day behind the ball whether coach directed or self-directed, this meant that Butters was able to have a “cleaner” attack on the clearances as Newcombe and Worpel were not able to compete with his speed from the contest – an area where Day could compete with him.
5. “Match winners” are that for a reason – For the development of the group, this is the next stage of development for our key players to understand how they need to impact on the game, particularly when we have the momentum.
6. Sometimes a plan can work too well – When Meek had his break, Chol took the centre bounces and then Nash did the around ground ruck work. This worked particularly well in the first half, highlighted by Chol’s goal in the 2nd quarter from Nash pushing forward. This led to Port putting Dixon into the ruck who was much more physical than Finlayson for Nash to cope with. It certainly took away the advantage we had.
7. Laziness off half forward – Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times, what is going on!! Allowing Houston to run by or get forward to kick three goals is a clear breakdown in concentration or communication.
8. Breust, as the sub, isn’t the answer and significantly impacted the structure of the team balance, given Jiath was being managed. The hindsight call may have been Gunston, the extra behind the ball, which may have allowed Day to play midfield in the last quarter.
Observations:
• D’Ambrosio played his best game for the season, and it appears that he is a neat kick rather than a penetrating kick going by the eye and the stats with 434 metres gained from 28 disposals (15/13). Again, to the eye, when he has his shoulders facing toward our goals, his disposal is more assured in his disposals. He did use his right foot and whilst not stylish, it was effective.
• Moore giving away a 50m penalty in the last quarter slipped past some commentary and it did set up the scoring chain for Rioli’s goal – the first in the last quarter that came at the 11 minute mark. To this point, we had been breaking even in an arm wrestle to this point in time. Further to this, Moore didn’t have disposal in the last quarter.
• Zero disposals in the last quarter – Chol, Mitchell, Watson & Weddle. 1 diposal in the last quarter – Dear, Mackenzie, Serong & Worpel (these were all handballs.) (Newcombe only had 1 disposal in the 2nd qrt
• The set play from the kick out – again, the kick out to the open side was taken on, however the impact wasn’t as effective this week as Weddle, on both occasions, couldn’t make the next step allowing us to have an inside 50 opportunity. On one opportunity, he missed Serong with a 20m pass that ended up Port having a scoring chance.
• For our forwards kicking for goal from 40+ metres, again aside from Hardwick and Chol, anyone else taking shots from long range are “not put them in the book” opportunities.
• Flying the flag scuffles before kicking the goal are proving to be less than effective at this time!
Starting 4:
1st Qrt: Newcombe (18), Worpel (15), Day (18)
2nd Qrt: Nash (15), Newcombe, Day
3rd Qrt: Newcombe, Worpel, Day
4th Qrt: Nash, Newcombe, Day
(Meek 23; Moore 9; Mackenzie 5: Chol 4; Ginnivan 1)
Issue of the week:
Don’t lose perspective – this time last year, we were 16th on the ladder with two wins, having beaten North and West Coast (neither earnt any status) with a percentage of 73.7%. Today, we sit 15th with 3 wins and 78.6%. As has been said, Port put us to the sword this time last year and the Swans smashed us last year. I tend to agree with Sam that whilst the Swans beat us by 76 points, on the ground, we weren’t as embarrassed as we were last year in Sydney. Even the Gold Coast game is not looking as bad as it did a month ago.