'Just lacking polish'
Encouraging signs as the Hawks go down against the Bombers in Tassie
ROUND 14: Hawthorn 73, Essendon 86 - “Promising signs aplenty”
📝 Main recap: Let’s get this out of the way first: It absolutely sucks losing to Essendon no matter what stage of the rebuild we’re at. But if you haven’t already heard the lines that are being trundled out ad nauseam, we worked hard, we are building, it is a step in the right direction, we just lacked a little bit of polish.
They are the key takeaways from our narrow 13-point loss to the Bombers in Tasmania, in what was a game that we had every chance to win.
It was frustrating at times knowing how close we actually came to doing the double over the Bombers in 2021, but at the same time the disappointment was tempered with the glimpses of what is to come as we vigorously rebuild our team.
The likes of Jarman Impey, Jack Scrimshaw, Changkuoth Jiath and Jacob Koschitzke were shining examples of the younger players taking control of proceedings, while we also had Lachie Bramble on debut and Jai Newcombe backing up his first start against the Swans.
Plenty to be excited about in what was a game where wasted opportunities in front of goal and the inability to put the clamps on a rampant Essendon midfield, ultimately cost us the four-points.
✂️ Snippet of the match: We are going to go with the newbie on debut - Lachie Bramble, who had a great first half of footy to open his AFL account. In the second term he executed a wonderful smother deep in our attacking 50, before receiving from Dylan Moore and then giving off a no-look handball to set Titch up for a goal. Was great to see him involved and have this sort of an impact - hopefully one of many we will be replaying over his career.
🍔 Ash’s key takeaways
What is it they say about racehorses second up after a spell? Jai Newcombe (six touches and three tackles) and Will Day (unusually non-composed) were great in the win over the Swans, not so good against the Bombers. Suspect Newcombe will have learned more about league footy this week than last. Looking forward to Brad’s Selection Dissection later this week as to whether he plays next week.
Bad kicking is bad football, but even when the Hawks had the lead, they couldn’t keep it. All up, they only led for eight minutes the entire match. But the kicking for goal early was deplorable and ruined whatever momentum Hawthorn had. Really, Luke Breust was the team’s only reliable forward and it’s not often a small forward is going to win you a game like that.
At one point we were 1.6 - not good enough. Tom Mitchell and Jaeger O’Meara chalked up the stats (35 and 31 touches respectively), but the Hawks were well-beaten in clearances. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Jimmy Worpel hasn’t been in great touch but was missed.
Sam Draper was the new Max Gawn there for a time, but the team managed to work out a way to stop kicking it to him. Jon Ceglar and Ben McEvoy were generally down.
Lachie Bramble looked okay when he had time and space, but there wasn’t too much of that for him. He should play next week given Harry Morrison is still nursing a hamstring injury.
Jack Gunston’s back injury is puzzling. Not fit enough to play, but okay to sit on a plane for an hour each way.
Where’s Jack? Heart-in-mouth stuff when CJ went down in the final quarter. He came back later, but we’ll wait for the injury report on Tuesday for reassurance. Or not, depending on how forthcoming the club chooses to be.
Denver Grainger-Barass impressed for Box Hill in his first proper outing from all reports. One more week in the VFL should just about do it for him.
This gif back by popular demand. Nauseating to hear the Essendon theme song blaring out at Hawthorn’s home away from home. But every single Essendon supporter at the ground would have paid cash into Hawthorn’s coffers for the privilege to be there, softening the blow of losing a home game at the MCG, which given the gorgeous weather in Melbourne would have drawn more than 50,000.
With Sunday’s loss, Hawthorn has lost two games in a row in Tasmania for the first time since 2009-10. And now, it is on to Giants Stadium where the Hawks are 0-6. If there is hoodoo ground, this is it. The ‘James Sicily Rule’ didn’t apply to Toby Greene, who got off with a fine and he’ll be right to play. Like the Bombers, the Giants have a sniff of the finals and that’s going to make it awfully difficult for Hawthorn to avoid 0-7.
Superstar/Rising Star/Falling Star
⭐️ Superstar - Jarman Impey
For what was essentially a pick in the early-30s, Jarman Impey has been a BOOM recruit for us. Has returned to his pre-injury form where he was at the pointy end of our best and fairest count, and isn’t it a sight to behold. Jars was consistent all day finishing with an equalling team-high 10 marks, 25 disposals, and 409 meters gained. The 25-year-old is signed up until the end of 2023 - we say hand that man a long-term extension right away!
💫 Rising star - Jacob Koschitzke
Again we laud the move of Kosi up forward over the summer and throughout 2021. Was our only forward that even remotely looked like taking a grab, and kicked a tremendous banana from the boundary after clunking a strong grab. If he had converted some of his earlier set shots he would have had another day out in Tassie, but for now we can be excited with what he proposes as a forward of the future.
🤷♂️ Falling star - Jonathon Ceglar
A week is a long time in footy. And so it has been for Cegs - one of the heroes of last weeks win against the Swans, but this week reduced to a whipping boy by a 22-year-old 11-gamer. Compare the stats:
Round 13: 20 touches, 35 hitouts, one goal, four tackles, 11 clearances, 19 contested possessions.
Round 14: 11 touches, 11 hitouts, no goals, three tackles, 0 clearances, 10 contested possessions.
Simply not good enough and while his form warranted automatic selection agains the Bombers, we suspect his newfound form might warrant automatic Box Hill selection next week.
Unsung Hero & Scapegoat
👼 Unsung Hero: Daniel Howe
A lot of support flowing in for the fantastic season that Howe is having - easily the best of his career to date. Howe was enormous in the first half and finished the game with 23 touches and 10 marks - no Hawks registering more grabs. He has become handy as a utility and can play in a number of positions - will be one to keep an eye on through the remainder of the year to see if he can cement his spot in the line-up.
🔪 🐐 Scapegoat: Tom Phillips
Unlike earlier in the year, the field is narrowing for scapegoat decisions week on week and that is a GOOD thing. But we can’t help but feel sad when reflecting on how excited we all were to bring in Flip over the off-season. The coup as the Pies shed their salary cap, and us being the beneficiary of a good young player played out of position in 2020. However, Phillips has thus far failed to live up to the expectations, and had another mediocre game agains the Bombers. Still plenty of time to turn things around in the brown and gold, but we have a massive watch on him through the second half of the season.
The Obligatory Ladder Check-In
It has become slightly congested above us as we cling tightly onto 17th spot on the table. It is clear that we DON’T want to finish below the Roos, but how much higher do we actually want to climb? Pick 3 (nee 2 before Daicos enters proceedings) has a sweet ring to it, but so do wins.
Current forecast 2022 Draft Picks of note: #2, #20, #21 (Collingwood’s second round selection).
News & Notes
“Jake Stringer is the sort of powerful mid-sizer we tend to have trouble with.” You heard it first when our Oppo Analysis guru Simon Morawetz rolled the line out in his pre-game assessment of the Dons. It became more obvious as the game wore on but there was nothing we could do to stop it. Like watching a car crash in slow motion.
Similarly, it was pretty clear Ceglar was being obliterated in the ruck contest. Why McEvoy didn’t stay there we are not too sure - would be far more forgiving if it was Ned learning a lesson but Cegs really had a stinker.
A very pro-Essendon crowd of 14,834 packed into UTAS Stadium which was a great result. Not surprising with the calibre of opponent, when we are used to playing lower-drawing non-Victorian teams in Tassie.
Connor Nash quietly notched up the 23rd game of his career to date - and joins a fair group of players to register a game without being activated as the sub. We have only activated the medical sub in three of 13 matches this year - the least number of times in the comp.
Clarko Press Conference Bingo
✅ Pleasing for us
✅ Pleased with our effort
✅ Lacked a bit of polish
✅ Made it a contest
✅ We were in the game right up to our eyeballs
✅ We will learn from it
What They Said
🗣️ Luke Breust
“I thought the boys acquitted themselves all night - I’m not sure what the contested numbers were but I thought we cracked in, I thought we defended pretty well.
“Just a little bit of polish going forward, we couldn’t connect and I think in the second quarter we had three of four shots that we should have nailed as well, but we’ll learn and move on.
“Last week was a massive step in the right direction and then tonight we didn’t step forward but we definitely didn’t go backwards - there are a number of things in our game that I think we will review and definitely be a big positive for us.”
🗣️ Tom Mitchell
“We played some really good patches and then some other patches. They had the momentum and it felt like we were still right in the game until the very end so that’s a good sign building from last week.
“We didn’t take a step backwards but it would have been nice to win.
“I think the bye is always a good chance to refresh mentally and physically, and I think the boys are just trying to set ourselves up for a big second half of the year.
“Obviously finals are going to be pretty tough, but if we can keep building and working on our processes that will be pretty important.”
🗣️ Alastair Clarkson
“It was a good contest from go to woe - we stopped Essendon from being able to play the way they usually play which is pretty free scoring - we had more inside 50’s and more scoring shots than what they did.
“Probably at the end of the day we just lacked a bit of polish to finish off our good work - at the end of the day they had 21 scoring shots where we had 23 and they had 47 inside 50’s and we had 50, so that part of the game was pleasing for us despite the fact that we couldn’t finish our work.
“We made it a contest for the whole four quarters and we continue to learn and build our game and there were some really positive signs for us today albeit we didn’t really have the polish to get the job done like we did against Sydney, but we will learn from it and we will get ourselves ready for GWS next week.”
Essendon are better than people think. Jones was also pretty good for them, we took Finn just ahead of him in the 2019 draft. This was a good game with good signs. Loved Bramble's game and Kosi was good. Midfield was not trashed - just Stringer was the diff. We beat them for Inside 50s which is a very encouraging. Also concerned on Jiath.