Let's not sugar coat it too much... ouch.
Deja vu with another final quarter collapse
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ROUND 7: ESSENDON 108, HAWTHORN 81
📝 Main recap: It’s never nice losing to the red and black.
It’s even worse when we go into the game as near unbackable favourites leaving the Bombers as the huge underdogs.
It’s even worse again when the whole world - including the television commentary team, are fawning over them - wanting the Essendon Football Club to get off the canvas from their 1-6 start to the season.
What sort of sick universe are we living in?
Many a Hawks fan went into our Marvel Stadium clash with a huge sense of unease - worried that we would drop a game we all in our hearts thought we should win.
And after squandering a number of opportunities to push out our third quarter lead out past the five goal mark, the Bombers did a Sydney and ran rampant all over us in the final quarter.
It was definitely disappointing, but it was by no means the end of the world - we continue to push the development side of the equation and the fact that we are generally a young, immature group still learning its caper.
We can even start thinking about the positive notion that we may have a top-five draft pick to look forward to at the end of the year.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the lack of leadership shown by some of our senior players when the chips were down. Where were Tom Mitchell, Luke Breust, James Worpel and Jack Gunston when we needed them the most in the final term?
And how did our backline - usually the rock in our ever evolving structure, falter so badly throughout the evening?
These are just some of the questions that Sammy and his brains trust will have to answer as they reluctantly review the tape from the game.
Hopefully they can come up with some decent answers and possible solutions by 1:45pm on Saturday when we come up against a resurgent Richmond at the MCG.
✂️ The Misses
With Jack Gunston kicking the opening goal of the third term we moved ahead by four goals on the scoreboard, and it felt as though one more might have killed off the Bomber spirits. But three crucial misses to put us up by five goals kept the door open and gave the Dons a sniff:
✂️ You never forget your first
In his seventh game of AFL football, ruckman Max Lynch managed to kick a couple of quick goals in succession including his first ever snag. And despite the final result, it is always great to look back at the footage of our players getting around a first-time goal scorer!
🍔 Ash’s key takeaways
1. Where to start on a night that had real 1984 Grand Final vibes about it.
2. The most disappointing aspect was the lack of care around goals. James Sicily was formerly a forward – but if he is going to drift down the field and have set shots at goal, the lackadaisical approach needs to stop. Jack Gunston was great around the ground, but 2.4 is not good enough, especially through circumstance when he was the second key forward for much of the night. The net effect of his back injury is that he is now an unreliable set shot for goal.
3. The missed 3-on-1 late in the third term was as costly as all the missed shots. It was the sort of game where if the Hawks had gotten out to a five-goal lead they probably would have broken Essendon’s spirit. But sadly not.
4. Luke Breust can still sniff a goal given half a chance, but the champion has lost half a yard and is becoming a liability defensively.
5. I’m not as down on James Worpel as some, but pretty much all the midfield went to sleep in the second half. Even Jai Newcombe, who worked himself ragged in the first half, needed to do more than get six touches after that. Conor Nash would have been handy in the clinches in the second half as the Bombers got on top.
6. Jaeger O’Meara is excused from criticism. He was one of the few four-quarter players. He’s had a great few weeks.
7. The backline was under siege for most of the night. In hindsight, they might have needed Kyle Hartigan. The lack of a hulking key backman is going to hurt some weeks and needs to be a draft or trade priority for Mark McKenzie and his team.
8. Max Lynch was having the game of his (relatively brief) AFL career until he went off injured. The Hawks lost control when he went off.
9. Mitch Lewis, Chad Wingard and Nash will be three handy ins for the Tigers next week, but it is shaping as a difficult encounter. Still, the Hawks have yet to play two bad games in a row this year so expect some sort of bounce back.
10. The reality is that the Hawks are still a bottom six club and Saturday night was the reminder of that that most supporters needed. And over the next few weeks, we will see Ned Long, Connor Downie and perhaps Sam Butler get their opportunities. It’s what Sam Mitchell promised at the start of the year and nothing has changed.
11. Still, the great Hawthorn teams we have known and loved knew when to sniff blood and then put the opposition to the sword. The failure to do so on Saturday night – developing team or not – will stick in the craw of every supporter for quite some time. It was an embarrassing performance and the suspicion here is that Mitchell let his players know as much.
Superstar/Rising Star/Falling Star
⭐️ Superstar - Dylan Moore
It was hard to find many players that stood out on the night, but Dyl once again worked himself to the bone.
Ash mentioned last week in his takeaways that it was noticeable how much time Moore played in the back half of the ground, and this week he increased that figure (69%) to an incredible 75% in the defensive zone.
Moore finished the match with 20 touches, 11 marks and kicked a goal as he worked tirelessly up and down the ground.
Together with James Sicily, he could arguably be the best footballer on our list (big call?).
💫 Rising star - Jai Newcombe
Arguably could be put into the Superstar category of this article, but we are going to keep the lid on Jai for just a little bit longer.
In just his 15th career game Newcombe was easily our best midfielder on the night, thanks largely to his incredible first half at Marvel where he was the leading disposal getter with 22.
He finished the night with 28 - 17 of which were contested, eight marks, five clearances, five score involvements, three inside-50s and three defensive 50 rebounds.
Has to be in the thick of the NAB Rising Star Award calculations.
🤷♂️ Falling star - Tom Mitchell
With just 14 touches on the night, it was Titch’s second worst disposal tally in his last 125 games of footy - telling given it was his 158th career game.
Titch seems to be playing a lot more off the ball throughout games this year, and it doesn’t seem to be suiting him. The matches where he has been purely in the middle he has dominated and turned games with some classic Tom Mitchell quarters.
But he seems unable to contribute meaningfully in any role outside of the inside ball magnet we know and love. And if it continues this way in 2022, fans will start asking the question as to whether or not we should have traded him for a first round draft pick at the end of last season.
Unsung Hero & Scapegoat
👼 Unsung Hero - Jaeger O’Meara
Given the strong opinions of a number of the Hawks Insiders crew in terms of where Jaeger fits in and what he has left to give, our midfield elder statesman stood up in probably his best game of the season.
Most of our senior players went missing in the second half against the Dons, but JOM dug in and was the only player that seemingly tried his heart out in the final term when the chips were down.
Jaeger finished the game with 28 touches (season high), six inside-50s (tied season high), five marks (tied season high) and a monstrous 13 score involvements from our 26 scores for the match.
🔪 🐐 Scapegoat - Jack Gunston
All-in-all Gunners had a decent enough day at the office - leading well, presenting, guiding our young forwards and having a scoreboard impact.
Unfortunately the scoreboard impact he had was in the behinds column.
Gunston finished the game scoring 2.4 from his six shots at goal - following up from his 0.3 against the Demons last weekend.
He had some solid opportunities to steady the ship and give us some breathing space including some pretty regulations set shots for anyone - let-a-lone Jack.
Fingers crossed he recalibrates his radar during the week and has it ready for our game on Saturday against the Tigers.
The Obligatory Ladder Check In
We have slipped down to 12th on the ladder and are part of a group of five teams (Crows still to play) stuck on three wins for the season. This might be the end of the ladder we are reporting on for the remainder of the 2022 season 😬.
News & Notes
It was just the second time in 95 matches that Peter Wright has kicked a bag of six goals or more in a game - finishing the evening with six straight. In the six times that he had played us before last night, he scored a combined six goals total.
As he was in round six, Liam Shiels was once again the unused medical substitute. That takes his career games tally up to 247.
Chad Wingard being a late withdrawal means he will have to wait until next week’s game to bring up his 200th career match. It was pretty obvious the way Luke Breust spoke at the mid week conference he fronted in Wingard’s place that it was always going to happen.
Sammy Press Conference Bingo
We could never put them away ✅
We lost control of the game ✅
We started the game really well ✅
We didn’t make the most of our chances ✅
It wasn’t to the standard we expect ✅
What They Said
🗣️ Harry Morrison
“We couldn’t get the game on our terms. They found a bit of momentum. Not having Lynchy at the start of that last quarter hurt us a bit. But we’ll have a look at it on Monday and see where we broke down.”
“[There were] little individual wins along the way … Like Jai Newcombe taking another step to building his own brand and playing some good footy.”
“Sam’s got a 24-hour rule - you can be as sad as you like for 24 hours, but come Monday it’s work again.”
🗣️ Jarman Impey
“It was a rough night. We started well. We had a good first half, I thought. Always against Essendon is tough. We just had to bring a four quarter effort. It’s disappointing we didn’t get the chocolates today, but we lick our wounds and get ready for Richmond at the ‘G.”
“Jaeger mentioned it last week that most of our players are 0-20 games. Little bit inexperienced but that’s no excuse - we’re not hiding any from that … It’s a hard loss at the moment.”
“With the Bombers they had a bit of a tough week, so we knew that they were going to bring the heat. And they were just too strong for us. They got out through the middle, they got shoulders out, and they just come through the corridor and it was hard - you could just feel the energy, especially among the crowd.”
Yep. It had a 1984 GF feel to that. Thanks for reminding me of that horror show. Also on a par with the loss to the Roos in Hobart last year. Getting beaten by this mob is not what we needed. We can do better. Standards are important. Let's look forward to improvement. Some messages need to be sent and clearly understood, though.