Prelim Final – Hawthorn v Adelaide

Saturday 22 September 2012, MCG

OMG we’re in the big one…

…but not without a little scare

Jane Austen tips Hawks for flag

Hug me, I’m Hawthorn
source: the roar.com.au AFL media

“It is a truth universally acknowledged among football pundits that Hawthorn will win this year’s AFL premiership.”

I wrote that sentence on 25 March of this yearby way of introducing this blog and reporting the foregone conclusion football commentators prophesised for the season’s outcome.

True, Jane Austen wrote a very similar sentence 200 years earlier, but I’m just paying due homage to her tipping ability. Fittingly, just like the novel from which part of that sentence is lifted, I have pride in Hawthorn and as regular readers of this blog will know, display nothing but utter prejudice against any other team. And if Darcy played football, surely he’d be in the brown and gold – what with all that ancestral money behind him.

Anyway, here we are six months and 24 matches later and the Hawks have reached the Grand Final!

Profuse sweating and erectile dysfunction

Winning a Preliminary final should be accompanied by feelings of exhilaration and triumph as we march into the Grand Final, banners held high and voices in full gloat. Much as it is for Sydney after cruising past Collingwood on Friday night. But after Hawthorn barely scraped through against Adelaide in an excruciating match, perhaps our least convincing win of the year, an entire day later and I still feel decidedly on edge. We so nearly lost a second successive Prelim by less than a goal that we were in danger of being known as the new Bulldogs.

It was truly agonising. I’ve just watched the match again and found it nearly as stressful the second time around. My doctor recently diagnosed that I have a hernia – now I don’t know the conditions under which hernias thrive, but I think mine grew six centimetres in diameter during the final quarter. The shame is that when we buy the DVD box set featuring the Qualifying Final, Preliminary Final, Grand Final and season highlights, this is one disc (or file or stream torrent) that will never be watched.

Reaching the Grand Final is magnificent, but the nature of the victory; scrappy and haphazard, just made it tense and traumatic. It was like finally getting to have sex with the girl you’ve fantasised about for years only to be inconvenienced by profuse sweating, erectile dysfunction or your girlfriend coming home unexpectedly.

But just like that scenario, it’s still worth it! The point being…we’re in the big one!

Inauspicious signs and portents

The whole thing started inauspiciously and looked like it might get a whole lot worse.

First; the time of the game…5.15pm. What’s with that? No other match this season, or any other season, has started at this time. The Hawks have no routine for a 5.15 start so why suddenly in a big final is the game starting at this hour? And it’s just the same for the supporters – with a 5.15 start we didn’t know when to start drinking.

What’s wrong with 2.10 like thousands of games before it (including last year’s Saturday Preliminary Final)?  The Hawks are creatures of habit; they rarely play well at unfamiliar start times – it’s something to do with body clocks and the preparation time they need to go out clubbing later.

Another bad sign; Sydney defeated Collingwood quite easily the previous night. History shows there’s always one close Preliminary Final and Sydney Collingwood clearly wasn’t it, so that only left this one.

Then we hear Hodge is out! At first I dismissed this news as nasty Twitter trolling; malicious, anonymous haters trying to mess with our already frazzled minds…but then we discovered it was true. Gastro of all things! Is Hodge a hypochondriac or just strangely susceptible to illness and injury?  In 2008 Geelong targeted his ribs after he injured them in the Preliminary Final – what will Sydney do next week, waft the smell of parmesan under his nose?

Then the game starts (again, why at 5.15pm?) and we go forward – the Rough marks, so far so good, until he misses the first set shot. Then everyone else continues to miss – the tone is set. Our first three scoring shots are behinds and at quarter time we’re 2.6 trailing Adelaide’s much more assured 4.1.

After the Crows extended their lead early in the second, The Rough dropped a sitter from Sammy, however, before we’d finished groaning Buddy pounced and grubbered through a goal.

But we never really found our rhythm: Breust missed from 25, Lewis’ marked within range but went for a short pass that didn’t hit the target. Our next goal also came from a fluky happenstance: a good smother from The Rough got the ball to Cyril, to Sewell, whose scrappy kick was marked by Breust. This time, thankfully, he goaled.

When Burgoyne burst through the middle and nailed a goal it finally looked like we were finding our tempo, but late goals to Walker, including a monster 60 metre kick after the siren, gave the Crows a narrow half-time lead.

It’s it’s the Hawthorn blitz…well, sort of

The third quarter saw the Hawks regain their strut with Sewell winning the clearances, Lewis going hard and Sammy pinging sharp handballs about like a pinball wizard.

In 10 minutes we had goals from Gunston and Breust, both courtesy of Buddy set-ups, a Suckling bomb from 50 and then one to Buddy himself. But the rout never quite happened: Adelaide continued to play strong, smooth football with crisp passing and accurate shooting. They always looked like they were going to score and despite goals to Gunston and Cyril, we only led by 16 points at the final break – a lead unnervingly similar to the one we couldn’t defend in 2011 against Collingwood.

And sure enough – our composure deserted us. Just as in this season’s two Geelong defeats, we missed several shots and were unable to turn a handy lead into an unassailable one. Burgoyne missed, and Buddy missed three times, including two wayward shanks.

Meanwhile Adelaide couldn’t miss – goals to Walker, Porplyzia – after one of the more laughable free kick reversal decisions I’ve ever had to stand and vent loudly about – and then Johncock gave Adelaide the lead with five minutes to go. Not again, surely?

Cyril and Stratton save the day (or evening)

Enter Cyril. At the very next clearance Burgoyne grabbed it and kicked long to where two Crows were set to take a grab, only to see Cyril spring above them to mark and goal. Hawks back in front.

In Adelaide’s next attack, the aptly named Dangerfield took possession and went to turn towards goal until Stratton first corralled, then tackled him to the ground. When the ball spilled he got it out and we went forward where Lewis paddled it to Cyril, who ran and got it on to Buddy who kicked what we thought would be the sealer. At last.

Cyril took another great grab and could have put it beyond doubt, but missed. What was particularly hurtful was that the Adelaide defender jumped into his back in an action the 50 metre penalty was intended to deter, but in this case wasn’t awarded.

So when Walker kicked another goal the Crows were suddenly back to within a kick. Not again, surely? Happily Burgoyne won the next clearance and despite the umpire trying to interfere in the just and true result by penalising Suckling for deliberate out of bounds, we held on.

The siren song

In Greek mythology, a siren is a bewitching female or mermaid who lured sailors to their death through her beautiful and beguiling song. Ulysses famously had himself strapped to the mast so that he could resist their wiles and temptations. Putting aside the whole grounding of ships on rocky cliffs aspect of the story, I can understand how the sailors became so entranced, as the sound of the siren on Saturday evening worked a very similar enchantment on me. It was one of the more beautiful bursts of sound I’ve ever heard and its resonance sent us all into song…the Hawthorn song.

Hot, hot, hot

Much was made pre-match of Hawthorn’s hot favouritism: the hottest Preliminary final favourite since Essendon in 1999. Essendon, of course, lost.

Being hot favourite is an indication of what football punters think, not a measure of how football teams play, so the odds were never an accurate guide to the outcome, any more than me wearing my lucky t-shirt and shirt combo – although we are 12 from 12 since I started wearing it. And our only loss in that time was to Geelong when I had to don corporate attire.

And unlike Essendon, we were playing a team who’d finished on equal wins and missed out on top spot by percentage only. So it was never going to be as lopsided as the betting suggested. Sure enough, as Adelaide’s form line indicated, the Crows play fantastic football. They played a strong, free-flowing game and always looked dangerous.

Hawthorn’s poor conversion was a contributing factor to the closeness of the contest, but the Crows played their own game and stopped Hawthorn playing theirs. Pencil them in for a Grand Final berth next year.

After the match one of my Hawk buddies drew parallels between this game and the famous Preliminary in 1999 when Carlton defeated Essendon against the odds. Again bad kicking for goal was the problem. The score that day was Essendon 14 19 103 to Carlton 16 8 104, eerily familiar to yesterday’s score of Hawthorn 13 19 97 to Adelaide 14 8 92.

There was also the third quarter surge by Hawthorn similar to Essendon’s surge in 99, but where the difference lay is that in 99 it was Fraser Brown from Carlton tackling Dean Wallis as he went for the winning goal, whereas yesterday it was Stratton’s tackle on Dangerfield that dispossessed the dangerous Crow, won us the ball and we went forward to goal.

Sanderson said pre-match that for Adelaide to win, they needed Hawthorn to not be at their best. Well, we weren’t and yet we still won. So plaudits and applause for the Hawks. We’re there. And now there’s just one more win to go, so I’d best see about getting my lucky shirt laundered.

Final scores: Hawthorn 13  19  97  d  Adelaide 14  8  92

Buddy goals tally – 3 = total, 66.  Buddy behinds tally – 5 = total, 60

What we liked: Sewell, Cyril, Sammy and Breust: sounds like a tongue twister but this quartet got us into the Granny.

Sam Mitchell for Brownlow. The Brownlow medal is becoming like the Academy Award for best actor in a leading role – it gets awarded to the bloke who should have won it the year before. Like the Academy, the umpires realise they got it wrong and fix it the following year. This all started when Cooney won it ahead of Ablett, following in the great tradition of undeserving Bulldogs players to win the medal. Given that Sammy should have won it last year, expect him to take it home this year. Look out for the embarrassed looks on the All-Australian selectors when he does and put your money on Cotchin for next season.

Dress code at the Show. Went to the Royal Melbourne Show yesterday and I’d estimate that one in every ten people was wearing a Hawks jumper or top of some sort. Expect to see the brown and gold verticals out and proud this week.

What we didn’t like: Hodge’s gastro – as one of my friends said, don’t we have a dietician overseeing every morsel they eat? I suppose next week he’ll want paternity leave.