Prelim Final – Hawthorn v Geelong

Friday 20 September 2013, MCG

Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by

“Wait long by the river…”

‘Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by’ is the title of the second album by The Drones. It may also be an ancient Japanese proverb, or just a made up maxim attributed to the Japanese by Sean Connery in the 1993 movie, Rising Sun, but whatever the origins of the saying, its central message of ‘good things come to those who wait’ or ‘patience is a virtue’ or ‘Up Yours Geelong!’ has most Hawks fans nodding in recognition.

In fact Hawks fans taking the trek from the G to the city after Friday night’s Preliminary Final might have taken a glance at the lapping brown tide of the Yarra and been able to make out in the murk the slime-coated, litter-bespecked empty vessels of our long-time adversaries Johnson and Selwood, Bartel, Lonergan, Corey, Kelly and Mackie all drifting quietly past. Bon voyage boys…

Jeff was right!

In the lead-up to the match there was, as always when these sides meet, much talk about the ‘Kennett curse’. On the eve of the 2009 season after defeating Geelong in the 2008 Grand Final, Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett said that Geelong didn’t have the mental toughness to defeat Hawthorn in big games

“They don’t have the psychological drive we have. We’ve beaten Geelong when it matters.”

As we all know the Hawks haven’t beaten the Cats in their 11 subsequent meetings, giving rise to the notion of the curse.

Having now finally defeated Geelong, much is being made of the fact that the curse is now broken. But was there really ever a curse? And really, didn’t Friday night’s events prove that Jeff was right after all?

If you examine his exact quote, you’ll see he was referring to “…when it matters”. He said nothing about the piddling Home & Away games that make up 10 of the 11 losses. And the other was a Qualifying Final, not a knock-out, do-or-die encounter. So of the last five games that really ‘mattered’ Hawthorn has won every one of them: 1989 Grand Final, 1991 Second-semi Final, 2000 Elimination Final, 2008 Grand Final and 2013 Preliminary Final.

Geelong fans can do their gloating over Home & Away games if they like (and as any Hawthorn fan knows, they haven’t held back), but we’ll save ours for the matches that matter.

Missing the target

The Hawks couldn’t find the target,
but they found their way onto the ground

Of course anyone watching the match would have been forgiven for thinking the curse was still active, for surely some malevolent supernatural entity or evil spirit was putting a hex on our set shots for goal.

In no particular order, Hale (twice), Breust (thrice), Lewis, Shiels, Roughead and Gunston, all missed relatively straight forward set shots for goal. There may well have been others, but by the final quarter I was no longer able to watch when we were lining up. I just waited for the collective moan to tell the story before I lifted my head.

They were spraying it everywhere, like men aiming into a toilet bowl after 11pm at a party. Honestly, you’d think the goal face was a narrow aperture in the space time continuum that appeared only fleetingly like a slim, wavering tear, just long enough for Dr Who to slip through in the Tardis, before quickly closing up. As Matthew (19:24) sayeth, quoting Jesus, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the Hawks to slot one through the big sticks at the G.”

Ebb and flow…and more ebb

The match began inauspiciously, and I don’t mean the free kick the umpire paid to Geelong within seconds of the start, but the woman behind me who’d grabbed my shoulder to pull me down after I stood to cheer on the Hawks during a stoppage. Then when I turned to enquire if she thought she was at the ballet, her husband pulled my cap over my eyes. I think they thought it was the 1989 Grand Final and they were actually playing for Geelong. On half time when I cheered The Rough’s big mark I overheard their daughter suggesting that her dad jab me in the ribs! In retrospect I’m lucky they didn’t take me out at the first bounce, Mark Yeates style. And I hadn’t even begun to be obnoxious by that point.

For two and a half quarters Hawthorn had the ascendency in general play but we were simply unable to convert our opportunities. Whereas when Geelong went forward they rarely missed. Johnson was playing a brilliant game for Geelong and looked set to decide the course of the match on his own; Bartel was playing well as always and they were easily covering the loss of our arch-nemesis Paul Chapman.

Both teams enjoyed periods of superiority. Geelong had got out to a 19 point lead in the second quarter before Hawthorn clawed back and edged in front, point by agonising point. Our inaccuracy was becoming a crucial factor, in particular Roughead’s miss after the siren. After taking a soaring mark on the edge of the goal square he managed to miss the goal, somewhat sapping the momentum we’d been building.

The third quarter opened fairly evenly, but when Birchall ran through Stokes it resulted in a Bartel goal, a scuffle, and a short but decisive period when the hex kicked in and everything went wrong for Hawthorn and right for Geelong.

Selwood and Guthrie kicked goals, then after Burgoyne got one back for us, Cyril took an absolute screamer in the goal square, but either it wasn’t paid, or he decided playing on in the goal square while sitting down was a good percentage play, or more likely, it was an earthly manifestation that there is no God. Either way, it resulted in Geelong sweeping the ball forward and Motlop kicking a goal. Taylor kicked another over his shoulder. Then with the ball bobbling near the boundary it came off a Geelong boot, as the replay clearly illustrated, but the sheer force of Geelong whingeing left the umpires undecided – even though everyone at the ground and everyone watching on TV could tell exactly what happened – and they elected to ball it in, from which of course Geelong scored again.

In the space of five minutes and two or three crucial moments where baffling calls had gone against us, our one point deficit had blown out to a 20 point deficit at three quarter time. I was not alone among Hawthorn fans in thinking we were gone.

3/4time sulking

Taking stock at three quarter time: Sam Mitchell was playing one of his best ever games – which is saying something – Hale and Burgoyne were playing well, but Franklin, Roughead, Hodge and Sewell were all well below their normal standard and having very little impact. And at 20 points down, a season that had progressed quite swimmingly seemed destined to end in an all too predictable fashion.

I’ve been to every Grand Final since 1971 except for two; in 1996 I was overseas and 1999 I was at home with a newborn, but I decided then that I simply couldn’t bear to attend the Grand Final this year if Hawthorn wasn’t playing. After being the dominant side all year, to not even make the Grand Final seemed just too depressing a scenario to face. I was in full sulk mode and that newborn from 1999 was sitting next to me at the game feeling exactly the same.

From grief to belief

When Franklin got his boot on the end of a loose ball in the goal square I thought we had a slight chance. The field umpire signalled ‘all clear’, the goal umpire stuck out his two fingers and did his little semaphore thing with the flags and everyone went back to position. Then someone sitting in a sort of Panic room somewhere decided that the goal needed to be reviewed. So ignoring that two umpires standing close by and 36 players had settled on a decision, they decided they’d like to intervene and slow things up. I wasn’t even aware there was allowance for this sort of thing and I can’t help feeling that had it been anyone other than Buddy whose toe had nudged the ball through, play would simply have resumed.

If two blokes watching on TV can just stop the game at any given moment, why didn’t they intervene when Cyril’s mark wasn’t paid? Why didn’t they intervene when Geelong kicked the ball out on the full and the umpires called for a ball-in?

After Caddy kicked one for Geelong it was back to 19 points and it stayed that way for several crucial minutes. It was 96 to 77 at the 13 minute mark and I recalled Leigh Matthews’ elegantly simple theory that the first team to 100 usually wins. At that moment it didn’t look like it would be Hawthorn. We still trailed by more than three goals and I’d moved beyond fearing the worst and was well into the second or third stage of the grief cycle.

Then it turned. A Burgoyne tackle affected Bartel’s clearing kick which landed with Bradley Hill, who goaled. Then Burgoyne handballed to Gunston for another and then he ran in himself to put us in front!  Of course there were several behinds littered amongst this burst and several more to come, but we found ourselves in an eerily familiar position – six points up with, well, who knew how long left.

Stratton took two big pack marks from Geelong kick-ins, Burgoyne was in everything, Cyril was just starting to get involved, Mitchell simply didn’t let the ball get past him and suddenly we believed…until Geelong broke free one last time and got the ball to Varcoe who was in space about 30 metres out…but before we even had time to form the thought, ‘My God, it’s happening again, I can’t believe it’, Varcoe missed! For once Geelong had missed!

Such was the noise that no one heard the final siren, because Cyril had it 15 metres out and he played on to Buddy, which therefore didn’t count. We’d won! We’d beaten Geelong! But more importantly, we’d made it to the Grand Final!

Goal dancing

A misguided decision to drive to the game meant that I couldn’t celebrate in a manner befitting the occasion – guzzling champagne, lubing up and climbing nude up one of the goal posts while waving a Hawthorn flag, but watch out for that if we win next week.

Defeating Geelong by less than a goal in a final is a fitting way to end the hoodoo.  On the one hand it would have been nice to bury them, as our shots on goal suggested we should have, but that would have given the Geelong players and fans time to get accustomed to the idea of losing, to frame it in a philosophical light, and even leave early. Whereas this way they got to experience a little of what Hawks fans have felt over the past 11 meetings as we’ve been overrun in the final quarter or lost on the final kick. Except on this occasion there is a Grand Final appearance at stake.

My thoughts turned to the Geelong fan sitting in front of me in Round one who actually wished death upon Buddy; to all those Cats fans I know who have Facebooked and texted me after Geelong has beaten us in the past five years; and to the people behind me at this match who, naturally, had left before I had a chance to wish them a pleasant drive back to South Barwon. In fact they’d left before we reached “we love our club” in the first rendition of the song. So since they couldn’t stay, I applauded the Geelong players off on their behalf. After all, they’d played a great match and had a wonderful season. They were just beaten by a team whose destiny is to win the 2013 premiership.

Final scores: Hawthorn 14 18 102  d  Geelong 15 7 97

What we learned: All hoodoos end, all curses are broken.

In my most recent report of the Geelong v Hawthorn Groundhog Day experience in Round 15, I lamented that a Brit (even though he’s actually a Scot) had managed to win Wimbledon while Hawthorn still couldn’t defeat Geelong. There I was thinking this was a sign that the hoodoo might last forever, when in fact it was a sign that all hoodoos end. I mean even Geelong won a premiership in 2007 after 44 years and five Grand Final losses.

Get in the witchdoctors

Spain eventually won a World Cup in 2010 after 80 years, England reclaimed the Ashes in 2005 after 18 years, Adam Scott became the first Australian to win the US Masters in 2013 after several close calls, and Australia won the America’s Cup in 1983 after 129 years.

Even if it did exist, the Kennett curse is mild by comparison to some others. In rugby Ireland has never beaten the All Blacks and the Welsh haven’t beaten them since 1953.

The most famous sporting curse is ‘The curse of the Bambino’ in baseball. In 1918 after winning the World Series, the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. In footy terms, it’s a bit like letting Gary Ablett Snr go to Geelong. Like Ablett, Babe Ruth furthered his reputation with the Yankees, but the difference is that while Hawthorn won their way to seven successive Grand Finals and eight of the next nine without Ablett, winning five of them, The Red Sox endured an 86 year drought, eventually winning in 2004.

Melbourne is suffering under a similar curse. After legendary coach Norm Smith took them to the 1964 premiership, his sixth overall as coach of Melbourne, they sacked him during the 1965 season, and they haven’t won since.

My favourite sporting curse, however, involves the Socceroos and a witchdoctor. I mean if a curse is to be taken seriously there should be a witchdoctor involved, not just a former state premier. Of course many on the left of politics might place Jeff Kennett in that category anyway.

The story was first related in Johnny Warren’s autobiography, ‘Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters’  The Australian team was playing Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1969 in Mozambique and was trying to qualify for the 1970 World Cup. They organised for a witchdoctor to place a curse on Rhodesia, which he did by burying some bones near the goal posts and presumably incantations and strage dancing were also involved.  Australia won 3-1, but when the witch doctor asked for payment, the team couldn’t provide it. So the witch doctor reversed the curse and placed it on Australia.

Australia did qualify for the 1974 World Cup, but were drawn to play host Germany and were duly thumped. Since then they had never qualified again, despite being 2-0 up against Iran in the second half at the MCG in 1997, needing only to hang on to win, and in 2001 losing to Uruguay in the final qualifier.

The curse was eventually lifted by comedian John Safran in his show ‘John Safran versus God.’ He travelled to Mozambique to find the witch doctor and have him reverse the curse.

As it happened, the witchdoctor had died, but Safran found another witchdoctor who could channel the original one. As Safran told David Sygall of The Age on 20 November 2005: “that involved us sitting in the middle of the pitch and he killed a chicken and splattered the blood all over me.

“I then had to go to Telstra Stadium with Johnny and we had to wash ourselves in some clay the witchdoctor had given us.”

At the next qualifying stage for the 2006 World Cup, Australia defeated Uruguay and got through.

Okay, I think everyone would like to see Jeff Kennett covered in chicken’s blood in the middle of the MCG, but failing that, defeating Geelong by less than a goal will just have to do.

Now we just have to give Freo the old heave-ho.

What we already knew: That with Paul Chapman out suspended it was out best chance yet of defeating Geelong since 2008. It may be apocryphal but Chapman had vowed after the 2008 Grand Final that Geelong would never lose to Hawthorn again. And he’s been as good as his word, combining with Bartel to get us every time.

Chapman is a restricted free agent next season and Geelong so far seems undecided about keeping him on their list. I advocate that Hawthorn should recruit him, not to play as such, but just to make sure he never plays against us.

Addendum: As I write this, the Box Hill Hawks have just defeated Geelong in the VFL Grand Final. Geelong had won 13 games in succession leading into the match and were strong favourites to go back-to-back…remind you of anything?