In his latest book, Australian Football’s 100 Year Club, author Andrew Clarke celebrates the history of three centenary AFL clubs – Hawthorn, North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs. In this edited extract, he deep dives into one of the greatest clubs of the modern era and their three-peat of premiership wins…
Hawthorn had an easy win over Collingwood in the first week of the 2012 finals and then had a rest before the scare of its life against Adelaide when Taylor Walker put the Crows within a goal with a minute left on the clock. It held on though and went into the grand final as the favourite, only to be beaten by a more accurate Sydney Swans. Hawthorn held an 11-point lead when ex-Roo David Hale goaled at the 2m 21s mark of the final quarter, but that was the last major for Hawthorn.
In that time, Sydney kicked four goals two to take the game away from Hawthorn who could muster only five behinds, most of which were gettable. The Hawks had thrown that one away and, a bit like Essendon in 1999, it built a certain resolve in the squad. Brian Lake was brought in from the Bulldogs to fill a hole down back, but otherwise it was the same team.
A first-round loss to Geelong in 2013 was its 10th loss to Geelong since the premiership win, and it would lose its 11th later in the season in what was called the Kennett Curse. After the 2008 grand final win, Hawks’ President, former state premier Jeff Kennett, said Hawthorn had Geelong’s measure in the big games, just as it had for the past 40 years. The only team Hawthorn lost to other than Geelong was Richmond, in its final loss for the home and away series – curiously, in 2008, Richmond was also Hawthorn’s final loss – and it finished on top of the ladder for its ninth minor premiership.
Sydney was an easy win in the qualifying final, and then it was Geelong for a preliminary final, a heart thumping win with a final quarter comeback that my daughter still rates as the greatest and most stressful game she has attended. If Hawthorn had kicked straight the game would have been easy, but the Kennett Curse loomed all night. Fremantle had an easy win in its prelim to head into its first grand final as the favourite… somehow.
The Grand Final played out as another strategic masterclass by Clarkson. In 2008 he sacrificed Franklin’s game by forcing him to drag the playmaking Matthew Scarlett out of the backline; this week it was Sam Mitchell. The 2008 premiership captain was one of the best players in the game and he was tagged during the Grand Final, but Clarkson gave him a tag himself, meaning he had two players for most of the game, being released only in the third quarter which saw Fremantle close the 23-point half-time gap to as little as three points.
Three goals in the first half of the final quarter while keeping Freo scoreless set up a memorable premiership. Brian Lake won the Norm Smith Medal. In the days after the game, though, Lance Franklin announced he was leaving the club, which many expected, and was going to join Sydney, which few expected, on a mammoth $10m deal for nine years. With an already banged up body few expected him to go that far. The deal was done the week after losing to Sydney in the 2012 grand final. Hawthorn fans were furious and heartbroken at the same time; they could understand the quieter life at Greater Western Sydney, but Sydney was a rival.
Hawthorn’s 11th premiership, 2013
Hawthorn 2.3.15 5.5.35 8.8.56 11.11.77
Fremantle 0.3.3 1.6.12 6.10.46 8.14.62
Sydney topped the AFL ladder in 2014 from Hawthorn, both winning 17. Sydney cruised through the finals. Hawthorn disposed of Geelong in the first week and then had another heart-stopping preliminary final, its fourth in a row decided by less than a kick. But unlike the Geelong prelim where the Hawks had to come from behind, this one was all about a risk-taking Port coming hard at the end.
Clarko had missed five games during the season with Guillain Barre Syndrome, but the Hawks didn’t miss a beat, giving fill-in coach Brendon Bolton five wins from five games. The Hawks were confident, even if the bookies were again looking elsewhere. Ex-Hawk Josh Kennedy kicked the first goal of the game and Franklin the third, but the Hawks surge from there was relentless.
It led by 20 points at quarter time and 42 at the long break, extending the margin to 63 at the end. Franklin was easily the Swans best, but the Hawks fans didn’t hold back on him, and neither did the Hawks captain Luke Hodge when he planted a kiss on the cheek of his former teammate.
Hawthorn’s 12th premiership, 2014
Sydney 2.3.15 5.3.33 8.5.53 11.8.74
Hawthorn 5.5.35 11.9.75 16.11.107 21.11.137
The Hawks had gone back-to-back with Hodge winning his second Norm Smith Medal. Cyril Rioli had missed most of the season with a hamstring injury, but he made an impact on the game, which was his first since round 15, and a lot of the lead-in chat was whether he would make it into the game at all. He played half a game in Box Hill’s – Hawthorn’s effective reserves team in the VFL – grand final the previous week and was rested and ready go.
He started the game on the ball, which was a very clear statement, and a handful of minutes later flew over the pack to prove the troublesome hamstring was strong. When he was subbed off for Taylor Duryea, the Hawks faithful, fully aware of the importance of his nine-touch game, cheered him all the way to the bench.
Will Langford, the son of former captain Chris, was also really good on this day, and like Ellis in 2008, he probably played his best game for the club. Nothing went wrong for him apart from only getting one vote in the Norm Smith Medal when he deserved more. Nothing went wrong for Hawthorn either from Roughead’s crunching tackle on Dan Hannebery to set up the Hawks’ fourth goal to his fifth goal late in the game.
The Hawks were in good shape and there was a sense at Hawthorn that this dynasty was not done, and it was already eyeing 2015 and a chance at immortality. Its age profile was just OK; there were six players in their 30s and none under 21, so they had to keep going. The 2015 season couldn’t have started better for Hawthorn fans. After enduring a run of 11 losses to Geelong which it broke in the 2013 preliminary final, all wins against Geelong were sweet, and a big 62-point win on the now traditional Easter Monday game in front of more than 70,000 was a great way to unfurl the club’s 12th premiership flag.
Up to round eight though, the Hawks couldn’t string either two wins or two losses together. But then it began to click again, and it started closing in on the ladder leaders from the west with Fremantle on top from West Coast. But all its losses were small, the largest being 10 points, and when the Hawks won eight in a row it had a percentage of 170.1 after a 138-point mauling of Carlton in round 17. Yet it sat only third on the ladder.
The ‘unsociable Hawks’ saved its most unsociable behaviour for North; captain Luke Hodge talked about it in his book and couldn’t explain why they disliked North so much, but he said they did. The round five clash at Docklands was a fiery affair from the Hawks. Jordan Lewis clumsily cleaned up Todd Goldstein with a late high hit and copped two weeks – it was his fourth suspension playing against the Roos. Luke Hodge scored a three-week penalty after he climbed from a pack and whacked Andrew Swallow.
At the time, Lewis told Fox Footy none of it was intended. “We want to be physical, but we never want to go over the edge, because if you go over the edge you lose players for weeks. That stuff we didn’t intend to do.” Regardless of that, they did. It was an interesting sideline to the season, and perhaps fortunately for the Hawks, they didn’t have to play North again that season.
Hawthorn was rocked mid-season when Roughead had to take time off after having a melanoma cut from his lip. The time off was for the wound to repair more than anything else, but for a club that still carried the scars of Peter Crimmins’ cancer battle four decades prior, it was a big scare. Not that it upset the Hawks, who kept winning games.
A further emotional setback happened later in the season when the 16-year-old son of assistant coach Brett Ratten was killed in a car crash. The rattled Hawks struggled through its Friday night game against Port Adelaide that week, dropping a game it should have won. That loss cost it the top spot on the ladder after it finished the season with two big wins and Freo and West Coast stumbled.
The worst part about finishing third was heading to Perth for its first final against West Coast, whose ‘Weagles Web’ methodology on the backline was being analysed by the experts as much as it was by the other coaches. Hawthorn lost the qualifying final after a big second quarter by West Coast setup a good win for the home team. The Hawks bounced back at home with a 74-point smashing of Adelaide at the MCG, but that setup another trip west for a preliminary final against Fremantle. North edged into the finals in eighth place beating Richmond in the first week and then Sydney the next week to make another preliminary final, also in Perth against West Coast.
Hawthorn’s 13th premiership, 2015
West Coast 1.5.11 3.8.26 5.9.39 8.13.61
Hawthorn 5.0.30 9.3.57 14.5.89 16.11.107
For a salivating Hawthorn-North Melbourne grand final, both would need to win finals in Perth on the same weekend, the first time Perth had ever hosted two preliminary finals in one weekend. Hawthorn had Fremantle who had finished on top of the ladder, but a big opening quarter settled the nerves and set the base for a win and Hawthorn’s chance at a historical three-peat. Cyril Rioli was electric with three goals after missing only one game for the season after being taught a new running technique to stop pinging hamstrings. North also started well and led by 20 points at quarter time but fell away for a 25-point loss as the Eagles plugged away.
West Coast wasn’t really that impressive in its preliminary final but went into the grand final as the clear favourite, with two trips to Perth in three weeks worrying the pundits, and the fascination with the ‘Weagles Web’ leaving it unbeatable in many eyes. But when you broke down the Web, it wasn’t that different to what Hawthorn did in its zone defence, and Clarkson proved on grand final day that he understood it better. Jack Gunston was brilliant with four goals (giving him 10 from three grand finals), but the attacking tone for the game was set by Rioli who had five marks inside the forward 50 and 18 of the most damaging possessions you could ever see in a game. He kicked two himself but set up another four and posed a threat to the Eagles whenever the ball was near. He was a very popular winner of the Norm Smith Medal. The Hawks pulled the Eagles apart on grand final day and powered away to a 50-point lead at three-quarter time, which closed down by only four points at the end for a famous third grand final win in a row.
In the AFL era, only Brisbane had managed three in a row, and in the VFL, Carlton and Melbourne (twice) had managed it, and only Collingwood had more in a row with four, but two were won under the dubious Argus Challenge system. This Hawthorn side was now guaranteed immortality.
AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL’S 100 YEAR CLUB by Andrew Clarke (Gelding Street Press, $34.99rrp) is available at BIG W and all good bookstores
