Preliminary finals are often billed as the best games of the season. This one promised the world, and over-delivered.
For just under three hours on a balmy Melbourne September evening, a mammoth partisan crowd of 97,835 were treated to a game that had it all.
There were heroes on both sides and villains – the latter, at least to those with Hawk eyes, wore florescent green.
There was drama and controversy, not to mention an outpouring of emotion from those on both sides of the fence.
They saw speccies and goals, plenty of the latter – 39 to be precise. Not since the fabled 1989 decider has both teams scored 120 points or more in a final.
Six goals came off the boot of Nick Watson, who must wait at least another 12 months to showcase his wizardry on the game’s grandest stage.
No goal was more contentious than the game’s penultimate, which broke Hawthorn hearts around the globe and left their coach Sam Mitchell frustrated and on the verge of tears.
Most importantly, football lovers were given a contest, a nerve-jangler with savage momentum swings that left them guessing until the final seconds as to which team would come back to this venue next Saturday to take on minor premiers Fremantle to lift the cup.
No wonder Lions coach Chris Fagan said he was “stuffed”. His team is one win away from emulating the three-peat of Leigh Matthews’ Brisbane team of 2001-03.
“That was an emotional roller coaster, that game,” Fagan said.
“I mean, talk about entertainment. Whatever you paid for your ticket tonight, it was worth it. Wherever you sat, it had everything.”
In a game of numerous twists and turns, the most stunning twist played out in a chaotic conclusion, which saw four lead changes in the final 7½ minutes.
Mitch Lewis’s towering pack mark and goal with a tick over three minutes remaining would have immediately entered football folklore had it been the match winner. Instead, it sits alongside Brendon Goddard’s equivalent from the drawn 2010 grand final.
Tom Barrass and James Sicily both hauled in clutch marks deep in defence that were celebrated as if they were game savers.
That they were not was due to a controversial passage of play, which produced three contentious frees and finished with Hugh McCluggage’s ice-cold conversion in the closing seconds.
The first what if moment for Hawks fans came with just over a minute left when Lewis was pinged for not showing insufficient intent to keep the ball in play.
What those in brown and gold saw as a fumble over the boundary was interpreted by Brett Rosebury, officiating in his 586th game, as insufficient intent to keep the ball in play.
The second came in the centre square when Dayne Zorko was awarded a free kick for negligible, if any, high contact. His kick deep inside 50 sparked a frantic scramble where Jarman Impey was penalised holding the ball.
Though Impey did not have prior opportunity to dispose the ball, he also did not make a genuine attempt to get rid of it. A shattered Mitchell was more upset with the two frees that led to the call on Impey.
“I’m sure the umpires will assess how they performed in that game in key moments,” Mitchell said.
Barrass, Sicily and Jack Ginnivan all had words for umpire Hayden Meyer moments after the final siren, while Hawks fans chanted “bullshit, bullshit” in the stands. Fagan saw it differently.
“I would expect one of my players to be paid a free kick against if that was what he did,” Fagan said. “I know I don’t know what the whole world thinks, but that’s the way they interpret it. You’ve got to be making a genuine attempt to get rid of the ball, and he didn’t.”
Mitchell appeared a broken man when he fronted up to his press conference. It was too much for his warrior midfielder Jai Newcombe, who was consoled by loved ones in the Hawks rooms.
Newcombe had his Stephen Milne moment from the 2010 grand final at the last centre stoppage when he was set to shark the hitout only for the Sherrin to bounce on its end away from him, allowing the Lions to sweep the ball forward.
“If you want to strive for great things, you will open yourself up for all sorts of emotion – the greatest of joy and the deepest of pain,” Mitchell said after lengthy pause when asked what message he told his players.
His players were in “mourning”, Mitchell said, and would take a while to progress through the seven stages of grief.
“I’m a long way from acceptance right now, so I’ll sit in anger for a bit longer,” Mitchell said. “I’m sure all the players will too.”
The next few days will be agonising for Mitchell, who must conduct a thorough post-mortem of their harrowing defeat.
As Mitchell acknowledged, this game was lost long before the trio of free kicks at the death. The Hawks shipped seven goals in a row in the third and fourth quarters, turning a game that had appeared in their control to imminent defeat.
Last year, the Hawks were brutalised by Patrick Dangerfield and smashed in clearance. They were beaten out of the centre again, giving up eight goals to three in a match decided by a single-digit margin. There will be many in the Hawthorn community wondering what could have been if the Hawks had stumped up the picks for Zach Merrett.
That said, the Hawks were mighty in the last term to fight back against one of the greatest teams of the AFL era. Josh Ward, a No.7 pick in 2021, came of age. His bursts out of the middle, as the Hawks reeled in a 28-point deficit in the final term, were powerful.
Watson relished the occasion, producing a career-best performance in the biggest game he has played.
For the second year in a row, Mitchell’s Hawks fall at the second last hurdle. This time, they fought to the final siren for their faithful.
“I think every one of them was happy they went to the game, was proud they wear brown and gold, and knew that we had every player leaving every step that they physically had within them out on the field,” Mitchell said.
“And as a coach, it’s hard for me to ask for much more from them than that. And we need to continue to improve to make sure we can be two steps further than we are.”
The improvement, from eighth on the ladder to fourth, and a five-goal preliminary final loss to nine points, came internally in the main. The impending arrivals of Ben King and Merrett should, in theory, take them further, but it’s a long way back to the top four.
“We’ll improve every part of our organisation to continue to make growth and go where we want to go – because it’s not losing on preliminary final weekend,” Mitchell said. “This feeling is the pits.”
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