Autopsy Round 14, 2021: Hawks fail against Bombers

[Paul Kersey]

Essendon played better and deserved the win. However, are they not just the most vanilla team out there? Haven't done anything of note for +15 years, will win enough to finish in the upper half of the bottom half of the ladder but won't present any realistic chance of threatening the top teams. Rinse and repeat.

I’d even pay money to see Selwood kick a winner post siren from a dodgy free against them in a final. That’s how much I hate that filthy club.

 

[The Spirit of Cricket]

Why do we keep letting other teams have not one but two extra players around the clearances. Just stupid coaching. Also you know when we don’t want to win a game as we put Ceglar in the middle. I would like to see the difference in clearance numbers today between when Ceglar is around the ball compared to McEvoy if anyone has them.

it was by design this game and was intended to prevent essendon's quick corridor gameplay from being effective

while we ultimately lost I think the strategy was largely effective tbh

earlier in the year when we were being smashed in the middle it was giving us -10 differentials in Inside 50 counts. We were +3 today, which suggests it was an intentional tactic that almost worked

 

[Off The Couch]

Bad kicking, bad football
So need some quality midfield - JOM just cannot do it alone

hate losing to these chunts and made worse by the fact that they outnumbered our supporters

lousy way to finish the weekend

 

[eldorado]

As Clarkson would say, not enough polish...

 

[IdiotBox]

No one is brave enough to say that Will Day had a bit of stinker? A few poor kicks at end of second and in the third let the scum in for goals.

 

[theiaofseed]

Missing 3 of top ten players, should've won still. No idea why people aren't taking positives out of that

 

[Roddy]

Sorry to burst everyones bubble but 'Duke' is a mile off it at present. Tackling is nice but you have to actually get the ball if you play in the midfield.

You’re saying this after 2 games, one of which was a ripper? You’re either taking the piss or you need to go away and watch about 200 games of footy before you comment again...

 

[Hawthorn23]

Couple of quick thoughts:

- Kosi is a 10 year lock, absolute natural at FF

- Getting smashed in the centre clearances and still being in the game for four quarters showed how good our backline hold up. Great intercept work for the majority of today, and will only get better with DGB and Sis coming back

The W would’ve been nice but I thoroughly enjoyed watching the game today.

 

[Buttonsticher]

We can play fast football but we choose not too, reckon the game plan is as much at fault as the lack of skills. The upshot is we have some genuine young talent. I also think I need to record the games and watch when we win, watching them live is taking years off me.

 

[flinchfree]

Sorry to burst everyones bubble but 'Duke' is a mile off it at present. Tackling is nice but you have to actually get the ball if you play in the midfield.

He was pretty clearly told NOT to hunt the football.

 

[local hack]

Not much to like about this Hawthorn team atm, is there?

There’s lots! Didn’t go our way today but CJ, day, Imp off half back for starters

 

[ShortRaver]

I think most would agree at this point that the midfield and rucks is where we are losing, particularly on the clearances and defensive turnover. If we can just get them to click, I think we'd be alright this year.

This week though, and coming off last week, things are looking brighter for the most part for us. It was a huge effort from the Hawks, it looked like they wanted the win but just needed to tidy up the set shots. We were certainly the better team on the day, but deserved the loss for not capitalising on our opportunities.

It's not all tidy, but you can see the pieces coming together. This is my first time watching a rebuild, and it's fascinating to watch the highs and lows.

Unfortunately... that outlook was completely dumped on by the trash umpiring and scummy crowd. Sure we have more free kicks, but that means nothing without context. Stringer getting a pass in particular for many key decisions was infuriating.

Would like to throw a shout out to Howe this week, his work rate was massive and was involved quite a bit. I know he cops a lot of criticism from this thread, but today he was great.

 

[grumbleguts]

Man how the f*ck did we win the free kick count. I know we got kissed on the dick last friday but it was shambolic today, particularly in the 4th. Wouldn't have won us the game but f*ck me dead if you can't honestly say we weren't robbed of a few.

There's one idiot who thinks we were favoured. Three * goals came directly from umpiring mistakes. You only need to assess that stat to see how ridiculous it was. Still we could have taken a few marks and got a few clearances. A little hard to win clearances though when they are allowed to clear it one handed.

 

[mickmaster]

Burger is my fav Hawthorn player but is cooked.
Stop waiting for Obrien to start taking marks he has been in the system long enough, he will never hold the marks he nearly takes.
Ceglar is like corona virus ....fake fake fake. wake up
Moore can play but is not

 

[eldorado]

No one is brave enough to say that Will Day had a bit of stinker? A few poor kicks at end of second and in the third let the scum in for goals.

Two howlers within a couple of minutes...oh well...

 

[flinchfree]

I've got no idea why everyone keeps talking about midfield accountability????
That's all we freakin do, try and watch and stop the opposition.
But you do realize that's a losing mentality....your fixation is on hoping to stop the opponent, not on finding the footy first.
Everyone knows that attack has the advantage in every sport.

 

[local hack]

Jake 'the full frontal lobotomy' Stringer. Has there ever been a bigger deadshit to play the game?

He’s a full DC but tore us a new one today.

 

[detox]

Positives:

We are way better coached after the bye. Defensively much better.
Defence was good. Half back line solid. Scrim, Dimma, Impey, Jiath very good.
Breust very good
Kozi is good enough.
Bramble looked good and composed for a half, before fading out.

Negatives.

Wingard is off at present.
Newcombe is obviously still raw, but A few peices of play I saw worry me in that he is too much the same as basically our whole midfield. Great toughness & endeavour but slow.
Tim O brien did some ok things, but we just have to play the kids. We have depth in this position in terms of youngsters, time to give another a go.
Our rucks got exposed by Draper, especially in the air.
Ceglar cant tap.
Our Midfield tried hard, but exposed.

 

[blackheart]

Ceglar and McEvoy need to hang their heads in shame allowing a guy who hasn't played since round 2 school them. That flows on to the mids who couldn't get their hands on the ball. Parish continuously stood off the pack by himself and cleaned up the loose ball.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

Not much to like about this Hawthorn team atm, is there?

There’s plenty to like but our midfield set up and output is not one of them.

 

[WWSD]

 

[VandoHawk]

We played poorly out of the middle but if it wasn’t for our inaccuracy we would have won that game. We have some decent names in the midfield but the entire group & likely the coaching directive needs work. They try hard but are often outmatched.

Despite going in with an undersized backline our defenders were great both aerially and at ground level. We generated plenty of attack from our backline and didn’t let them get easy scores. Given the lack of midfield defensive pressure I thought this was a massive positive.

We also generated a lot of shots on goal despite a patchwork forward-line. Some of this is attributable to lax defence from Essendon but I think we take some positives from that even if the goalkicking routines need work.

 

[The Spirit of Cricket]

the fact is we've just got a few blokes that are a little off it and Essendon's bottom 6-7 today were superior

i thought our top-line players performed up to the same standard as theirs with the exception of Stringer who was UNFORTUNATELY BOG

Duke couldn't back up his R1 performance, Bramble had a nice debut but faded really hard, Moore was uninvolved, Shiels was good on Zerrett but I think we missed his ball-winning capabilities, Cousins had some nice moments but just lacks the polish needed in crunch time, TOB did some good things but wasn't impactful enough, Phillips started excellently but faded as well. Ceglar reverted to the mean, which I'm sure we expected but we had to let him back up his performance vs Sydney. We just had no drive off our wings — literally all of our push was coming from our HB or from Titch/JOM.

It's a weird thing to say, but also really a good thing to take out of this year — we missed Harry this game as much as anyone.

So there's a lot of great pieces that are coming together and it's going to be a rough journey forward, but you can see that we're still missing consistency from a lot of our players. Say Moore/Newcombe plays the same game he did vs Sydney, or Worpel is in as opposed to Cuz, we probably win. It's going to be a week-to-week process where some things will go right and others wrong. Today I honestly thought there was enough good stuff to take out of it to not be too disappointed.

Our backline was simply awesome. Day had those two uncharacteristic turnovers but aside from that they completely negated Essendon's clearance dominance. Tom and JOM were very good, just really needed some help. Howe's ball use was disturbingly good. Kosi looks like a 200 game player at the minute. If we're challenging by 2024 I'm almost certain Breust will be in that side, bloke is timeless.

And for all the negatives it's pretty simple stuff — if we kick straight we win.

 

[Ridingthebumps]

it was by design this game and was intended to prevent essendon's quick corridor gameplay from being effective

while we ultimately lost I think the strategy was largely effective tbh

earlier in the year when we were being smashed in the middle it was giving us -10 differentials in Inside 50 counts. We were +3 today, which suggests it was an intentional tactic that almost worked

Fair point but we even kept it that way with two minutes to go. Even just to change it up at some stage would be nice as teams start playing for it and run and handball through it then kick over our two loose players.

 

[TheExtractorFactor]

You’re saying this after 2 games, one of which was a ripper? You’re either taking the piss or you need to go away and watch about 200 games of footy before you comment again...

It's my opinion. He played well last week but I didn't get carried away like most others. I think he will be another that is good in the VFL but not AFL standard, but I could be wrong.