Strapping Young Lad
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- Apr 19, 2006
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It's the offseason, there's lots to ponder.
Can Hawthorn make the jump and contend for finals in 2024?
If you can't be optimistic about your side in the off-season you're likely following an absolutely trash side, so I'm going to present the case for, in part.
I know others will present the case against, likely highlighting that we need to go passed others, that development and improvement isn't always linear, what if injuries etc.
But let's focus on what we know and what went right in 2023.
Remember when we “gutted the midfield” and "will struggle to win 3 games"? Well what actually happened was that we went from the worst clearance side in the comp to amongst the best in the course of half a season with the new group.
By the end of 2023 this new Hawthorn midfield, the youngest in the comp, averaged more Centre Clearances per game than every side in the comp, bar the top 4 finishing Power and Lions sides.
Now while we took a good third of the season to take advantage of the new midfields performances at the clearances(no doubt hindered by the loss of Lewis over that time, Gunston heading North and McEvoy retiring), according to Rob McCartney on Hawks Insiders from Round 10, Hawthorn were 9th in the comp for Quarters won. During that period Hawthorn played 9 games against the eventual finalists, knocked off the Dogs and lost to the Tigers in the final moments of the game.
We did all this with what could often be described as a makeshift or clumsy forward line, and will head into 2024 with 3 additions via trade, of which all are capable of at least 20 goals each(some might suggest that Chol and Ginnivan are more than capable of double that).
In the Fig.1 overview below you can see that despite our slow start the year these young Hawks defeated their fair share of top 8 sides, and lost as many close ones as sides that were tipped to play finals.
It's not beyond the realms that Hawthorn could've had 10 wins on the board by the end of 2023, and what makes for a strong argument that we have a good chance of rising is that we enter 2024 without trying to facilitate so much change in the most important part of the ground.
Fig.1
(D) = draw
Remember also when “the youngsters will struggle to run out the season”? The stats below in fig.2 show that the youngsters and the side as a whole continued to push hard even against much more seasoned sides, and as I posted in the preseason thread the system with which we played with over that period is a more than fair chance to become the baseline of what our accepted output should be in 2024.
Does that mean we sit 1st in numerous CD rankings in 2024? No.
Does that mean we win the flag? No.
Does it mean we win enough games to make finals? Not necessarily.
But it does mean that while our midfield and forward half took at least 7-8 rounds to come out of the fog(and return of Lewis), we should be far more competitive from the very first bounce in 2024, and we should be more than capable of winning the majority of games against sides in the bottom 6, of which we do have quite a few, considering our 16th placed finish in 2023.
fig.2
In short, we could have quite easily had 10 wins in 2023, despite the rebuilding of the midfield and having Fergus Greene as our key forward for a third of the year, and with that in mind for 2024 I'd be amazed if the internal benchmark for a successful season is anything less than 10 wins with so much growth to come across the list and the additions to our forward half...certainly after my quick look at the draw I think that 10 wins is entirely achievable and that puts us right in the frame to be challenging for finals should we sneak a couple of unexpected wins early in the year.
What say you?
Can Hawthorn make the jump and contend for finals in 2024?
If you can't be optimistic about your side in the off-season you're likely following an absolutely trash side, so I'm going to present the case for, in part.
I know others will present the case against, likely highlighting that we need to go passed others, that development and improvement isn't always linear, what if injuries etc.
But let's focus on what we know and what went right in 2023.
Remember when we “gutted the midfield” and "will struggle to win 3 games"? Well what actually happened was that we went from the worst clearance side in the comp to amongst the best in the course of half a season with the new group.
By the end of 2023 this new Hawthorn midfield, the youngest in the comp, averaged more Centre Clearances per game than every side in the comp, bar the top 4 finishing Power and Lions sides.
Now while we took a good third of the season to take advantage of the new midfields performances at the clearances(no doubt hindered by the loss of Lewis over that time, Gunston heading North and McEvoy retiring), according to Rob McCartney on Hawks Insiders from Round 10, Hawthorn were 9th in the comp for Quarters won. During that period Hawthorn played 9 games against the eventual finalists, knocked off the Dogs and lost to the Tigers in the final moments of the game.
We did all this with what could often be described as a makeshift or clumsy forward line, and will head into 2024 with 3 additions via trade, of which all are capable of at least 20 goals each(some might suggest that Chol and Ginnivan are more than capable of double that).
In the Fig.1 overview below you can see that despite our slow start the year these young Hawks defeated their fair share of top 8 sides, and lost as many close ones as sides that were tipped to play finals.
It's not beyond the realms that Hawthorn could've had 10 wins on the board by the end of 2023, and what makes for a strong argument that we have a good chance of rising is that we enter 2024 without trying to facilitate so much change in the most important part of the ground.
Fig.1
(D) = draw
Remember also when “the youngsters will struggle to run out the season”? The stats below in fig.2 show that the youngsters and the side as a whole continued to push hard even against much more seasoned sides, and as I posted in the preseason thread the system with which we played with over that period is a more than fair chance to become the baseline of what our accepted output should be in 2024.
Does that mean we sit 1st in numerous CD rankings in 2024? No.
Does that mean we win the flag? No.
Does it mean we win enough games to make finals? Not necessarily.
But it does mean that while our midfield and forward half took at least 7-8 rounds to come out of the fog(and return of Lewis), we should be far more competitive from the very first bounce in 2024, and we should be more than capable of winning the majority of games against sides in the bottom 6, of which we do have quite a few, considering our 16th placed finish in 2023.
fig.2
In short, we could have quite easily had 10 wins in 2023, despite the rebuilding of the midfield and having Fergus Greene as our key forward for a third of the year, and with that in mind for 2024 I'd be amazed if the internal benchmark for a successful season is anything less than 10 wins with so much growth to come across the list and the additions to our forward half...certainly after my quick look at the draw I think that 10 wins is entirely achievable and that puts us right in the frame to be challenging for finals should we sneak a couple of unexpected wins early in the year.
What say you?
