Autopsy Dogs get the job done for Bonty's 200th

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Also Liam Jones continues to be an amazing acquisition. We’d be several goals worse off each week, without him.
 
I don't understand how we can pay for Gold Reserve seats and be surrounded by mouthy, obnoxious Hawks supporters at our home game!?! Just about ruined the night for me. I'm going to write to the club and let them know that if I want to sit in the Hawthorn Cheer Squad I don't have to pay many hundreds a year per seat.

Other than that....brilliant to win for our captain.
Sorry to hear you had such an experience.

In all honesty, I think it might be a good idea to look towards setting up fan separation like soccer.

There is so much more atmosphere at soccer games when everyone around you is cheering and chanting for the same team. Soccer can do this because fans are separated by club.
 
First half was atrocious in terms of effort but the end result was not unexpected. Bank the win and move on
 

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On a slightly more constructive note:
  • Lobb is being judged too harshly by some on here - he contested last night and kicked a big goal when we needed it. He was bloody competitive in the ruck hit outs and seemed to be more effective than Tim often was. We are close to getting what we paid for. He does seem to be down on confidence or unsure about when to go for the pack mark. Not sure if Lobb is a bit gun shy of Naughton and his killer knees arriving at 100 kph out of nowhere. I sure would be. The number of times that Naughton almost cleaned up Marra or Lobb was amazing. Even has Cody Weightman pulling out of contests. This comes down to s**t forwards coaching. We have no discernable plan to my eye. Compare our forward setup to that of Geelong and Melbourne, where everyone knows where they should be and where they should not be. None of this is Lobb's fault.
  • Trelour and Smith seemed to really lift our stoppage work and effectiveness after halftime. Kudos to them and to the coaches for switching it up.
  • Naughton gets bumped and shepherded out of the marking contest 50% of the time. As a club, we need to do all we can to ensure that he gets the same protection that Curnow, Hawkins and many other key forwards get.
  • Bontempelli similarly - held by the arm all night at stoppages during the first half. The umpires are watching for jumper-holding and seem oblivious to arm-holding and illegal shepherds.
  • Marra is becoming a bona fide star before our eyes. He worked very hard off the ball last night and with a bit of luck could have had a bag. Hawthorn certainly paid him as much respect as they did Naughton. We are going to have an awesome forward-line for a long time if we could sort the coaching out.
  • Liam Jones....thanks for coming home. You saved us in the first half. A seriously important player for us but needs help urgently.
I'm just glad that the players rallied after half time and we were able to make Marcus's milestone game a memorable one.

And kudos to Bullies supporters for turning up last night. 40k is a respectable crowd given that the Hawks supporters didn't turn up in good numbers.
 
Umpires were allowing front on contact and arm chops in marking contests (Sicily) all day.

It does my head in when compared to the soft free kicks Charlie Curnow gets week in week out.

Why we let our defenders rotate on to Mitchell Lewis is a mystery to me. Play Liam Jones on him and he is limited in his impact considerably.

I think if we want Jones to play as an intercept type then we need to play Gardiner as the other lock down defender.
The only reason that I can think of for playing TO'B on Lewis was because earlier in the game he was roaming up to the wings and taking contested marks.

This is not where Liam Jones does his best work. He does that closer to goal by reading the flight of the ball playing the goal keepers role. I guess they are punting correctly that at some point Lewis would run out of gas and play closer to goal. This is where Jones does his best work.

Perhaps our backs could've coordinated who was picking up Lewis when deep a little better. However I dont think it would've made much difference given how he was clunking everything early in the game. Looking at the highlights package he out marked English deep on at least two occasions. Lewis was just too good for everybody early in the game. There's no shame in that, he's a gun when it comes to catching the thing.
 
On a slightly more constructive note:
  • Lobb is being judged too harshly by some on here - he contested last night and kicked a big goal when we needed it. He was bloody competitive in the ruck hit outs and seemed to be more effective than Tim often was. We are close to getting what we paid for. He does seem to be down on confidence or unsure about when to go for the pack mark. Not sure if Lobb is a bit gun shy of Naughton and his killer knees arriving at 100 kph out of nowhere. I sure would be. The number of times that Naughton almost cleaned up Marra or Lobb was amazing. Even has Cody Weightman pulling out of contests. This comes down to s**t forwards coaching. We have no discernable plan to my eye. Compare our forward setup to that of Geelong and Melbourne, where everyone knows where they should be and where they should not be. None of this is Lobb's fault.
  • Trelour and Smith seemed to really lift our stoppage work and effectiveness after halftime. Kudos to them and to the coaches for switching it up.
  • Naughton gets bumped and shepherded out of the marking contest 50% of the time. As a club, we need to do all we can to ensure that he gets the same protection that Curnow, Hawkins and many other key forwards get.
  • Bontempelli similarly - held by the arm all night at stoppages during the first half. The umpires are watching for jumper-holding and seem oblivious to arm-holding and illegal shepherds.
  • Marra is becoming a bona fide star before our eyes. He worked very hard off the ball last night and with a bit of luck could have had a bag. Hawthorn certainly paid him as much respect as they did Naughton. We are going to have an awesome forward-line for a long time if we could sort the coaching out.
  • Liam Jones....thanks for coming home. You saved us in the first half. A seriously important player for us but needs help urgently.
I'm just glad that the players rallied after half time and we were able to make Marcus's milestone game a memorable one.

And kudos to Bullies supporters for turning up last night. 40k is a respectable crowd given that the Hawks supporters didn't turn up in good numbers.
Maybe it was the colour difference that made it obvious to the eye but there were a decent amount of Hawks fans. Not 10k or anything but maybe 5k.
 
I don't understand how we can pay for Gold Reserve seats and be surrounded by mouthy, obnoxious Hawks supporters at our home game!?! Just about ruined the night for me. I'm going to write to the club and let them know that if I want to sit in the Hawthorn Cheer Squad I don't have to pay many hundreds a year per seat.

Other than that....brilliant to win for our captain.
Where is your seat?
 
Naughton is never going to be coached to not fly for the ball. It’s not going to happen.

It’s all about the proper spacing between the forwards and added fitness for Marra.

Marra has made great strides in running out games and as he continues to build his fitness base he’s going to spend more time up the ground and away from Naughton.

Much like McKay and Curnow are doing currently.
 
Umpires were allowing front on contact and arm chops in marking contests (Sicily) all day.

It does my head in when compared to the soft free kicks Charlie Curnow gets week in week out.

Why we let our defenders rotate on to Mitchell Lewis is a mystery to me. Play Liam Jones on him and he is limited in his impact considerably.

I think if we want Jones to play as an intercept type then we need to play Gardiner as the other lock down defender.
Spot on, it was at about the third time that Sicily blatantly arm-chopped and no f***ks were given, that I thought there must’ve been some weird rule reversal regarding that.

It ain’t a hard one to adjudicate.
 
We need to find a new inside bull whether it be via draft or trade. Libba and treloar are 30 plus and whilst Daniel played well on the outside, we got beaten up when he was around the stoppages.

I’m not too worried we always seem to find inside mids with ease but it’s certainly a main list management objective.
We have two 1st round picks at the draft. I hope we use both of these picks to address the midfield for the future.
With our 2nd round pick off brissie we need to address our KPD.
Keathy is dropping off the cliff fast, and Gardner not beating him out for the best 22 is concerning.

L Jones is fantastic, absolutely brillant pick up but he is also over 30 and he is shouldering a big load.
Hopefully Sammy can work a trade in to help Liam out in the off season.
 

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So, was there a clamp-down on throwing or did we get away with them all? 😀

1 throwing free each but I can say in all honesty, Hawks did it more than we may have.

The worst of the lot was missed, maybe the ump was blindsided (or just plain blind) but a Hawks defender got tackled , full 360 and then “handballed” with the same arm that was holding the ball when he tried to stand up in the tackle. There was also one mighty scoop off the ground that the Hawks got away with too.

But nope, only the Bulldogs do it.

Umpiring was pretty bad last night overall, there were at least 2 bounces that looked outside of the ruck area that completely favoured the Hawks (Timmy couldn’t even compete) and it was play on. At least they were consistent and allowed us one in the last quarter.
 
We were flat but will always take a 29 point win, that’s all we have to do at this stage, win ugly. That’s the best team hawks have put out this season, they won’t win many but they have a crack and will scare a few good sides

AJ is a jet, those are hugeeeee pressure numbers for a player that doesn’t play in the guts, he will never get dropped when he’s doing that. He’s building nicely I just love him, his goal was a nice moment the crowd was so excited when he went near it
 
Bont and English were down on their output for the year - and let's be honest in large part of our season so far was their contribution (we would have lost by 3 or 4 more goal to the Saints if it wasn't for English!) so even though the final margin was probably a goal or two less than what we would have hoped for pre-game, in some ways the other 20 players other than English and Bont actually exceeded expectations.

Which happens when a team that dominated the stoppages and contested ball actually loses it.

The forward line played well with Naughton playing an excellent game and we've become accostimed to it that it's almost blase. His ability to add more tricks to the marking-only player he was 2019-20ish shows great self-investment to develop and improve his game.

Not quite thinking Jones is a gun in defence like others but he was very good and I think O'Brien and Keath cop a lot of stick, especially as they both were exposed by the fact we kept losing it out of the middle in the 1st half (every key defender looks bad when they can keep pumping it in). We equalise the stoppage game in the 2nd half and all of our sudden our key defensive unit can shut the game down when they can actually defend the full length of the ground.

Williams is good when he uses his size on the wing to get free, and is confident to kick long now that we have three big targets and two proper small forwards down there. Always hard to back up from last week but he's the type of player who always plays well the more simple he keeps his game.

And strangely, one of the worst games I have seen Macrae for a while. He didn't make any out and out clangers, so it has sort of gone unnoticed, but he accumulate a bunch of poor little decisions consistently throughout the game - shallow entries I50 when the deeper one was better, handballs to players in no less of pressure than he was, kicking long when they had an extra tall in the pack so he had to switch it etc. Not sure what was up with Macrae but it's clear through 7 games he's no longer the three-season All Australian midfielder he once was and if we want to go deep in finals he has to find it, surely.
 
Lobb receives way too much criticism on here. Did people think we were recruiting Buddy Franklin? He kicks his goal or 2 a game & is a very handy relief ruck. Has his limitations, but is playing his role.
Agree, I personally didn’t want him but he’s performed to what we expected really. Allows English to spend more time behind the ball intercepting, takes a tall away from Naughton/JUH and kicks a goal a game. Third in our goalkicking, he’s not perfect but he’s helped how we function
 
Agree on everything you've written here except for your dissing of Gardner - he was good today and his decision making and disposal is much improved. He may still have a few things to work on, but he is an undeniably solid defender with a great spoil and excellent closing speed, and started to take interept marks last year. Not to mention his disposal has improved markedly. Infinitely better than Keath anyway, and if it wasn't for his injury he would have been in the side already. Would be surprised if he's not in this week, match-ups permitting.
I'm talking about a player that gets us closer to really competing in finals again. Not one that fills a spot better than the current iteration of Alex keath.

Ryan Gardner might do a fine job of being the latter. It's not the former though. He still makes mind nubbingly s**t decisions a lot of the time. Same with Jones and keath.
 
If our key defenders could intercept and use the ball as well as people want them to, they'd be the best key defenders in the league, which guess what, it's a salary cap system, that's impossible.

Also, Sicily can use the ball and intercept, and didn't play awful by any stretch. But Naughton also outdid him in several marking contests. And hevs getting paid more than any of our key defenders. I bet there's Hawks fans that would have love to have trades some of Sicily's ball use for more strength against Naughton.

Keath does some silly stuff but at least he actually looks to take the game on and take advantage of an open forward line from time to time. For example, Bruce didn't make a heap of errors before his injury, but he basically only looked to move the ball sideways or take the obvious kicks due to his nervousness in a new position, which actually really hampered our ability to move the ball quickly and into an open forward line. Yet Keath comes in for criticism that Bruce's ball use out of defence never did this season so far.
 
I find the attitude of supporters of the ‘big clubs’ an interesting case study. When they’re not going well there’s a natural tendency to look for comfort in historical cliches and rhetoric around previously unsuccessful and struggling clubs. It’s a mindset of ‘well we’re ordinary but we still own a natural position in the power hierarchy above Footscray irrespective of how bad we are’. As time has gone on and we’ve elevated ourselves above the historical struggles and had the shackles released, there’s an almost desperate reaction from your Essendon, Hawthorn, Carlton, Richmond fans to cling onto the past. You see it in the regular attacks. ‘The Dogs get more free kicks’. ‘The Dogs throw it’. ‘The Dogs were gifted their flag’. Absolute garbage. You then see supporters like The Dees and St Kilda who win a few games and feel they need to try and put distance between themselves and the ‘historical Dogs’. Sorry for the long rant but I really do find the whole thing quite fascinating from a human perspective.


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Just putting it out there, Bont obviously was a bit quieter yesterday and maybe it's a mixture of the high standard he sets himself, the occasion and honestly how good Hawthorn were in the middle, but the fact that we didn't have Libba, had Bont play the game that he did and still won by 5 goals was pleasing.
 

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