Warning: for those with an aversion to boxes or ticking, there’s a lot of hypothetical box ticking in the post that follows.
Despite the Tassie factor, I believe that if we play to our potential we’re every chance to beat an under-strength Hawks this week, and in the process to tick the “back-to-back wins” box for the first time since June 2017. If we do get up, then at the same time we’d also be ticking the “win outside of Melbourne and the Gold Coast” box for the first time in three years, and for only the second time under Bolton’s reign (no doubt most of us will recall the glorious but ugly 4 point win over the Dockers in Perth in April 2016).
Anyway, even if we can’t quite manage a win against the Hawks, as a bare minimum I’m hoping that we’ll be able to tick the “competitive after a win” box. I realise that this particular box might not get the pulse racing, but in all seriousness I think it’s crucial, because in the week immediately following our last 3 wins (dating back to round 22 in 2017), we’ve lost to the staggering aggregate tune of 294 points - that is, after our last 3 wins, we went on to lose the very next week by 81 points, 109 points, and 104 points respectively. What this sobering pattern suggests to me is that over the past 22 months, we’ve struggled so damned hard to achieve a win that having finally done so we’ve collapsed in a collective psychological heap the very next game. Even if we lose against the Hawks then, as long as we start switched on and we remain competitive throughout then it’s another meaningful sign of progress, in a season where (as Bolts is always reminding us) our win-loss ratio is important, but not all important.