Autopsy The Grand Final - Take it apart here

[badgrill]

You weren't in bay M9 were you? Had two Hawks fans sitting next to me. Probably the only two Hawks supporters in that bay. One of them shouted out f**k after every Sydney goal. They stormed off as soon as Mal kicked the winning goal.

Like they would've been the only 2 doing that.

That was me in my lounge room!

 

[Hauker]

In hindsight I believe the poor start to the season in terms of win / loss meant we were unable to manage players loads as effectively as we would have liked. Hopefully we receive an easier start to the 2013 fixture, this would help build confidence and momentum for the club.
Wishful thinking though, top 4 from this year in the first 6 weeks is a certainty.

 

[Roger Rogerson]

One positive aspect of the GF which has been overlooked is how good Buddy's discipline was not giving away his usually undisciplined free kicks. Gives me hope that he can actually concentrate well enough to improve his goalkicking.

 

[HAWKS HEROES]

wind played havoc it did take the ball a few times to help us miss great game bar for losing wonder if we kicked punt road first and ended city end would it be any different ??

 

[The BIG X]

Lets try it - we cant do any worse

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

Don't troll here.

 

[HAWKS HEROES]

Maybe if the Hawks realise that the game is won by the end of the 4th quarter and not the first, they might get a chance to stand on that dais again? it looked like the Hawks were too busy working out their GF poses and not playing the game.. hmmm.. 21-10 Hawks favour? yep.. disadvantage to the Hawks.. robbed i tells ya. You only need to witness that last quarter who wanted that cup more. Till the dying seconds the Swans were still ferocious.. nuff said..

they hawks did not take you for granted !!!! they were not cocky fool are you if you thought that ! the wind played havoc for all it was in Peter Knights words a game of inches ! your comment is disrespectful in my books to both teams !
the umpiring did not lose us the game but it was bad when i see high tackle after high tackle and no free for them let alone other stuff makes my blood boil as i said that did not lose us the game so do not think for one second i am blaming that !!!

 

[HAWKS HEROES]

i wonder if sav was on for whole game and ellis sub would it be any different , will never know i guess that is a what if,
i think they will learn from it they will come out stronger next year .

 

[Collins-Langford-Ayres]

In hindsight I believe the poor start to the season in terms of win / loss meant we were unable to manage players loads as effectively as we would have liked. Hopefully we receive an easier start to the 2013 fixture, this would help build confidence and momentum for the club.
Wishful thinking though, top 4 from this year in the first 6 weeks is a certainty.

Agree that Clarko may have been reluctant to manage workloads but looking at our percentage we belted a lot of teams and certainly could have managed workloads better, particularly Rough's.

Poor coaching and selection committee decision-making for mine.

 

[rocket9]

It happened in the Adelaide game too where I guess it's been dubbed "the slingshot". We let both teams rebound too easily. I think one way that Clarko could have slowed/stopped that is with the Clarko's Cluster. It would have bottled them right up. Both teams flooded our forward line yet we didn't return the favour and they scored to easily. I think we were also a small "cool in a crisis" defender short (Guerra). He really steadied the backline in the last game against Sydney. Accuracy hurt too.

 

[lickmerocks]

• Roughead played with big ankle injury and was plodding
• We lost Guerra at the wrong time
• We lost White x at the wrong time
• We lost Lewis at the wrong time (had no major influence in Prelim or GF after a great year)
• We lost Young at the wrong time
• Hodge struggled all year with body and then got crook at the wrong time
• Ellis basically was just making up numbers as his body was shot

Put all those things together along with terrible goal kicking and you lose a Grand Final.
Not sure how else to sum it up really.

 

[Cynic]

• Roughead played with big ankle injury and was plodding
• We lost Guerra at the wrong time
• We lost White x at the wrong time
• We lost Lewis at the wrong time (had no major influence in Prelim or GF after a great year)
• We lost Young at the wrong time
• Hodge struggled all year with body and then got crook at the wrong time
• Ellis basically was just making up numbers as his body was shot

Put all those things together along with terrible goal kicking and you lose a Grand Final.
Not sure how else to sum it up really.

We lost

 

[Mighty P]

• Roughead played with big ankle injury and was plodding
• We lost Guerra at the wrong time
• We lost White x at the wrong time
• We lost Lewis at the wrong time (had no major influence in Prelim or GF after a great year)
• We lost Young at the wrong time
• Hodge struggled all year with body and then got crook at the wrong time
• Ellis basically was just making up numbers as his body was shot

Put all those things together along with terrible goal kicking and you lose a Grand Final.
Not sure how else to sum it up really.

That's all fine and great, but it doesn't explain how and why both Adelaide and Sydney cut through our middle like butter, going the slingshot route, and if not the slingshot the ease in which they went from defence to attack that converted into goals. That's what I want to know.

 

[Agent Smith]

• Roughead played with big ankle injury and was plodding
• We lost Guerra at the wrong time
• We lost White x at the wrong time
• We lost Lewis at the wrong time (had no major influence in Prelim or GF after a great year)
• We lost Young at the wrong time
• Hodge struggled all year with body and then got crook at the wrong time
• Ellis basically was just making up numbers as his body was shot

Put all those things together along with terrible goal kicking and you lose a Grand Final.
Not sure how else to sum it up really.

Rumour has it, Sydney had a few injuries to some of its 'borderline' players as well.

 

[quinnstar]

Apologies guys if I've insulted anyone.. Was a great game and very similar to the game at the SCG.. Albeit didn't have the same prize on offer but it was for first place. I think sometimes it's better to be beaten by more than 20 than by 10, or in our case in '06 - 1 point. Then we wouldn't go through as much of this what if scenario..

Anyway, two out of two cracking games.. Can see many more to come.

We're all well aware of what the Hawks are capable of, so good luck for next year!

 

[Watsclarkosmob]

Murphy plays we win in my opinion.

 

[HAWKS HEROES]

Apologies guys if I've insulted anyone.. Was a great game and very similar to the game at the SCG.. Albeit didn't have the same prize on offer but it was for first place. I think sometimes it's better to be beaten by more than 20 than by 10, or in our case in '06 - 1 point. Then we wouldn't go through as much of this what if scenario..

Anyway, two out of two cracking games.. Can see many more to come.

We're all well aware of what the Hawks are capable of, so good luck for next year!

agree was a great game could have gone either way there was a scoring end which is unusual at the G going by what sen said sunday morning , i wonder [yes a what if] if we kicked ount road end first up would the result be different its possible but we will never know but i am actually contemplating still getting a copy even though we lost

 

[db swannie]

That's all fine and great, but it doesn't explain how and why both Adelaide and Sydney cut through our middle like butter, going the slingshot route, and if not the slingshot the ease in which they went from defence to attack that converted into goals. That's what I want to know.

I think this is one of the biggest issues that Clarkson will look at over the pre-season. In the prelim it became obvious that Hawks were looking vulnerable on the fast break down the centre, the "slingshot" or whatever the term they've come up with. Why exactly this is (and why Clarkson was unable to counteract this) will be mulled over I'm sure.

 

[Baz_hawk]

The break is what hurt us the most. I also think many are brushing aside just how important Whitecross was to our game plan. He was consistently playing a role week in week out and I really did feel that in the 2 games after he went down we were exposed in this area. His ability has been to negate an opponent whilst hurting them the other way and we didn't really have anyone who filled his boots after he went down. The Collingwood game can be seen as an exception however I feel our game plan is very strong against the Pies. Guerra is another big loss who we sorely missed. He's one of our best kicks, if not the best so with the wind swirling he'd have been handy with ball in hand. Obviously we had a number of players who were stuffed also (as did Sydney) and I think selection was poor. Murphy should have played in my opinion, was one of our best against Adelaide when we were playing some absolute rubbish footy he did a number of things that were team lifting.

On the day the second quarter was just horrible, but our conversion early really set the game up. I will be honest and say after we wasted a number of easy chances in the first term I knew we would lose. Sydney are a great side and the signs pointed to another Adelaide like game by us. Good sides make you pay and that's what happened.

We learn a lot from it and move onto next year and hopefully can go one step further.

 

[HAWKS HEROES]

yes Missed Whitey for sure and Goo felt for them both as they played a huge part in us getting there

 

[Paul007]

Is our midfield crap? I don't mean Mitch, Sewell or Lewis but our outside runners and our ruck? I think lack of an elite ruckman hurts us sometimes and that we really miss the run/space that Crawford and Bateman could create.

 

[seysearles]

That's all fine and great, but it doesn't explain how and why both Adelaide and Sydney cut through our middle like butter, going the slingshot route, and if not the slingshot the ease in which they went from defence to attack that converted into goals. That's what I want to know.

We pushed up the ground too far and did not have the men back or the pace to account for their slingshots out of defence. The amount of times they rebounded and were able to spot up completely open players was ridiculous. We had completely over committed. Why we couldn't have kept a few more guys deep is beyond me. When they inevitably recovered possession in their backline they immediately burst out of defence whereas we were spent from the past 3mins of relentless (and futile) attacking. It was bad (arrogant) coaching if you ask me. The presumption being that we could just bulldoze our way to goal.

 

[Jack Gun Cyril Stun]

It

We pushed up the ground too far and did not have the men back or the pace to account for their slingshots out of defence. The amount of times they rebounded and were able to spot up completely open players was ridiculous. We had completely over committed. Why we couldn't have kept a few more guys deep is beyond me. When they inevitably recovered possession in their backline they immediately burst out of defence whereas we were spent from the past 3mins of relentless (and futile) attacking. It was bad (arrogant) coaching if you ask me. The presumption being that we could just bulldoze our way to goal.

It actually had a lot of similarities to the 2010 H&A game at the G vs Sydney where they did a very similar thing. We won by 1 or 2 pts i think thanks to Carl Peterson taking a hanger in the goalsquare but they clogged up our fwd line and we had to work so hard for every goal. They got theirs off the fast rebound into an open 50 quite a few times. I am not sure it was arrogant coaching in the GF, perhaps just some better prep in the lead up seeing this had happened to us a few times this year. When we are going forward it is crucial to lower our vision and hit targets, not bomb away. The SWans are masters of the flood and rebound and this was part of why they dominated Crows (who incidentally couldnt kick straight in the Qual Final either) and the Pies more than we did.

But ultimately despite all our missies on goal and some senior players struggling, we cant let a side kick 8 goals to none for an extended period and expect to win a flag. Sydney three times this year ran amok against us in all 3 games at different stages for over a quarter exploiting our lack of general defensive abilities as a team structurally and one on one. (The 2nd half in Launy, the first 40 mins at SCG and 2nd / early 3rd quarter last week. Geelong did same when we gave them a 9 goal headstart).

We just have to learn to slow the game down when its not going our way and play some defensive stop/ start footy and not roll the dice as much when a team has kicked 2 or 3 in a row. Bigger bodies, more preseasons and now Brian Lake should help.

If we could play that 2nd quarter again .....sigh !!!

 

[Paul007]

Highlight package showing all of our goals is shocking, we go from running rampant at the end of the 1st qtr then it cuts to our next goal, 10 minute mark of the 3rd when Hale gets a free kick. Bewildering and depressing.

 

[hawks realist]

Apologies guys if I've insulted anyone.. Was a great game and very similar to the game at the SCG.. Albeit didn't have the same prize on offer but it was for first place. I think sometimes it's better to be beaten by more than 20 than by 10, or in our case in '06 - 1 point. Then we wouldn't go through as much of this what if scenario..

Anyway, two out of two cracking games.. Can see many more to come.

We're all well aware of what the Hawks are capable of, so good luck for next year!

the quoted post above of yours was spot on and i wasn't insulted in any way.The team who wanted it more and were willing to fight to the end got the win.