Analysis Hawthorn rebuild: are they tanking?

[nickrebellious]

In a fair fixture the bottom 6 of 2023 play each other twice in 2024. So yes we should have 2 games against West Coast, North, Gold Coast, Freo, and Richmond.

I'd be hoping for 2 games against Brisbane or Collingwood over some of those. We've been Gold Coast and Fremantles bunnies lately.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

North will play finals again before Hawthorn, Essendon, Richmond and Geelong. You can lock that in

Were you drunk when you posted this?

 

[Caligo]

Were you drunk when you posted this?

That post was peak Elmer.

 

[nelk boys]

Were you drunk when you posted this?

He's becoming effective at baiting. Can't argue that

 

[James Colorado]

I'd be hoping for 2 games against Brisbane or Collingwood over some of those. We've been Gold Coast and Fremantles bunnies lately.

I'm expecting neither GCS nor Fremantle to be bottom 6 next year.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

He's becoming effective at baiting. Can't argue that

What is it about Carlton posters and Hawthorn.

 

[Caligo]

What is it about Carlton posters and Hawthorn.

Not sure. It has been an extremely long time since Carlton and Hawthorn were rivals.

 

[peetoo]

We need a spoon 2024 poll,so the intellectual power of bigfooty can give is a certainty to not come last

 

[Jhye Clark 13]

No one’s in here taking the piss out of my comments about our midfield anymore?

Funny that.

I think I was the only opposition supporter that wasn't. I've said all along that Hawthorn are building something special and it won't take long before you rise again.

I'm a huge fan of Ward particularly. He'll blossom soon.

 

[Caligo]

I think I was the only opposition supporter that wasn't. I've said all along that Hawthorn are building something special and it won't take long before you rise again.

I'm a huge fan of Ward particularly. He'll blossom soon.

Promising signs in the midfield. Still big concerns about our key posts though.

 

[NetworkNerd]

Were you drunk when you posted this?

Carlton already have the flag according to his bay 13 threads. So def getting on the turps early

 

[Bugs1977]

Were you drunk when you posted this?

Maybe he meant AFLW

 

[naysayer]

Maybe he meant AFLW

I wouldn't mock him. Carlton supporters have a keen eye for what makes a real finals team, I always trust their judgement.

 

[HairyO]

In a fair fixture the bottom 6 of 2023 play each other twice in 2024. So yes we should have 2 games against West Coast, North, Gold Coast, Freo, and Richmond.

AFL will never make anything truly fair. $$$ come first.

 

[Footy Smarts]

They're clearly going into games trying to win them and have some really good young players. I don't think you can fault Mitchell's approach after being handed a mess of a list. But I think everyone's getting a bit ahead of themselves with their future.

They had an amazing run with form and fitness of their best players this year. Probably the best in the league. And they finished 2 games and over 10% below 15th.

For every very good performance (eg Collingwood) there were multiple stinkers.

I don't really see them being much different to North. Some really talented kids whose performance is very inconsistent. They just had a much better run with injury and had a few senior players playing better footy making them a few goal better team this year. There's no reason why that can't reverse next year. But the consensus view seems to be that North are stuffed while Hawthorn will be pushing for finals next year.

 

[Joao]

Reckon they tried early in the season but once they realised how bad North and West Coast are, they gave up.

 

[SSSSSS]

Not sure. It has been an extremely long time since Carlton and Hawthorn were rivals.

I thought we beat them for about 12-13 years in a row at some point? Was it from 2005-2019ish that we had a streak over them?

Can't be arsed to actually check. I haven't really had any strong feelings about Carlton for a long time. In the same bucket with the Saints and the Dogs for me.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

They're clearly going into games trying to win them and have some really good young players. I don't think you can fault Mitchell's approach after being handed a mess of a list. But I think everyone's getting a bit ahead of themselves with their future.

They had an amazing run with form and fitness of their best players this year. Probably the best in the league. And they finished 2 games and over 10% below 15th.

For every very good performance (eg Collingwood) there were multiple stinkers.

I don't really see them being much different to North. Some really talented kids whose performance is very inconsistent. They just had a much better run with injury and had a few senior players playing better footy making them a few goal better team this year. There's no reason why that can't reverse next year. But the consensus view seems to be that North are stuffed while Hawthorn will be pushing for finals next year.

Majority of the stinkers came in the first half of the year, which was expected. We'd removed so much experience from the middle(Tom, JOM and Shiels) and handed the reigns to Day, Newcombe, Worpel and Nash.
It was a massive shift.

We also didn't have our best forward(Lewis) for the first third of the season, which had a huge impact on the side, and the ball whizzing straight back over their head. Ferg Greene played as our key forward most weeks, and he's 189cm.

The footy dept head, Rob McCartney said in the preseason that we'd not be as bad as people were suggesting("they won't win a game!"), that they had great faith in the youngsters on the list picking up the slack, that it would likely take a bit for the new midfield to gel and find their way together and that in the second half of the year Hawthorn would take some teams by surprise and play a much better brand of football.

He looks like nostradamus.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

I think I was the only opposition supporter that wasn't. I've said all along that Hawthorn are building something special and it won't take long before you rise again.

I'm a huge fan of Ward particularly. He'll blossom soon.

Ward is very much a no-fuss mid. Hasn't spent too much time on the inside yet, but I think he has the scope to be a 30 disp each week type who uses the ball particularly well on the outside.

 

[smish]

Ward is very much a no-fuss mid. Hasn't spent too much time on the inside yet, but I think he has the scope to be a 30 disp each week type who uses the ball particularly well on the outside.

Gave AA wing J. Dacios a bath too.

 

[TheFourPillars]

Gave AA wing J. Dacios a bath too.

Combination of him and sidebottom

 

[Caligo]

This is why I didn't want Henry. He just would have taken wing minutes away from Ward and other youngsters that need space to grow.

 

[Guardian Hawk]

They're clearly going into games trying to win them and have some really good young players. I don't think you can fault Mitchell's approach after being handed a mess of a list. But I think everyone's getting a bit ahead of themselves with their future.

They had an amazing run with form and fitness of their best players this year. Probably the best in the league. And they finished 2 games and over 10% below 15th.

For every very good performance (eg Collingwood) there were multiple stinkers.

I don't really see them being much different to North. Some really talented kids whose performance is very inconsistent. They just had a much better run with injury and had a few senior players playing better footy making them a few goal better team this year. There's no reason why that can't reverse next year. But the consensus view seems to be that North are stuffed while Hawthorn will be pushing for finals next year.

I can definitely agree with some of your post - we had a decent injury run, played some absolute stinkers and still require lots of improvement before we will necessarily make finals (and progressions is not always linear).

I can't however agree that we are pretty much the same as North - or that a slightly better injury run is the only difference between the sides. North added heaps of experience last off season and Hawthorn significantly cut theirs. Every off season Hawthorn have been backed for the spoon on here and North have been tipped to 'fly past'. But Hawthorn have continued to finish higher for 15 years running now. Before you say it is only 1 spot difference, North won less than half as many games as Hawthorn (with a more experienced team). Hell, Hawthorn won 6 games since Round 10. You have to go back 3 seasons to find North's 6th last win.

You also mention that Hawthorn have similar good performances and similar inconsistency to North. But at their best, Hawthorn have beaten multiple top 4 teams every season, and I suspect will have beaten the eventual premiers both this year and last. For North, since the wheels fell off 4 seasons ago (Round 3, 2020), they've won once against a team higher than 13th (against a cooked and ridiculously inaccurate Richmond by 4 points in 2022). Other than that, their 'best' has rarely troubled and never beaten a top 12 team.

In fact, North have won just 10 of their last 82 games - which is easily the worst 4 year stretch of any team in AFL history. As bas as Hawthorn have been, we have still won 11 of our last 30 games. That's right, more wins from 50+ less matches. Right now, it's not very close at all.

Something miraculous might finally happen for North this off season but right now the gap between the 2 sides is significant.

 

[Caligo]

They had an amazing run with form and fitness of their best players this year. Probably the best in the league. And they finished 2 games and over 10% below 15th.

Wait, what? Amazing run of form and fitness? you can chart the success of the club in 2023 almost entirely bases on four main players being on the field. When Lewis, Nuke, Sicily and Day were healthy and playing you saw good Hawthorn performances. When more than one of them was missing or hurt you saw poor performance.

We rely on those guys more than other clubs, but saying we had an amazing run of fitness simply isn't the case. Similarly our form was up and down being the youngest team in the league and the youngest midfield in living memory.

The narrative you are trying to run that we were just lucky and that our beltings of both the minor premier and runner up don't count is incredibly transparent.

If anything, we were unlucky. Losing our best player to 4 weeks of suspensions for less than what Brad Close did (how many weeks did he get?) is about as unlucky as you can be.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

The club did expect to have more injuries or niggles that would mean players like Hustwaite and Stephens got games in the middle early in the year, but as it turned out Day, Newcombe, Nash and Worpel all were quite durable throughout the year.