Hawthorn have lost their first five games. The club has not done that since 1970.
They were so far below par against Gold Coast Saturday that their coach Sam Mitchell was fuming post match.
Jack Ginnivan has been a reasonable performer at Hawthorn after crossing from Collingwood.AFL Photos
“That’s just a completely unacceptable way to play,and we should be past games like that,” Mitchell said.
The Hawks could not win the ball,and on the rare occasions they had it (they lost the disposal count by 94),they gave it away too easily with skill errors.
The third season under Mitchell was always going to be the toughest in the cycle;the task of competing made even more difficult when they failed to land trade targets Ben McKay and Liam Henry and then had injuries to Will Day,Luke Breust,Nick Watson,Mitch Lewis,Changkuoth Jiath and James Blanck.
But the heat is rising as they search for a win,and Jarryd Roughead’s job of attracting talent from other clubs is becoming harder with each poor loss. The Hawks have gained a pass with big quarters against Collingwood and Geelong giving them a story to tell,but the performance against Gold Coast was a major setback.
A huge match awaits against North Melbourne next Sunday as both teams look to break their duck. For Hawthorn,the game is a must-win. Win and anything could happen. Don’t forget,they did win the flag in 1971.
Will Bevo’s band play on with new sound or revert to old classics?
If Luke Beveridge were a musician he would confound fans.
There is no way he would play the old hits to satisfy their want to sing along to familiar tunes and relive their glory days. He knows that only leads to a gradual yet inevitable decline.
The Western Bulldogs look dejected after a loss during the round 5 match against the Essendon Bombers.Getty Images
Beveridge would be pushing into new frontiers,filling up half the set list with songs from the new album,rebranding himself as LB and hoping he can add new fans without losing the old ones. It’s an attitude to admire.
Currently,,he must feel however like he’s football’s version of Bob Dylan going electric.
Confusion abounds as the Bulldogs try to explain that they want to compete hard for a premiership in 2024 while building a deep and balanced list that keeps generating contending teams.
Jack Macrae’s future will be intriguing as he fights for his spot in 2024.AFL Photos
Making bona fide AFL players and previous All-Australians such as Jack Macrae,Caleb Daniel (both also premiership players) and Bailey Dale fight for spots on the set list is a tough call because all are good enough,can find the ball and are popular internally and externally.
But opponents have been able to exploit Macrae’s leg speed on turnovers (accumulators have fallen out of favour at many clubs lately),while Dale’s kicking has been below the level he set when he was selected All-Australian.
Neither are the same players they were in 2021. And they probably won’t ever return to that level. No coach would ever say that,especially one as protective of his players as Beveridge. But observers from other clubs know that.
It’s harder to find reasons to keep a player with the ball-handling skills and kicking ability of Daniel out.
Western Bulldogs defender Caleb Daniel could attract rival club interest,despite being contracted until the end of 2026.
However,with Nick Coffield injured and Liam Jones forced into more defensive roles because Alex Keath and Ryan Gardner are out,the Bulldogs’ marking power in the backline has been reduced.
This has clearly made them nervous about having Daniel freewheeling in defence.
But he is too good to be out of the team,so they must find a new way to arrange his game because,on stage,he sets a tempo for the Bulldogs that is hard to replace.
It’s also draining being required to explain,in season,why experienced players are battling to get a game. But this has become all too common at the Bulldogs under Beveridge.
There has been no malicious intent,but the best clubs tend to move stalwart players at the end of seasons rather than mid-season. A strong football manager plays an important role as a sounding board in managing such situations,which is why Matthew Egan’s appointment in that role was overdue and welcomed.
Results,of course,will be the ultimate judge of selection decisions,and Beveridge knows that.
But the premiership coach,who can polarise opinion,has been prepared to live or die by these decisions. So,when his time to depart the kennel eventually comes,no one at the club will be able to reasonably accuse him of running the Bulldogs’ list into the ground.
Beveridge’s present contract is due to expire at the end of 2025 – 11 seasons after he arrived – and he has his eyes on both now and the future. He is not focusing on the past,and nor,does it seem,are the players concerned.
The premiership coach is not sitting on his hands hoping for a different result from the same team.AFL Photos
The other difficulty right now for the Bulldogs’ coaching staff as they prepare to pick a team to beat St Kilda on Thursday night and contend for a flag later in 2024 is that the foundation of the list remains strong. However,the plethora of the list’s highly rated talls are in the incubator rather than capable of having an immediate impact.
Sam Darcy will be a star,but he can still be out-bodied at ruck contests,which leads to opposition goals,as happened in the third quarter of Friday night’s game.
The arrival of Jordan Croft as a father-son draft selection and the decision to recruit a tall defender,Jedd Busslinger,in the 2022 national draft – which had few midfield options available at that time – along with Darcy in 2021 and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan in 2020 meant the club did not,until Ryley Sanders arrived this season,added young draftees to their list who were likely to have an immediate an impact.
And Sanders is still learning what to do and where to be when he doesn’t have the ball.
Those names give Bulldogs fans plenty to look forward to,but apart from Ugle-Hagan they won’t be the difference between winning or losing against the Saints.
The Bulldogs didn’t help themselves,of course,by recruiting Rory Lobb,who is now languishing in the VFL. Every club has a mulligan.
Perhaps they could consider whether Aaron Naughton – who is contracted until 2032 – could yield enough return to stack the midfield with more raw talent. That’s not a question for today,however.
The Bulldogs of 2024 are not the same as their teams of 2021,2022,nor 2023,all of whom failed to reach the top four.
Let’s face it,the brilliant encore at the end of 2021 when the Bulldogs went from fifth to a grand final under all sorts of adversity has delayed many of the questions about their capability and direction.
It’s often forgotten when questions are posed about what has happened to the Dogs since 2021 that Josh Dunkley left at the end of 2022 and Bailey Smith failed to continue the form he showed during that year’s finals series. The knee injury he suffered pre-Christmas when poised to get back to his best has made them much weaker than they were when they lost the 2021 grand final.
The Bulldogs have a choice:return to their venerated crowd-pleasers or expose fans to a new contemporary style based on pace and excitement.
In the best scenario,they should be compared to the Giants and the Blues of early last season as they adjust on the run and search for the DNA that can make them a genuine threat. In the worst,the fans will turn on them and no one will be listening when they sing the Times they are A-changin’.
Not necessarily blue skies ahead for Blues
The Crows kicked accurately. The Blues lost Adam Saad and Mitch McGovern to injury after losing Adam Cerra pre-game. But no one at Carlton could say with a straight face they were unlucky to lose to Adelaide.
The result was a reminder that seasons can turn quickly. Carlton have gone from 4-0 with Sam Walsh returning to 4-1 with matches against the Giants,Geelong,Collingwood,Melbourne and Sydney in the next five rounds and injuries to key players.
Jack Martin and Jesse Motlop’s absence denies the Blues much-needed penetration at ground level inside 50 metres. They did not have much flow in their game either with the Crows use of handball to create overlap better than Carlton who struggled to defend the moving ball.
A hamstring injury is likely to keep speedster Adam Saad sidelined.Getty
Although Marc Pittonet’s selection helped their stoppage game,they were top-heavy inside their forward 50m,with Tom De Koning having next to no impact. A more balanced team is needed to defeat the Giants,who also have injury concerns.
Carlton must also quickly get to the bottom of the hamstring epidemic. Martin,Motlop,Cerra,McGovern and Saad have all experienced soft-tissue injuries in relatively quick succession.
What was heartening was that they played better in defeat than they did in victory a week earlier. They will need to build on that performance to stay near the top at the mid-season point because the challenges are looming.
And with it comes the question:Are Carlton a genuine top-four team? We are about to find out.
Bad bounce recall needs reconsideration
It might be pedantic,but the seconds of game time lost whenever a centre bounce is recalled is not acceptable in an era when we are constantly reminded that the seconds count. The final quarter of Carlton v Adelaide went two seconds shorter than it should have because the first bounce was recalled. Either retain the bounce and live with it or ball it up.
And while we are on pedantic issues,are we all comfortable with a grand final interrupted by lightning after half-time that does not get restarted within the hour being decided by the team that is in front at that point? What if the margin is less than a goal?
It’s as unlikely to occur as lightning striking twice,but given we saw what happened in a home and away match on Easter Monday,the AFL executive and AFL Commission should turn their mind to the question now rather than be hit by a storm of controversy if the unlikely ever were to happen.
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