The Roar
The Roar

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The champs are exposed, but can anyone finish them off?

23rd August, 2016
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(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Expert
23rd August, 2016
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For all of the close wins, the doubts, and the countless question marks, Hawthorn look set to enter September in as good a nick as they have in their premiership run. Attention is rightly on the challengers, and you’d reckon that’s just the way the Hawks like it.(Click to Tweet)

If Jonathon Ceglar hadn’t tragically ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee last Friday, Hawthorn would have been set to enter the finals series with just one name of immediate value on their injury list: Jarryd Roughead.

With Ben Stratton’s pectoral muscle expected to heal in time for week one of the finals, and with all due respect to 2014 draft pick 49 Teia Miles, Hawthorn will have their full 2016 playing list available.

Compare that to North Melbourne. Or to West Coast. Or the Western Bulldogs. Indeed, compare Hawthorn’s injury list to the rest of the 2016 AFL finalists; only the Giants can claim a similarly clean bill of health.

This isn’t how it is supposed to be. The grizzled veterans of Hawthorn should be limping to the line, holding on to the last vestige of their dynasty against any number of the younger teams nipping at their heels. Instead, we enter the final week of the season with the Hawks one win against a weakened opponent away from a sixth-straight top-four finish.

Yet, Hawthorn have drifted to the fifth line on the premiership ticket, behind the more fashionable choices of the 2016 season. There are reasons to remain alert at the prospect of Fourthorn, but equally, the signs of weakness are there for all to see.

Health matters, a lot
We’ve talked about this ad nauseam in 2016: in a year where one win separates first from seventh, and thus every spot in the eight bar eighth is still up in the air, being healthy is going to matter more than usual. Four weeks ago I ranked Hawthorn fifth on my Totally Subjective Power Ranking of team injury lists. They are now clearly ranked number one.

The loss of Ceglar is important, but not insurmountable. Indeed, in Ben McEvoy, the Hawks have one of those types of ruckmen who can shoulder a mountainous burden. McEvoy has missed just one game in 2016 (the fewest since joining the Hawks in 2014), and has played 80 per cent of game time in five of his past seven hit outs. That’s not quite Todd Goldstein levels – he averages over 90 per cent of game time – but those extra 12 or so minutes surely aren’t beyond him.

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Indeed, Hawthorn have bucked what is a clear trend of playing a solitary ruckman, and relying upon hybrid back ups to give the main man a rest. Anyone that doubts coach Alastair Clarkson is a mad man, but for Hawthorn, it might be a case of addition by subtraction.

Who comes in? Well, that’s where the Hawks’ near-clean bill of health comes to bear. They have options. Another tall forward, like Jack Fitzpatrick, could be a near-like for like swap, just that McEvoy would spend far less time up forward. They could bring in an extra midfielder, such as Will Langford, to sure up their inside midfield. They could turn to everyone’s favourite utility, Matt Spangher, who can pinch hit all over the field. Marc Pittonet could come in, although he may struggle against the more grizzled ruck line ups of Hawthorn’s opponents to come.

The important point here is the Hawks have options. Where the Western Bulldogs are being forced to turn to their envious depth, or where West Coast will bring in Nic Naitanui’s sparring partner/ruck training bag Jonathon Giles, the Hawks can bring in whomever they please.

Being this healthy, this deep into the season is a luxury, and one that gives Hawthorn an edge over many of their rivals. And if the the major selection dilemma facing the Hawks is what to do with their second ruck spot, then they are in a very comfortable spot.

Just enough punch
Offsetting this to some degree is the long-awaited decline in Hawthorn’s on field output, which kicked in in earnest this season. The Hawks have unquestionably been the best team in the League in the past five years, maintaining a standard of play that has seen them win 78 per cent of their games.

Their winning rate has continued this season, but their performance, as measured by their percentage, has fallen away precipitously. At 120 per cent, the Hawks sit sixth on the output ladder, ahead of the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne.

Hawthorn’s defence remains stoic; even at their apex, the Hawks weren’t the best defensive team in the game. This year, they’re conceding around 80 points a game on average, which is good enough to win more often than not. They are aRound 2 goals a game worse than the League-leading Sydney Swans, and are pretty well on par with the Crows and North who sit in seventh and eighth on D, respectively.

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So it’s not Hawthorn’s stopping power that’s failing them. It’s at the other end of the ground: Hawthorn’s scoring power has fallen from astronomical to just plain good.

So far this year, Hawthorn have put up an Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER) of +8.8, ranked sixth in the League. That’s down from an almost-unfathomable streak of figures in excess of +25.0 in the previous four years, with the Hawks ranked either one or two as a scoring force each year of their grand final run.

Indeed, the Hawks have run up the arbitrary marker of success, 100 points, on just seven occasions this year, equal with Sydney as the second fewest of the top eight (the Western Bulldogs have done it six times). Last year, they did it 14 times, including a seven week stretch in the middle of the season where they did it week in, week out.

It’s difficult to pin down precisely what’s going on here, but it mostly traces back to the midfield. More on that in a moment.

Their scoring power remains punchy enough, though. Jack Gunston is one of the most unlikely spearheads in the league, but with 47 goals and more than 50 marks inside 50 in 2016, he’s probably going to make it into the All Australian team. James Sicily has slotted in nicely as a deep forward flank, a position he can only play due to the threatening nature of the rest of Hawthorn’s set.

There is no more terrifying forward line fleet in the league than Hawthorn’s small-medium group. Led by Luke Breust, Hawthorn’s three headed hydra of Breust, Cyril Rioli and Paul Puopolo is an impossible match up. All are threats in the air and on the ground, and even if their opponents play two small stopping defenders it’s a matter of limiting their damage rather than stopping them completely.

Unlike recent years, there have been times where Hawthorn have looked less fluid in attack than we’re used to. At the peak of their powers, the Hawks were capable of scoring incredibly quickly on transition, running in waves and using their incisive kicking skills to zig-zag their way across the ground. They have never been the quickest team in the League, and that lack of pace looks to be the biggest issue hamstringing their offensive play in 2016.

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More than most sides, the Hawks need to have the game on their terms to win. In wins, Hawthorn average 94.9 marks per game. In losses, they average 64.8. That 30-mark differential is the second higher marker in the league, but critically, is more than double the next largest top eight side (West Coast, on 14.4).

Where other sides have turned more to handballs and linking play through the middle of the ground, the Hawks have maintained the largest kick-to-handball ratio in the League. Sydney, the team who have shifted their identity more than any other side in recent years, now kick the ball 1.08 times for every handball – the Hawks’ ratio is 1.29. Even Adelaide, long known as the kicking capital of Australian rules football, have adjusted to the new paradigm, reducing their kick-to-handball ratio from 1.47 to 1.22 this season.

Once again, it shows in wins versus losses. When Hawthorn have won, they’ve kicked the ball 1.36 times for every handball; when they’ve lost, their kick to handball ratio plummets to 1.07.

We doubt Clarkson at our peril. But could it be that the rest of the competition has evolved to play a more running-oriented game, and the Hawks haven’t kept pace?

The simplest answer is the correct one
It is possible, but like most vexing questions, the simplest answer is probably the most correct one.

Hawthorn’s midfield has been unable to win the ball at the coalface on a consistent basis. The root of their offensive decline starts here. We’ve seen this story all year so I won’t repeat it now, other than to parrot the lines of others: the Hawks are dead stinking last on contested possession differential in 2016, having won the count on just three occasions this year.

This is supposedly all by design; the Hawks aren’t worried about throwing numbers at the ball and scrubbing their way to pyrrhic victories on an supposedly anachronistic statistical tally board. Instead, theirs is a game about controlling the ball on the outside of the play, and winning the battle by turning the ball and taking it to the hole.

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That’s fine, and it has led them to a 17-5 (counting this weekend as a win) campaign. They are, indeed, the second best side when it comes to scoring from turnovers, amassing 61 points per game (behind the behemoth at Adelaide, who are almost two goals in advance).

But it comes with a catch: Hawthorn aren’t keeping possession of the ball at a rate in keeping with their contemporaries at the top of the ladder. It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Hawthorn have a time in possession differential of 1.1 minutes per game, ranked 11th in the league. The sides that are above them on the scoring table are all holding onto the ball far more readily, except for the mini-Hawks at West Coast. Against top eight opponents, the Hawks are losing the time in possession battle by 3.7 minutes per game.

I don’t have past season time in possession numbers handy, but we can compare this Hawks side to past iterations on contested possession wins. Last year, Hawthorn won the count on 11 occasions, although never convincingly so. In the second half of last year, they lost the count in nine of their 11 games.

The Hawks are a strong scoring side on turnovers, but they are weak from stoppages. In the first 21 rounds of the year, they’ve kicked just 30.8 points per game from set piece situations, and conceded 35.2. Their differential of around a goal per game puts them 13th in the league. Atop the scores from clearances ladder sit the other seven top eight sides, led by the Giants (+17.2 per game) and closely followed by the Swans (+14.3 per game).

For a team that needs to control the ball, and can’t compensate for this with extra pace on the outside, it looms as a critical issue heading into September. Their preference for outside play creates a weakness that can, and has, been exploited to great effect this year. That was West Coast’s blueprint last Friday, and it worked a treat.

The Zombie Hawks
Don’t tell Hawthorn though. How confident are they? Yesterday, the club announced that their three oldest players, captain Luke Hodge, Shaun Burgoyne and Josh Gibson, had all signed one-year contract extensions, joining fellow veteran Sam Mitchell as guaranteed starters on the 2017 squad. They did this just before the Swans were set to hold a mystery press conference – which turned out to be a new major sponsor announcement – and Dane Swan was to address the media and formally announce his retirement.

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An announcement like this should create fanfare. On the doorstep of a finals campaign that could cement their team as the greatest of all time, announcing that not one, not two, but three of your champions are going around again. Nope. Let’s just slip it into the news cycle and hope no one notices. Their minds are evidently focussed squarely on the job at hand.

Hawthorn haven’t been the best team in the competition in 2016. But they have done everything that was required to get themselves into a good position at this time of the year. But unlike recent years, we’re seeing more of Hawthorn’s warts exposed by a larger swathe of the competition.

Are they still in with a shot? Like I’ve been saying all year, until their brains are splattered over the walls of the MCG in a preliminary final, you cannot rule a line through this team. They won a preliminary final away from home in 2015, and have won six of their eight games outside of the MCG and Aurora Stadium this year. Finishing fourth, or even fifth or six, is not a death sentence for this team like it may be for others.

In a year of flawed contenders, the Hawks have their share of challenges. Whether the other seven teams are collectively good enough to expose them in two out of three games, to stop them reaching the big dance, remains to be seen.

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