Hawthorn’s young outfit slayed the AFL giant at the MCG today and in the process defied conventional wisdom on how quickly a club can climb from ground zero to the top of the mountain.
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But the 18.7 (115) to 11.23 (89) grand final victory over a wasteful Geelong, witnessed by a crowd of more than 100,000, has not convinced Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson that his club is set to take over from the Cats as the competition’s dominant side.
Equally, Cats coach Mark Thompson is adamant that while today belonged to the Hawks, the players and game plan that carried his side to 42 wins in their previous 44 matches can make them a force again next year.
The Hawks’ triumph today capped a steady rise since Clarkson took over for the 2004 season and set about rebuilding a playing list, a game style and a club culture that could stand up in finals football.
The Hawks climbed from 14th, to 11th, sixth and now premiers in his four seasons in charge.
Clarkson acknowledged the debt his side owed to clubs such as recent premiers the Cats and Port Adelaide, having closely studied the way those clubs built lists to win flags and he suggested his side had reached the target in unusually quick time.
“What we have done is studied models of teams that have developed a premiership group over time,” Clarkson said.
“It was quite common that to bring a group together it usually took five, six, seven or eight years.”
He said part of the reason the Hawks stormed through this year’s finals series without losing a game was the motivation they took from an upset loss to North Melbourne in a semi-final last season.
“Such was the resolve with this particular group, their fanaticism to actually improve as people and players drove the whole group forward again this year,” Clarkson said.
With a clutch of Geelong’s best players – such as defenders Darren Milburn, Tom Harley and Matthew Scarlett – also their oldest, while the Hawks are a young side across the board, Hawthorn’s premiership could be seen as a changing of the guard.
But Clarkson was not convinced the Hawks would take over as the AFL’s benchmark.
“I suppose the whole competition will now look at it that way because they always judge the premiers in that sort of manner, as we have for the last five or six years too,” he said.
“… I still expect that Geelong will continue to be a dominant side next year.
“We got the victory today, but it could have quite easily been a very different result and I wouldn’t suggest for one minute that that elevates us above Geelong because we still respect them enormously.
“… We think that we’ve still got to chase them a little bit.”
He compared today’s match to the 1998 grand final, when hot favourites North Melbourne kicked 8.22, their poor conversion allowing them to be run over by Adelaide in the second half.
The Kangaroos bounced back to win the flag the following season.
Thompson labelled the match a “wasted opportunity”, saying Geelong’s forwards failed to work together and the pressure of the occasion might have affected some Cats.
But he was insistent that after dominating the competition for the best part of two seasons the Cats did not need any radical changes to again press for the premiership next year.
“Absolutely, the game plan’s held up, we’ve won a lot of games for a couple of years and we were red-hot favourites to win and maybe if the game was played next week we’d probably do it better and beat the Hawks,” Thompson said.
“But on this day they’ve got the points and the premiership and they thoroughly deserve it.
“But it doesn’t mean that we’re just going to panic and be ruthless and sack people and just forget about what we’ve done. We’ve still got a very, very good club.”
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