Hawthorn vs Sydney: Friday Night Forecast

The rematch of a game which two months ago produced one of the most surprising results of the season, with both teams playing their best football of the year. Layer on top the rivalry, and we’ve got a barn burner on our hands.

Since they last met in Round 10, the Hawks and Swans are a combined 10-1-3 in the following eight rounds of football, with a collective percentage of 122.3 per cent – full year numbers that would have a hypothetical hybrid team sitting in the top four. Much of this is owing to Sydney’s dominance (7-0, with a net margin of 30.4 points per game), but Hawthorn has improved to join the mid table mire of teams sitting around a 0.500 record (3-1-3 with a net margin of 2.9 points).

Indeed, since Round 10, the Hawks sit eighth on the Pythagorean wins ladder.

Over that stretch, the Hawks have been better than Melbourne, St Kilda, West Coast and the Western Bulldogs. The Swans have been better than anyone. On this alone, considering the game is to be played on Hawthorn’s home deck, tonight is going to be awesome.

(AAP Image/David Moir)

Last time they met, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson dulled the influence of Sydney’s midfield by playing what was ostensibly a Malthouse-style boundary-riding game. Every time the Hawks won the ball in their back half they went wide, with pathological intent to stop Sydney from scrambling through the centre corridor as is – or was – their style.

The Hawks inflicted one of Sydney’s worst time in possession defeats of the year, while gathering 283 uncontested possessions, the most the Swans have given up in 2017. In the end the margin was only a goal, and Sydney were down to two fit men on the bench (one, Jake Lloyd, was out for all but the first five minutes). But given where the two sides were at, and that it was played in Sydney, it was Hawthorn’s best win of the season.

Remarkable stuff. Wins like this serve to remind us that Alastair Clarkson possesses the best football mind in the competition. After his team looked simultaneously old and tired and young and raw, this win showed the power of strategy.

The team’s follow up performance two weeks later was similarly spectacular; a draw against the Giants and a last-gasp lost to Geelong only serve to further this thinking. He’s undoubtedly Hawthorn’s most important asset.

Indeed, Hawthorn disrupted the Swans so thoroughly that there’s a chance it gave Sydney coach John Longmire cause to change his team’s ways. In the first ten rounds of the year, Sydney had a kick-to-handball ratio of 1.20; in the eight rounds (seven games) since that has increased to 1.37 – which would be second in the league behind Carlton if it was over the full year. The Swans are also marking the ball more often – taking 86 per game in their first ten and 99.8 in the seven games after.

Sydney last changed things up in the 2015 season, switching to a pace and space scheme that made the most of their powerful midfield group. That the Swans are rolling with such a high kick to handball ratio suggests this is more than responding to the opposition of the day – we’ll see how it goes tonight.

There is little to report on the teams front, with Hawthorn going in unchanged and Sydney making one change. One young midfielder (Dan Robinson) out, another one (Will Hayward) in. It’s the second time in four weeks Hawthorn have been unchanged, after switching players in and out every week in the first 14 rounds of the season. Alastair Clarkson must be happy with how his youngsters are performing on the whole.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Can the rematch live up to the original? While the Round 10 meeting might not have been a high scoring shootout, the tactical nature of proceedings was a delight. We should expect a similar battle this evening.

Now the Swans are happier to chip around and play the uncontested game, and the Hawks appear to have come to grips with the faster pace of play, it’s unlikely we’ll see carbon copy repeat of nine weeks ago. Instead, we can expect Sydney’s midfield to be much more influential on proceedings.

The Hawks don’t have the depth at the top of their midfield group to match it with Sydney. It’s why they did what they did last time out. To help their young backline cope with plenty of Sydney inside 50 entries, expect Hawthorn to role with a spare defender from very early in the game. Sydney will happily oblige, rolling Callum Mills a kick off the play as a sweeper and pseudo-full back as has been the way in recent weeks.

Sydney’s midfield core has been steamrolling the competition since Round 6, with the likes of Lloyd and Zak Jones picking up the slack of a surprisingly down Luke Parker. Josh P Kennedy, playing his 200th game, is back to his clearance winning best, while Dan Hannebery and Kieran Jack (who looked like he had a foot out the door early in the season) are generating plenty of burst run from congestion. Sydney are back to being Sydney, and on face value it looks too much for the Hawks to handle.

There’s also a peculiarity in these two teams’ recent match ups. Since the Hawks sprayed Sydney’s guts on the MCG turf in the 2014 grand final, every match up has been won by the away team. Sydney have won the pair’s two matches at the ‘G, while Hawthorn have won the two SCG encounters and the final home-and-away game played at ANZ Stadium to the west of the city.

That looks likely again tonight. While the Hawks have upgraded themselves from bad to merely average, the Swans look like the best team in the competition. They’ll show that tonight, winning by 30 points. That’s my Friday night forecast, what’s yours?