DANIEL Webster had every tiny detail mapped out before he had even taken his first steps inside Hawthorn’s headquarters.

For a first-time AFLW head coach, having replaced the club’s inaugural leader Bec Goddard in February, Webster had complete clarity in what he wanted to achieve with the Hawks from the outset. Magnets would be flipped, game plans would be restructured, and training programs would be altered.

And it would all start with kicking.

If Hawthorn’s players were uncertain about what to expect from Webster’s hands-on coaching methods, they got their first glimpse when he began filming their kicking techniques in pre-season, meticulously breaking down that vision in subsequent sessions and demonstrating exactly what was required to gain more power, penetration and precision in their delivery.

Such an approach details Webster’s remarkably planned out idea for a football program that has improved out of sight ever since. After claiming just six victories from their first two seasons in the League, the Hawks piled up 10 wins from 11 games in 2024 to secure a top two finish, while on Sunday they will play in their first ever final when they take on the reigning premier Brisbane.

“I love that stuff, anything to do with kicking,” Webster told AFL.com.au.

“I’ve been coaching for 15 years and I’ve done most roles there are, development all the way through to line coaching. One of the passions I’ve always had is built in around kicking. I love that side of it, filming the players and trying to work out through their technique in how to improve.

“It’s all good and well for us to say, ‘You need to kick better and handball better’. But we need to show them how to do it and how to train for it. That’s something in the AFLW space I’ve found, that a lot of players don’t know how to get to that next level or what to do. They want to get there, but it’s our job to show them how to do it the right way.

“All of the coaches help. Sam Mitchell’s been in there helping with kicking as well. It’s been a full-club approach, just because everyone loves it so much.”

Webster’s desire to get in the weeds with his coaching was born from his past experiences. His three seasons as an assistant at Brisbane’s AFLW outfit followed five years and two QAFL premierships with Aspley’s men’s side, as well as more than a decade of coaching in Brisbane and Queensland’s state Academy programs.

But if the kicking training was the start of Webster’s revolution at Hawthorn, his more holistic ideas for how his team would play – its personnel, its style and its plan – began long before he even journeyed to Victoria to take on the role.

During the interview process, Webster laid out his vision for Hawthorn. He wanted a bigger, stronger midfield group. It’s the reason behind Mattea Breed’s reinvention, aided by the arrival of Melbourne premiership duo Eliza West and Casey Sherriff during last year’s Trade Period.

He also wanted more drive from the backline. It’s why Tilly Lucas-Rodd was shifted there before the year. He wanted more dynamism in attack. It’s why Aileen Gilroy has enjoyed a year that’s featured 14 goals from 11 games. He wanted more skill across the wing. It’s why Greta Bodey has pushed higher up the field for much of the year.

Such seismic tweaks to how a team lines up are normally made over the course of an entire season, the result of much trial and error. Yet for Webster, the majority were conceived as soon as he was told the Hawthorn job was his.

“I had a pretty clear mind early days around certain players in different spots. It was just the way I wanted us to play,” Webster said.

“Tilly was important to that because I wanted to get run off half-back and challenge teams in that way, so it wasn’t just the midfielders doing all the attacking. Even with Mattea Breed on ball, I wanted a bigger body on ball. That’s freed up Em Bates to do a bit more with ‘Westy’ coming in as well to get the ball out of space. ‘Gilly’ playing forward, I always thought with her attributes that she’s such a weapon to be wasted in the back half.

“There’s a way you want to play, then there’s adapting to the list you’ve got. Some players, we’ve played in all different positions to slowly work them out as well. Some have been easy, some have been more tricky.”

The dramatic shift in attitude at Hawthorn under Webster didn’t just extend to on-field issues, either. Having arrived from a highly successful Brisbane program, the club’s new coach wanted to implement a series of cultural changes from his first days in the job.

As one of the League’s final and most recent batch of AFLW expansion clubs, the Hawks built primarily through the draft – supplemented by the arrival of high-profiles names such as Bates and Bodey – which was reflected in their 3-7 records across both of their initial two seasons in the competition. But the time to be known as a developing side was over, and Webster knew it.

“It was just changing the mindset of what we were capable of and how we were going about it. The foundations were set up really well, so we could evolve quickly. But we needed to change our mindset around who we were and what we wanted to be,” Webster said.

“I think you can get stuck in the habit of making excuses for yourself. There are easy outs. You can use a term like ‘young and inexperienced’. That’s all I kept hearing. It gives you an out when you’re playing good teams. You think, ‘We’re young and inexperienced so that means we’re probably not going to win the game’. If it gets hard, you default to that.

“That was the biggest shift. The players have really brought into it and you can see the results off the back of it.”

Indeed, the proof is in the pudding. The Hawks are no longer a ‘young and inexperienced’ team. Rather, they are one of the competition’s newest powerhouses, cracking a long established AFLW ‘big four’ that has predominantly featured Brisbane, Adelaide, North Melbourne and Melbourne.

Where Hawthorn ranked bottom four in several significant statistical metrics last season, Champion Data notes that this season the club is now among the League’s truly elite sides in almost every key category

HAWTHORN’S RISE UNDER WEBSTER

	2023 rank	2024 rank
Pts for	#16	#3
Pts from turnover	#13	#3
Pts from stoppage	#17	#5
Disposal diff.	#16	#4
Kicking efficiency	#13	#5
Cont. possession diff.	#14	#4
Clearance diff.	#16	#4
Inside 50 diff.	#15	#3
Scores per inside 50	#15	#3
Shot at goal accuracy	#16	#3

 

It’s born from Webster’s vision of a Hawks team that wins its own footy at the source, attacks with efficiency and plays not only to entertain, but win.

“We definitely wanted to score more,” Webster said.

“I think it’s good for the competition, teams playing attacking football. We haven’t always done that. As the season’s gone on, teams have defended us better and challenged us in different ways. We’ve had different personnel playing as well.

“It’s something we’ve worked hard on all year and something we’ll continue to work on, because I think you need to score to win. I don’t want us to be a team that’s negative or playing in a way that’s just trying to slow the game down or kill the game. I want to be proactive in how we go about it.

“The best teams do that. That’s what we want to be and I think that’s the way we need to play.”

So, on the eve of Hawthorn’s first ever AFLW finals campaign, the one remaining question is obvious. Can the Hawks continue to defy the odds and snatch their first ever AFLW flag as well?

“Well, I think so,” Webster said.

“There are clear challenges around the unknown. The competition has always had the top four and they’ve been relatively clear. Out of those four, we’ve only played Adelaide – who we lost to by four goals – but that was a good lesson for us, and we were able to beat Melbourne.

“I think our best footy can definitely get the job done. The difference between where we’re at and those sides is our consistency for four quarters and being able to do it under all sorts of duress and pressure. That’s what Brisbane has done so well over a long period of time. Their pressure and work rate is just so consistent and at such a high level. That’s the challenge for us, can we perform over four quarters?

“But I definitely think our top end footy is good enough.”