Victory this Sunday would not only give the club a 9-0 record – its best ever start to a season, but would also put Hawthorn ahead in the head-to-head battle against Melbourne for the first time ever.
In 2001, the Hawks took on reigning Premiers, Essendon, and were thrashed by 65 points – 8.9.57 to 18.14.122. The absence of Hay and Rawlings through injury weakened the Hawks’ capacity to handle Essendon’s key forwards and the chances were further diminished when then captain, Shane Crawford, suffered injuries to both his ankle and knee early in the game.
Crawford’s suspension leaves Trent Croad and Tim Clarke as the only members of that Round 9, 2001 with a chance to play in a team that extends a run of wins at the start of a season to nine.
The current team has a better percentage than the 2001 Hawks had after eight rounds – 140.1 per cent versus 135.2 per cent seven years ago. Then, the ‘for’ and ‘against’ was 864 to 639, whereas now both are higher at 989 to 706.
The next best Hawthorn starts, apart from 2001 and 2008, were in 1971, 1975, 1976 and 1984, in all four of which, the Hawks won the opening five games.
Hawthorn lost the first nine meetings between the two clubs and the deficit grew as big as 36 (after a 4 point loss at the MCG in Round 7, 1968) before the Hawks began to reel it in. Intriguingly, when the deficit was 36, the two clubs had played 74 games (exactly half the current tally), with the Hawks winning 19 and losing 55. Since then, the records have been exactly reversed, with the Hawks holding a 55-19 advantage in the past 40 years.
The Hawks did some serious catching up when putting together the club’s greatest ever winning sequence against another club, the run of 22 consecutive victories against Melbourne from Round 13, 1973 to Round 3, 1984.
With Jason Dunstall and Dermott Brereton taking no further part in the game after quarter time (in the days of only two interchange players) and then Gary Ayres injured in the third term, the Hawks’ chances of beating top team Melbourne seemed remote.
With the Demons leading by two goals, the immobile Ayres was sent to full forward. Ayres out-pointed two defenders to take a pack mark and kicked the goal off a couple of steps. He added another later in the term, while also decisively winning a push and shove with a handful of Melbourne defenders. Sandwiched between Ayres’ two goals, Dean Anderson had burst clear of a pack to score and give Hawthorn the most unlikely of leads.
Melbourne recorded the opening score of the final term – a behind. It was to be their final score of the match. Hawthorn was about to kill them off. Platten twice, Anderson and Ayres all booted inspirational goals as the Hawks recorded one of the clubs most heroic ever wins – 14.8.92 to 7.6.48.
The club’s longest sequence of century scores is 11 in 1982, followed by runs of 9 in both 1987 and 1989.
Even closer together were the matches against West Coast in Rounds 10 and 14 of the 1989 season. The Hawks won at Subiaco by 5 points and a month later demolished the Eagles at Princes Park by 91 points.
The family of Will Taylor recently came into the Hawks Museum and revealed their connection with him. Taylor played just a solitary game in Round 1, 1938. He is listed in official records as having been from Sydney, but he was actually a local boy who played for the Hawthorn Seconds in the 1920s before shifting north. He had a further family connection with the club as his father had represented the club way back in 1902.
There are still over 50 of the 850 players to have represented Hawthorn in the VFL-AFL who are ‘missing’. View the remaining Missing Hawks list.
