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Hawthorn’s longest winning sequence against Essendon was six from 1987 to 1989 and overall the club’s record against the Dons stands at 51 wins and 92 losses.
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Apart from 2001 (which began with eight consecutive wins), 2006 is Hawthorn’s best start to a season since 1990. 1990 was identical to this year with 3 wins and 1 defeat, with the solitary loss also in Round 2. As well as 1990 and 2006 there are three other seasons in the club’s history that have begun WLWW, the earlier ones being 1943, 1969 and 1974.
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Last Friday night was Hawthorn’s 50th win against Carlton. The recent record against the Blues is now good with seven Hawthorn wins from the last nine meetings.
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Hawthorn is now in the top four on the ladder after a home and away round for the first time since Round 20, 2001.
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Hawthorn ended a couple of hoodoos last Friday night. It was the first victory for the brown and gold on a Friday night after five consecutive losses and the first win at Docklands after six consecutive losses. T
he previous Friday night win was also against Carlton at the MCG in 2003, while the most recent Docklands win had been late in 2004, against the Bulldogs. It also ended the recent curse of the unchanged side – it was the first time Hawthorn had won with an unchanged team since Round 21, 1999.
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Four years ago, in Round 5 2002, three young men made their debut for Hawthorn – Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell and Robert Campbell. Have three such talented players made their debut in the same game anywhere else in Hawthorn history?
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One reader has asked when did Hawthorn first and most recently play on Anzac Day? No matches were played on Anzac Day until 1960. Hawthorn first played on Anzac Day in 1963 when a crowd of 55,293 saw the Hawks lose by four points to Melbourne at the MCG.
In total, Hawthorn has played on 25 April ten times. Six of those were Saturdays, the most recent being 1998, when Hawthorn ended a 12 game losing sequence by beating the Brisbane Lions. The four on public holidays were all on different days of the week. These four games produced two big Hawthorn wins (versus South Melbourne in 1979 and Richmond in 1989) and two narrow defeats (1963 and Geelong in 1980).
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Hawthorn’s greatest winning margin against any opponent is the 160 point defeat inflicted upon Essendon at the MCG in 1992. In a wonderfully even performance, the Hawks booted 8 goals in every quarter.
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Last week’s Football Record had an interesting piece from Col Hutchinson on occasions when century goal-kickers have, and have not, won their club’s best and fairest. It raised the interesting question - how many times has the Hawthorn leading goal-kicker also won the best and fairest? The answer is 10 – Jason Dunstall four times, Peter Hudson twice and Alec Albiston, Leigh Matthews, Dermott Brereton and Nick Holland once each.
Surprisingly, on the 11 occasions when Hawthorn players topped the VFL/AFL goal-kicking, only five times did they win the club best & fairest (Dunstall did it all 3 times, while Hudson managed two out of four). Hudson could not do so when he kicked 150 in the 1971 season; nor could John Peck, despite leading the League goal-kicking when Hawthorn finished on the bottom in 1965; and Leigh Matthews could not do so in 1975, despite doing so 8 times, when he was not the League’s leading goal-kicker!
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On this Round
30 years ago – Round 5, 1976
Hawthorn 14.10.94 d Essendon 10.15.75
As with this week’s game, Essendon had a 1-3 record, while Hawthorn had made the perfect start to their campaign to go one better than 1975 by winning the first four games of 1976. Despite fine and sunny conditions, the opening term at Windy Hill was remarkably low scoring with Hawthorn kicking 1.2 to Essendon's 0.2.
In fact, the whole game struggled to reach great heights and was described by some media as a “comedy of errors”. While Essendon led by three points at half, Hawthorn gradually gained the ascendancy in the second half, leading by eight points at the final change and winning by 17.
Michael Moncrieff 5, Don Scott 3 and Stuart Trott 2 were the multiple goal-kickers for the Hawks, while the best players were listed as Peter Knights, John Hendrie, Scott, Moncrieff, Des Meagher and Geoff Ablett. One of the more amusing incidents of the game took place on the outer wing, as Essendon captain, Graham Moss, tried to get around his Hawthorn counterpart, Don Scott, and was caught in a magnificent tackle.
This win was part of an outstanding Hawthorn record at Windy Hill in the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s – Hawthorn won there every year from 1974 to 1979 and again in 1981, 1982 and 1984.
