This Saturday night Hawthorn will be trying to stop St Kilda winning five consecutive games against Hawthorn for the first time since the 1960s.  The Saints won seven in a row from 1964 to 1969.

Despite losing the past four clashes, the Hawks still are in front on the head-to-head battle with 72 wins and 68 defeats, plus one draw (in 1944).  The Hawks lead is the product of 20 consecutive wins against St Kilda from 1979 to 1989, the Club’s second best against any opponent.  Since the winning streak ended, results have been almost exactly even. In 25 clashes in the past 17 seasons, the Hawks have won 12 and the Saints 13.

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Meeting only once in the home and away season has been the recent norm for Hawthorn and St Kilda.  Having played each other twice in every season from 1994 to 1998, this year will join 2001 as the only two seasons when the clubs have met twice in a season since.

This week will only be the third Hawthorn home game against the Saints at the MCG, since moving to the ground for home games in 2000.  Both previous games – in Round 22, 2001 and Round 11, 2005 – resulted in Hawthorn defeats.  The two clubs have also played in two away matches at the venue in that time – in 2000 and 2003.

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For the second consecutive season, Hawthorn gave a home-state debut to a player recruited from WA, when Garry Moss became the 844th player in the Hawks’ VFL-AFL history. 

He is the third Hawthorn player to be recruited from East Perth, following Alvan Whittle who played one game in 1944, and Paul Barnard, who played 11 games in 1994-95. 

This takes East Perth to equal third, with Swan Districts, on the list of WAFL clubs from which Hawthorn has sourced players.  East Fremantle 10 and Claremont six are the major Western Australian sources of Hawks.  Overall, 33 Western Australians have played for Hawthorn.

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If you thought Hawthorn’s oscillation between eighth and fifth on the ladder in recent weeks was unusual you were right.  It is only the second time in history when Hawthorn has alternated between two ladder positions over a five round period.  The only previous occasion was Rounds 14-18, 1965 when Hawthorn were 12th, 10th, 12th, 10th and 12th over the last five weeks of that season.

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In 81 Round 8 matches played, Hawthorn has won 38 and lost 43.  It has been one of the better rounds in recent times, with five wins in the seven seasons from 2000 to 2006.

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The big names dominate the leading goal-kickers in Round 8. Peter Hudson booted 13 in this round in 1970, while Jason Dunstall kicked 10 in 1994.  Hudson also holds the record for the highest number of goals by a Hawthorn player against St Kilda, kicking 12 in 1971.

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1957 – Fifty Years On

Round 6, 1957
Saturday, 25 May, 1957 at Windy Hill
Hawthorn 11.8.74 d. Essendon 8.12.60

Hawthorn stormed home from 21 points down at three quarter time to beat Essendon at Windy Hill, with the highlight of the final term being four goals in ten minutes from Allan Woodley.

The 7.0 that the Hawks kicked in that final quarter made a welcome contrast from the 44.80 in the opening five games of the season, including the 3.19 in the previous match against Geelong   The poor kicking for goal had prompted coach, Jack Hale, to hold a meeting and buffet dinner after Thursday night training to discuss what was causing the inaccuracy.  One thing he did discover at the dinner was that Terry Ingersoll had been practicising goal-kicking four times per week.  Hale said “I soon stopped that”.

Somewhat surprising seeing the game was third against first, it was not receiving TV coverage, but it was on two radio stations – 3AR (which in that era was the ABC station that covered sport) and 3UZ.  Almost all the tipsters went for Essendon.  One absentee from the loss at Geelong was that the sole goal-kicker from that game, Les Kaine, was out with a bruised hip. 

Neither side made good use of the wind in an opening half that yielded a total of three goals between the two teams.  Essendon made better use of it in the third term, with their rovers exposing Hawthorn’s weakness in that area. 

In what had been a low-scoring game, there was a sudden avalanche of scoring early in the final quarter.  There were six goals in ten minutes, five of them to the Hawks, and four of them to Allan Woodley.  Suddenly, a 21 point deficit had become a three point lead.  Later in the quarter, Maurie Young kicked a goal from an acute angle and Phil O’Brien dashed in to kick the sealer.

As well as Allan Woodley’s heroics, a key factor in the final term was Maurie Young’s domination of the ruck.  As well as those two others in the best players were Alf Hughes, Roy Simmonds, John Peck and Brian Falconer.  It was also noted that Norm Maginness played an excellent game where, despite not getting many kicks himself, he blanketed Jack Clarke.

The win “confirmed the Hawks new found ability to play disciplined football under pressure’.  It also meant that Hawthorn had in the first six rounds beaten the other three teams in the Four – Essendon, Melbourne and Carlton.  Despite the evenness of the season, the quartet was also to be the Final Four.

One of the issues arising from the match was whether the presence of Sydney model, Margot Day, on the ground at three quarter time had distracted the Essendon players.

Player of the week –

“There are certain occasions when the giving of comprehensive reasons for a team’s success is made impossible by the individual performance of one star – and today at Essendon was such an occasion.”

“Hawthorn won because they had Allan Woodley – the most outstanding player on the ground.  He was brilliant all over the ground and his four goals in the last quarter were a match winning effort.”

That was how Herald writer and former Essendon full-forward summed up Woodley’s contribution to the Hawks win.  Another summation of his game in Round 6, 1957 was that he “marked excellently, rucked tirelessly and won the game with his devastating forward pocket pay”.

His performance prompted a feature article on him in the Herald during the following week.  It revealed that Woodley’s job at Saunders Pharmacy in Glenferrie Road precluded him from attending training until after dark and left him only with time to do “physical jerks, sprints and laps of the ground”.  The job at the chemist was one of three activities that limited his football time.  He was also attending classes at Pharmacy College (where he was in his third year) and helping out in his parents’ milk bar.

In his early days at the club after arriving from Xavier he had been mentored by Ted Fletcher and since his retirement by John Kennedy.  He also paid tribute to Beau Wallace and former Senior ruckman, Ian Egerton, who at that time was regaining form in the Seconds.  Woodley had grown up barracking for Carlton, which produced a humourous incident when in an early game one of his heroes, Keith Warburton, took a brilliant mark he patted them on the back.

In May of 1957 Woodley was expressing the view that was more vigourous and faster than when he first played but “the vigour is inclined to make it scrambly”.

Nicknamed ‘The Colonel’, Woodley went to England for three years 1960-62 to study osteopathy, thereby missing out on playing in the 1961 Premiership.  He returned for the 1963 meetings.  Woodley actually played 130 of a possible 131 games in the seven seasons in which he played, winning the 1959 Best & Fairest.

 
Goals:              Woodley 5, M. Young 2, O’Brien 2, Ingersoll 2.
 
Attendance:     22,000