As Hawthorn players, coaches and supporters battled the Easter Monday traffic snarl on the Mulgrave Freeway on their way out to Waverley Park for the season opener, they weren’t sure what to expect from their side, which was coming off two straight Grand Final defeats and for the first time in 17 years, was without the services of the great Leigh Matthews. Fellow club icon Peter Knights had also retired.
The replacement for Matthews was a shaggy-haired rover from South Australia, John Platten. He could clearly play - he won the 1984 Margarey Medal and had represented his state and his country (in International Rules) with great distinction before crossing to Glenferrie.
And it took a battle for the Hawks to finally get Platten into the brown and gold. He had signed with the Hawks several years before that, but had subsequently signed a different agreement with Carlton, and it wasn’t until the two clubs reached a settlement - and after some preliminary proceedings in the Victorian Supreme Court - that Platten could take his place in the side for round one.
That the Hawks were due to play Carlton only added to the intrigue. The Platten factor was part of it, but the Blues had also opened up their chequebook and had landed three stars from South Australia - Stephen Kernahan, Craig Bradley and Peter Motley - plus another from Western Australia, Jon Dorotich.
The injection of such quality, plus highly-regarded new coach Robert Walls, back at Carlton after a decade playing and coaching at Fitzroy, meant that the Blues were second favourites for the premiership, behind the all-conquering Essendon. The Hawks were well behind that pair in the betting and were widely expected to get rolled by Carlton in that first game, particularly with established players such as Dermott Brereton, Terry Wallace, Peter Schwab, Russell Morris and Peter Curran among those not available for selection.
Not even Matthews, by then on the Collingwood coaching staff and a part-time TV commentator, tipped the Hawks to win.
And for much of the opening half, he and the other pundits appeared to have it right. In The Age, leading football scribe Garry Linnell wrote that the Blues looked good, "Running in two and threes and creating the loose man." Carlton led at quarter time by 11 points, but trailed by a point at half-time. It appeared to be anyone’s game.
But after half-time it was all Hawthorn. Six goals to two in the third term, followed by another six in the final term helped the Hawks cruise to a 36-point win. Hawthorn’s backline got on top, Gary Buckenara kicked four goals, while Michael Byrne booted three, but the talk afterwards was all about Platten, the most influential player on the ground and recipient of two Brownlow votes on the day.
Wrote Linnell of Platten: "No sooner did the ball hit the turf than a bobbing head of hair pounced on it. Digging in under packs appears to be his specialty. Had he dug any deeper yesterday he may have provided Carlton with a most welcome hole in which to bury itself."
Hawthorn supporters were beside themselves with glee after the final siren. Not even the notorious Waverley Park traffic jams could cool their ardour. It had taken Platten just one week to prove himself a star and worth every dollar spent with the lawyers to bring him to Glenferrie Oval.
In an interview for The Golden Years, a forthcoming book about Hawthorn’s 10 premierships, Wallace talked of what a brilliant recruit Platten turned out to be and how the retirement of Matthews proved to be a blessing for the Hawks.
"It always helps when you get new players and in our case, a little bloke called John Platten walked through the door. The way he played, so exciting and so effervescent, was a big deal, while at the same time, Leigh’s stepping away allowed Jason Dunstall to blossom.
"It might sacrilegious to say so, not forgetting that Leigh almost single-handedly got us into the ‘85 Grand Final with his last quarter against Footscray the week before and he’s the best player I’ve ever seen play the game, but whether you’re Leigh Matthews, Wayne Carey or Polly Farmer, it’s got to finish at sometime.
"And although we didn’t realise it at the time, we had this champion full-forward, although at first he was just a fat bloke sitting in the forward pocket, who’d lead to all the right places, but we always kicked it to Leigh because that’s what we were used to doing. But we were increasingly relying on a player who physically, couldn’t get the job done any more.
"So you add a new player in Platten and the coming out of Dunstall and Dermott Brereton, who kicked eight goals on the Grand Final the year before. That’s enough to change any footy side so in 1986 we were significantly better. Then you had a whole lot of other blokes who were hungry, angry and sick of having it put on them that they were too old and too slow. There was this determination to prove a few people wrong."
Carlton wasn't helped on the day by game-ending injuries to Mil Hanna and Bernie Evans, and with only two interchange players on the bench, had no reinforcements to call on for the rest of the afternoon. Hanna, who was making his debut, did his knee and didn't play again for the season.
But it was a shaken Carlton president John Elliott who said just two words post-match on a day the might of the club’s recruiting power (and bulging chequebook) was supposed to be on display. "I’m disappointed," was his brief summation.
The rivalry between Carlton and Hawthorn had bubbled beneath the surface since 1974 when Hawthorn moved from Glenferrie Oval to become co-tenants with the Blues at Princes Park. It ignited when Hawks premiership captain and coach David Parkin crossed from the Hawks to the Blues in 1981 and was further inflamed the next season when Matthews crashed into Carlton defender Ken Hunter in a match at Carlton, sparking a flurry of fists and a war of words between the two clubs for the rest of that season and the next year as well.
But the rivalry was at its best in 1986 and 1987. The Hawks won both home and away games against Carlton in 1986, lost the second semi-final, but rebounded strongly to comfortably win the Grand Final. The Hawks again won both home and away encounters in 1987, before Carlton took the honours in the second semi and the Grand Final.
Platten proved to be a star for the Hawks over 258 games in 12 seasons, a career that included the Brownlow Medal in 1987. But equally brilliant were the contributions made to Carlton by Kernahan, who played 251 games and captained the side for 11 years, and Bradley, who also played in two premierships among his astounding 375 game-career over 17 seasons.
Dorotich also gave the Blues excellent service for several seasons, while the Motley's promising career was tragically cut short by a car accident in his second year with the Blues.
A quarter of a century has passed since the opening round of 1986 and the face of football has changed enormously. But there has yet to be an opening round match since, in which so many great players have made their debut on the same ground on the same day.
