Pressure gauge: How the Hawks lost the game and won the season

Having entered this final with form and momentum on their side, but facing a snarling opponent seeking redemption, Hawthorn discovered that genuine finals don’t permit the kind of carnival they experienced seven days earlier at the MCG.

It was a clichéd reality that Sam Mitchell would know well from the legion of finals he played – that typically, September permits players less time and space.

The elimination final obliteration of the Bulldogs featured clean and spectacular ball movement, Calsher Dear displaying his athletic gifts and a host of Hawks deploying leg speed to run away from a tired and sluggish Bulldogs side.

But Port Adelaide, pumped and primed to atone for their embarrassing display against Geelong, gave the Hawks precisely what they didn’t experience against the Doggies.

Pressure.

In the elimination final, which was played on Hokball terms – fast, open and attacking – the Hawks had 254 uncontested disposals. In their second final, played in more confined spaces and with Power players hurrying near, the Hawks had only 199 uncontested possessions.

This was to be expected. Jai Newcombe, outstanding in the middle this year and among the Hawks who stood upright in defeat, observed that pressure and the hot ball were defining features of finals.

Newcombe was asked if the narrower dimensions of the Adelaide Oval had hampered the Hawks’ outside running game.

“I don’t know, it’s slightly smaller,” said Newcombe. “But you play in finals it’s a contested game of footy. Pressure ramps up from both sides. It’s pretty much about who can handle it, handle it best on the day.

“We had moments where it was really good and we were able to have control, play the game how we wanted.”

It went unsaid that the Hawks also had moments when they didn’t handle the heat or have the game on their terms.

Consider the facets in which the Hawks fell short:

1. They were beaten in the contest and in the territorial battle. At three-quarter-time, they had just 29 entries (ended with 42). Even at the end, they lost contested ball by 16.

2. They struggled to take marks in scoring territory – to three-quarter time, they’d marked only twice in their forward 50m arc compared to Port’s seven. The inspired switch of James Sicily to attack was predicated on that failing.

3. As mentioned – and this was arguably as problematic as the territory deficit – they did not get their running game rolling, really, until that final surge when they had Port clinging on.

And yet, for all those failings, Hawthorn lost by three points and the game rested on their boot – on Sicily’s powerful right foot, in fact – in the final minutes. Had Sicily not struck the post, we would be talking Hawk heroics and another Port capitulation at their enfeebled fortress

So, if frailties were exposed, Hawthorn were still millimetres from reaching a preliminary final, despite starting the season 0-5 in what was slated as another development year.

In Newcombe’s telling, coach Mitchell had taken a positive view of the season in his post-game comments to the players.

Newcombe said Mitchell had been “very proud of how far we’ve come and sad that it had to end tonight. Lot of faith in what we’ve been doing, as a club and as a playing group. Proud more than anything.”

Newcombe, though, said he was “pretty gutted” by the outcome.

“To come so close probably makes it a little bit harder to take, I guess. It’s been a massive body of work from us, coming from 0 and 5, to be in this position I don’t think too many expected.”

Finals would be the bare minimum in budgeting for 2025. “I think so. Definitely finals will be the aim, no doubt. You don’t get this far in the season and be happy to settle for less next year.”

The upbeat reading of Hawthorn is that they will regain Will Day, and gain Josh Battle from St Kilda and, subject to a successful trade, Tom Barrass (West Coast).

Experience is building, bodies are hardening, and the game plan has been embedded, as Mitchell planned.

Nick Watson was a spectacular first year success. On a night that challenged forwards, tall and small, the Wizard’s three superb finishes had kept the Hawks close. He can hone his craft and become fitter, as can Dear, Connor Macdonald, Josh Weddle and others.

But the Hawks, whose freestyle method ambushed teams, also will be subjected to fiercer scrutiny from rivals and will carry the burden of expectation. We cannot know what will happen to any team on the injury front, either, in a competition of micro-margins.

“Overall, I think the season was a big tick for us,” said president Andy Gowers in the rooms, where the disappointment was muted by an awareness of how the Hawks had made a giant leap forward, and that success seemed so much tangible than three months ago.

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