Hawks handle umpiring controversy to crush Crows
The Hawks have kept their chances of a third consecutive flag alive after easily accounting for Adelaide by 74 points.
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HAWTHORN 8.4 11.6 16.7 21.9 (135) ADELAIDE 2.2 4.3 6.7 8.13 (61)
Goals: Hawthorn: L Breust 6, L Hodge 4, I Smith 2, J Lewis 2, J Roughead 2, B Hill, C Rioli, M Suckling, P Puopolo, R Schoenmakers. Adelaide: J Jenkins 4, T Lynch 2, P Dangerfield, T Walker.
BEST: Hawthorn: Hodge, Breust, Mitchell, Birchall, Stratton, Smith, Frawley. Adelaide: Dangerfield, Jacobs, Talia, Jenkins, Thompson, Lynch, Laird.
Umpires: Scott Jeffery, Ray Chamberlain, Brett Rosebury.
Official Crowd: 70,879 at MCG.
Luke Hodge walked to the centre of the ground and stood next to Paddy Dangerfield. No one drew the opprobrium of limp defeat as much as the Hawthorn captain last week. He wore the burden impatiently.
Hawthorn's six-goal hero Luke Breust gathers the ball and makes a break. Photo: Getty Images
That he stood next to Dangerfield was instructive: Hodge does not tag, so he was challenged to play head to head with the Crows playmaker and have more influence. Hawthorn had decided not to ask one man to negate Dangerfield but every man. Dangerfield was the Crows' best player still, but Hodge was more influential.
At the first bounce Hodge ran past the ball and bumped into Scott Thompson, but it had all the malice of two people meeting at a door. Moments later he intercepted a kick in, of course it was him. Hodge understood the significance of the kick personally and for the team. He set himself from beyond the forward arc and the kick dared not stray from its line. Every single Hawthorn player ran to embrace their captain.
So many Hawthorn players were poor last week but it seemed every one of the villains became an architect of victory a week on, though none more so than Hodge.
Hawthorn's David Hale and Jarryd Roughead team up to tackle Adelaide's Rory Sloane. Photo: Getty Images
Smith playing on one leg last week was poor, this week he found his run. He was involved immediately, he sliced in from a wing to the middle to find Matt Suckling for the second goal then fended off David Mackay and accelerated with impressive speed to kick the third himself.
Luke Breust had not kicked a goal in three weeks and was horrible last week, then kicked three in the first quarter on Friday night and finished with a career best six. Bradley Hill another Hawk lost on the Nullarbor, delivered to Breust for one of those first-quarter goals.
Adelaide began with a loose man behind the ball running off the back of the square. The effect of this was that Grant Birchall was allowed to be unmanned. Some teams tag Birchall so the idea of deliberately leaving him without an opponent, even if he was down last week, was at best ambitious. Birchall had it 13 times in the first quarter. Adelaide kept winning the centre breaks then feeding Birchall and watching the ball fly back over their heads. Brodie Smith was free at the other end of the ground but having no impact. The tactic lasted until Hawthorn's fourth goal when they went man on man but still failed to play tight enough on Hawthorn.
Hawk David Hale kicks as he is tackled by Scott Thompson of the Crows. Photo: Getty Images
The Crows allowed Hawthorn to play the game as they prefer to, which was something West Coast did not allow last week. Hawthorn were permitted to move the ball by foot without pressure. Hawthorn had 37 more uncontested marks than Adelaide in the fist term alone and throughout the night managed to double the Crows for uncontested marks.
Adelaide's two first-quarter goals were both spectacular – Dangerfield's banana on the run was sublime – but only served to reinforce that Adelaide needed something extraordinary to goal, where Hawthorn's goals were very ordinary in their construction.
Brian Lake was another who was awful last week, but he out-marked Taylor Walker in the second term and was solid throughout. He did not play on Walker, that was James Frawley's job. Frawley's future as a footballer was queried after the loss last week, this week he beat the Adelaide captain.
That was the contrast of a week – Walker was the talismanic captain last week and beaten this. Eddie Betts starred against the Dogs and was humbled by Ben Stratton, who incidentally is never beaten by small forwards. Betts didn't have a touch in the first term and with his first chance at a kick in the second he was run down.
It was not all Hawthorn's way, but it felt it. Adelaide won the ruck comfortably and the clearances yet it seemed not to matter. Daniel Talia for most of the night had the better of Jarryd Roughead, but the full forward still contributed his couple of goals and besides Hawthorn goals were liberally shared.
It might be presumptuous to consider this result a finals declaration just as it was last week to regard it a foreboding loss but there was at the very least a sense of atonement for wounded pride about Hawthorn's victory. With eight goals in the first term there was also an unsettling message to Fremantle.
