![Gold Coast's Gary Ablett had a profitable day against Hawthorn.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170610093128im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/o/p/j/a/image.related.landscape.460x307.gwopid.png/1497080739065.jpg)
Suns hold off desperate Hawks after late fight
Hawthorn gave Gold Coast a nasty scare at the MCG on Saturday, and but for a controversial 50-metre penalty that broke a run of six Hawks goals might even have snatched an heroic victory.
Greg Baum is chief sports columnist and associate editor with The Age
Hawthorn gave Gold Coast a nasty scare at the MCG on Saturday, and but for a controversial 50-metre penalty that broke a run of six Hawks goals might even have snatched an heroic victory.
Let's face it: Kurt Tippett and the Sydney Swans have not worked out.
Whatever way you do the sums, Tom Hawkins got what he had coming.
I have seen the future of sport, and it glows in the dark and crackles a bit.
What to do about those St Kilda footballers who last weekend revealed themselves not to have evolved since before most were born, since a time when Tony Shaw said he would use a racist epithet every week if he thought it would gain his team an edge, a time so long ago it can be found only by carbon-dating?
Some of the startling impact of the AFL womens competition was planned, some surely serendipitous.
Phil Tagell doesn't remember the king-hit, but when he woke up in hospital, cranial fluid was oozing from his left ear. He was told how close he came to "doing a Hookesey". That was more than eight years ago, but he lives with some of the legacy still, including dulling of his senses of smell and taste.
Footy reached one watershed at Etihad stadium when the AFL staged its first Good Friday match and a crowd of almost 43,000 came to say alleluia, and the young and winless Kangaroos so nearly crested a horizon of their own when they ran the Western Bulldogs, the reigning premier, to within one kick, the last of the match.
I could fill this column with an appeal to the better nature of some footy fans. But what would be the point?
The Callum Mills rushed behind drama at Etihad stadium on Friday night foregrounded a matter that is causing some muttering and lost sleep around the AFL.
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