Hawk annus horribilus

by RICK KANE

HAWTHORN is currently being considered as a team and a club through the prism of the distant past when they were also-rans and easy beats rather than through the glorious years between 1970 and 1991. And this is mainly because of what has occurred this year. Where did it go so terribly sour?

The observation that something was rotten in the state of Denmark turned out to be both acutely prescient and the understatement of the hour. By play's end just about everybody related to the rotten core of the state was dead. Sadly, in the tragicomic reality drama 'The Fall of the House of Hawthorn' not only has it been without blood but the main protagonists appear unburdened by pain, guilt, remorse, perspective or irony.

The most passion the club demonstrated was in a street brawl against Essendon. Even that was cosseted by umpires, the half time siren and its own ultimate futility. Dermot Brereton, club great and board member, is credited with sparking that particular fuse. For a few days following that game/incident key Hawthorn figures spoke of the incident in terms of the 'fight' that the players displayed. Never mind that the Hawks lost by 70 points (following the brawl, in the third quarter, Hawthorn was spanked by Essendon) and lost players to suspension and injury. The boys had 'fight'.

And the so called 'fight' they displayed? Well, ultimately football is about how effectively and efficiently your team can move the ball from the centre bounce down the field and through the big sticks, at your end. That 'fight' never translated into anything at all. Hawthorn kept right on losing... games, players, coach and all. From this end of the season it now stands out as one more scene in Hawthorn's excruciatingly drawn out fall from ordinary grace. To me, at the time, the brawl looked wretched and tawdry. Why principal Hawthorn officials didn't state something like that unequivocally at the time just reinforces their part in the fall.

Oh, that the Hawthorn story were a great tragedy. That would be magnificent. But it ain't Shakespeare, it's barely Williamson in depth. The warrior prince is Don Scott! He is right in his frustration and noble in his stance but when trapped in the most dreaded of duels - the conversation - he can barely draw a breath let alone a grand vision. He can hardly make a friend let alone 'a picture, and get us all to fit'. For those of us who barrack for the Mighty Hawks but are far removed from the inner sanctum Scott's pleading and insistence appears sincere. He was interviewed on Talking Footy and his 'fight' was palpable. Parkin, seemingly in agreement with Scott's position, was bursting to say something... dramatic, controversial, climatic. But as the Hawthorn story is more Midday Movie than Macbeth, he just spluttered and nodded and sighed.

Hawthorn's annus horribilus began with Schwab's bold assertion that the Hawks would win the premiership and ended with, well you and I both know it continues. It can't stop while people like Brereton, on his radio show this week, argues with a caller about the club having offered Schwab a two year contract, doesn't sound convincing. He resorts to the old favourite and asks the caller what the caller would have done. The caller offers the point that Eade was available. Rather than enlighten us with details as to why that wasn't an option Brereton forcibly and crudely restates the original reason for offering Schwab the two year contract. Listening to this exchange, as a Hawks follower, is troubling.

And it raises that other problematic construct that bedevils Hawthorn and football more generally - can individuals wear two hats (media employee and football club official) simultaneously? While we are listening to Dermot on his radio show we cannot stop knowing that he is directly involved in the events he is editorialising. What we cannot know is to what extent he is wearing his media hat and to what extent he is wearing his club official hat. This makes it impossible to take him seriously, sincerely or simply. I want to take the people who control Hawthorn's destiny seriously. As doomed as Hamlet was, at least he had a point.

During the season, as a Channel Nine employee Dermot took us into the Hawthorn rooms after another one of our 18 losses. Schwab had the players in a locked room. Outside the room Dermot whispered conspiratorially to camera. He was giving us an insider's view. I swear, if somebody ever makes a Spinal Tap version of the football world, they could use this scene, without changing a thing. Brereton spoke about everything and said nothing. I was on my fifth Lowenbrau and I was ahead of his reasoning. Brereton is a smart football thinker. Why was he so obvious in his observations when obviously he could have delved far deeper into the situation and proffered far more interesting insights? Caught in the matrix of conflict of interest he chose to make much ado about nothing rather than offer his truth measure for measure. This is not something the footballer Brereton would be trapped by. Sadly it is something the media Brereton and his parallel, the club official Brereton, are compromised by. Hawthorn is weaker and poorer for it.

Another of Hawthorn's great footballer's media millstones have contributed to its long winter daze of a nightmare. I love Crawf, the footballer. When there was all that kerfufle last year about his involvement with The Footy Show impacting on his game I laughed. Watch him play I argued. He is a great player. His absence this year has shown up how brittle our midfield is and how much further Sam Mitchell and Luke Hodge have to go to be able to truly stamp their style on the game. But he is also the captain. That is a very important title, position and responsibility. So important that in one episode of The Sopranos Kasey Chamber's song The Captain played over the end credits to signify and reinforce that position within structure, hierarchy and hegemony. Why did Crawf make that sludge of a program? When I watched his Channel 9 docu(mocu)mentary I cringed and spluttered and sighed. I only watched 20 minutes. The worst thing about it was that it was so drearily ordinary. I was angry at Shane for being so foolhardy with his position of honour and I was sad for him for his lack of self awareness. How can such an insightful footballer have such blurred vision of his standing and responsibilities? Is there another story to his situation? I hope there is. If there is, I would rather we were told it, for all of the tragedy it might produce. Without that story, the Hawthorn story remains a straight to video release.

The Hawks year has been filled with stuff ups and errors but mostly in a minor key. We haven't deserved the limelight. Our story is not that of Lear's, except the bit about jumping from a cliff that is only a foot high. Our failures on the field are self evident, we don't have the cattle. When Lekkas is one of your five best players you don't have a strong list. However, failures off-field just keep on repeating on us. Fair enough, we didn't handle the sacking of the coach with what is called aplomb. But we positively sparkled sacking the coach in comparison to engaging a new coach. If a Spinal Tap version of football is ever made, well you get the point.

My favourite Benny Hill-Keystone Cops-Kingswood Country part of the search was when Hawthorn decided to be transparent. This was after Richmond snared Wallace and the Bulldogs signed Eade. At that point there seemed like there really was only one obvious candidate - Garry Ayres, a formidable Hawks premiership player, tried and proven coach and very good friend of Brereton. At that point Mark Harvey, an assistant coach at another club and a probable future AFL coach told the media that Hawthorn had given him a bit of a runaround and if he had at some point been interested, he wasn't now. Brereton could have told us that if he wasn't wearing two hats. Hawthorn then decided to get transparent on us and released the list of people it was interviewing for the coaching position. Of and by itself that is an admirable thing to do. Trouble is, if you have a list, particularly a list of potential coaches for a side that has seen better years, that is still remembered as one of the most imposing and impressive teams of the last 100 years and a club that this year has smelled, you would hope that the list would knock the socks off each and every reader. And if Hawthorn's story was Shakespearian it would have. Hawthorn's story is actually just one of the 100s this city holds. The list contained nothing but so what's and who's that.

By the by, I'm glad Hawthorn didn't go for Ayres - one of the few winner decisions made this year. I don't know who Alastair Clarkson is but he sounds like he has a good football background. I will comfort myself with the fact that Mark Thompson, Paul Roos, Chris Connolly, Dean Laidley, John Worsfold, Mark Williams and even Grant Thomas have proven themselves beyond what was initially expected of them.

Hawthorn has had a sucker-punch of a year. That much is evident. We proved nothing through the year except that Everitt has been a great pick up (who would have picked that) and we can punch better than we can kick, mark or handball. The best example of how bad our year has been is the game against Richmond on 22 August. With our season on the line, we won. We fricking won! And in winning that one pathetic game we lifted ourselves off the bottom of the ladder, our lack of pride intact, and kissed goodbye to the thing we needed most - best draft choices. Our season has been that disastrous - we couldn't even lose the game that mattered. That is what I call a tragicomic reality drama in an annus horribilus. Not as much as you would find in Hamlet but something you could sigh and nod and splutter at in an episode of Neighbours.

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