Numbers Game: Ayres on McEvoy

WINS and losses, goals and points, kicks and handballs, and guernsey numbers made famous by the feats of footballers wearing them in September.

There’s no denying football is a numbers game.

Hawthorn has had plenty of players deliver in big finals over the years, and the current crop of Hawks will be striving to bring more success and silverware to the club in 2015.

hawthornfc.com.au caught up with a number of former Hawks greats, who talk about finals football and the player currently wearing the guernsey number they enjoyed success in.

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“The number one priority for me as a player was to do what I could for the side, and if that meant possibly inspiring your teammates by the actions that you put in out on the field… usually that meant you were going to win.”

While most AFL players don’t get to taste the ultimate success, Gary Ayres reached the footballing pinnacle five times, and along the way claimed two Norm Smith medals - one of only three players in history to have done so.

Described as a rock of a backman, great under pressure and one who also went through the midfield with equal effect, Ayres was a critical part of one Hawthorn’s greatest eras.

“If you didn’t make the finals, it was certainly seen as a failure and once you got a taste for it, it was something that to the normal person would be hard to describe.” Ayres said.

“During that unbelievably great era at the Hawks of the late 70s and the 80s and early 90s, that was just a constant right throughout.”

Wearing the number seven guernsey over his 269 games in the brown and gold, Ayres pointed to the Hawks’ ability to recruit players to fill vital roles as a driving factor behind their immense and sustained success.

“They just had a wonderful knack of being selective in their recruiting and being able to just add a little bit more to the current crop,” Ayres, coach of VFL club Port Melbourne, said.

“The club was just able to keep giving itself the best opportunity.”

It’s something the Hawks of today have been able to continue, such as when they recruited ruckman and current number seven, Ben McEvoy, to the club in 2014.

With the nickname ‘Big Boy,’ there’s no doubt McEvoy has a big role to play.

“With Ben its very much about first use out of the middle of ground, especially setting up at the centre bounces,” Ayres said.

“Then his contested work in and around the play in a general sense, obviously taking marks and then of course drifting forward.”

“So McEvoy certainly would be able to, or wanting his role to be, contest, give them first use of the football and hopefully win their fair share of clearances I would have thought.”

As some of Hawthorn’s current generation of premiership stars shoot for their third or fourth grand final victory, Ayres said it is a feeling that only gets more special, after tasting the greatest success in 1983, ’86, ’88, ’89 and ’91.

“When you won your first premiership it was such a wonderful feeling, sensation…”

“And then to go and play in another four winning ones, they just became really, really special, because you don’t know how long your career is going to go for and when these opportunities arise you certainly don’t want to waste them.”