There's no better way to celebrate Hawthorn's 100th year in the VFL/AFL than with a brief recap of the club's success over these years.

The key stat to know is that Hawthorn won more premierships than any other club from 1925 to 2024. Hawthorn’s 13 is one ahead of Melbourne’s 12 in that period, followed by Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond all with 11, then Essendon and Geelong with 10.

What makes the Hawks’ premiership efficiency even more remarkable is that the club’s overall win-loss in the VFL/ AFL is still in deficit by 44, having had 1,025 wins compared to 1,069 losses and 13 draws in 2,107 games.

Hawthorn also won more night/pre-season premierships than any other club, with the Hawks’ nine being comfortably ahead of the next highest, which was Essendon with six.

In the 100 seasons since joining, Hawthorn has had the leading goalkicker in 15 seasons, one more than the next highest, which is Geelong with 14. In addition, Hawthorn has the most 300-game players, with Luke Bruest’s 300^th last September taking the club tally to nine, two ahead of Richmond and Western Bulldogs, which both have had seven, while Carlton, Geelong and North Melbourne have all had six.

From 1925 to 2024, Hawthorn used 973 AFL players, with Michael Tuck playing the most games (426). At the other end of the scale, there were 86 one-gamers, from Reg Whitehead, whose only game was Round 1 1925, to Ethan Phillips in Round 10 last season.

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In only three seasons in its VFL/ AFL history has Hawthorn recovered from 0-5 starts to the season to finish with at least 10 wins. Those seasons were 1960, 1970 and 2024. We know what happened in 1961 and 1971, but what will happen in 2025?

This year will see Hawthorn’s earliest-ever start to a VFL/ AFL season, with 7 March being six days earlier than the previous record, which was Monday, 13 March in the year 2000, when the season was brought forward due to the Sydney Olympics taking place in the second half of September.

This 2025 start is eight weeks earlier than the start of Hawthorn’s first-ever VFL/ AFL season which was 2 May 1925. April starts were common for most of the club’s history before the first-ever March game in 1980.

However, it is also worth remembering that in the days of pre-season competition, Hawthorn played competitive games as early as 30 January in 2000, and on 6 February as far back as 1991.

2025 is the second occasion in which Hawthorn has started a VFL/ AFL season with a game that does not form part of Round 1.

The previous occasion was 40 years ago in 1985 when the league brought forward the Grand Final rematch between Hawthorn and Essendon from Round 3 to be played a week before Round 1.

On a very warm day in late March, a disappointing crowd of 41,694 went to Waverley and saw Hawthorn lose to Essendon by 14 points – 15.10.100 to 17.12.114. Dermott Brereton kicked four goals and, in an impressive debut, 23-year-old boom Western Australian recruit Steve Malaxos (who featured on the front of the Football Record for the game) kicked three goals and had 21 disposals. Malaxos was the 700^th player to represent the Hawks.

The postponement of the Thursday night game this week means that Hawthorn will play the standalone first game of the season for the first time since 1992.

In that season, Hawthorn kicked off the season at Waverley on a Saturday afternoon with a 20-point win against Geelong, with the only other game that day a night game at Carrara. The only other previous Hawthorn standalone games to commence a season were in 1991 when Hawthorn lost to Adelaide at Football Park on a Friday night and 1985 (as above).

When Tom Barrass makes his Hawthorn debut, he will be the first player to move directly from West Coast to the Hawks. Three former West Coast players have subsequently played for Hawthorn – Brendan Krummel, Paul Johnson and Matt Spangher – but all came via other clubs - Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney respectively.

There has been substantially more traffic in the other direction with seven Hawks, including current coach Sam Mitchell, departing directly for West Coast and one ending up there via another club.

In contrast, Josh Battle will become the 21st Hawthorn player to join after previously playing for St Kilda. In fact, three members of Hawthorn’s first-ever VFL/ AFL team in Round 1 1925 had previously played for the Saints.

Hawthorn has won six of its last nine games against Sydney at the SCG, including thrilling wins by margins of seven (2012), five (2016), six (2017) and nine (2018).

Who could forget the exciting goals kicked by Brad Sewell (2012), Cyril Rioli (2016) and Jarryd Roughead (2017) to clinch victories, remarkably all three being preceded by goals from the maestro of the tight finish, Shaun Burgoyne? In Round 23 2018, goals from Harry Morrison, Ricky Henderson and Luke Breust took the margin from a deficit of nine to a nine-point win and clinched a top-four place.

The most recent SCG win in 2021 saw the 17^th-placed Hawks upset sixth-placed Sydney by 38 points – 14.5.89 to 7.9.51. Jai Newcombe had a record 14 tackles on debut, and there were also outstanding performances from Sam Frost, Changkuoth Jiath, Tom Mitchell and Jon Ceglar.

Overall, Hawthorn has a 16-15 advantage in games against the Swans at the SCG and a 17-16 record at the ground overall, having also beaten North Melbourne there in 1979, but lost to Gold Coast in 2021. The Hawks and Swans also played four times at Stadium Australia recording two wins apiece.

In total, Hawthorn has played South Melbourne / Sydney 172 times, recording 94 wins, 76 defeats and two draws. Hawthorn beat the Swans 13 consecutive times from 1971 to 1977, and 11 times in a row from 1981 to 1986.

Peter Hudson holds the individual goals record for Hawthorn against the Swans, twice kicking 13, in both 1969 and 1970.