HAWTHORN will this week be seeking to become just the sixth team in 119 seasons of VFL-AFL football to win three consecutive Premierships.
The Hawks have already become just the second team in over 50 years to reach the Grand Final in the season after back-to-back flags.
Only Brisbane Lions (2003) managed it, while those who did not were Melbourne (1961), Richmond (1975), Carlton (1983), Essendon (1986), Hawthorn (1990) and Adelaide (1999).
In total, 11 previous back-to-back premiers have reached another decider.
The five winners were Carlton (1908), Collingwood (1929), Melbourne (in both 1941 and 1957) and Brisbane Lions (2003), while the six who fell at the final hurdle were Fitzroy (1900 and 1906), Carlton (1916), Collingwood (1937), Essendon (1951) and Geelong (1953).
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If Hawthorn can win its 13th premiership on Saturday, it will become the fourth most successful club in VFL-AFL history, moving ahead of Melbourne.
The Hawks would be behind only Carlton (16), Essendon (16) and Collingwood (15). Those four clubs all had a 28-season head-start on the Hawks as they entered the league at its inception in 1897, while Hawthorn did not join until 1925.
It is interesting to reflect that at the end of 1960, when Hawthorn was still without a flag, Collingwood had already won 13, Melbourne 11, Essendon 10 and Carlton 8.
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This Saturday will see Hawthorn play a league game in October for just the second time in club history.
The Hawks only previous October game was the 1963 Grand Final against Geelong, which was played on 5 October. In that year, a round of the home-and-away season was washed out and all subsequent games were pushed back a week.
Hawthorn lost the 1963 Grand Final by 49 points, so will be seeking its first ever October win this week.
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2015 will be just the third 26-game season in club history, joining 1985 and 1987.
As the only player to have played every game in 2015, Shaun Burgoyne will thus join a select group to have played a 26-game season for Hawthorn. Burgoyne will this week join Gordon Coventry in equal second place on the all-time VFL-AFL Finals’ tally with 31 (14 at Port, 17 at Hawthorn), behind only Michael Tuck’s extraordinary record of 39.
Only one individual played every game in 1985, Rod Lester-Smith. In contrast, 1987 had six ever-presents – Peter Curran, Greg Dear, John Kennedy Jnr, Chris Langford, John Platten and Michael Tuck.
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The magnitude of Hawthorn’s preliminary final win at Domain Stadium should not be underestimated.
Following the introduction of the current version of the eight in 2000, the Hawks have become just the fourth of 32 semi final winners to have managed to defeat a qualifying final winner in a preliminary final. The good news is that all three teams who previously did so, Brisbane Lions (2003), Sydney (2005) and West Coast (2006) went on to win the flag.
Even more striking is that since a preliminary final was first played outside Victoria in 1994, nine Victorian teams have played prelims interstate and only the 2015 Hawks have returned home victorious.
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Hawthorn has a 12-6 record in Grand Finals and a 52-29 record in finals. Against West Coast, the Hawks are 1-0 in Grand Finals and 2-2 in Finals.
The Grand Final was the 1991 decider, the only one played at Waverley Park. A crowd of 75,230 saw Hawthorn recover from a slow start to defeat the Eagles – 20.19 (139) to 13.8 (86).
Jason Dunstall booted six goals and Dermott Brereton four, but it was young guns such as Norm Smith Medallist Paul Dear, Steven Lawrence and Anthony Condon who were particularly impressive for the Hawks.
The Hawks other finals’ victory against West Coast, was the 1991 qualifying final, while the defeats were a 1992 elimination final and this season’s qualifying final. In total, the two clubs have met 45 times, with the Hawks winning 20 and losing 25.
Not only have the Hawks and Eagles not played a final at the MCG, they have only met there four times, despite the ground being Hawthorn’s home for the last 16 seasons. The Hawks have won three of the four with victories in 2001, 2008 and 2012 versus a solitary narrow loss by just 10 points in West Coast’s 2006 premiership-winning campaign.
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Sam Mitchell has become just the sixth player in VFL-AFL history to record 200 career Brownlow votes and in the process went past Leigh Matthews to become Hawthorn’s highest ever vote getter.
Mitchell now has 204 career votes, compared to Matthews’ 202, with the latter’s tally also assisted by the practice of both umpires voting separately in 1976-77. Of the top 12 career vote-getters, only Mitchell, Matthews and North’s Brent Harvey have not won the medal.
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Before 2012, only two former Hawks had played against the club in a subsequent Grand Final, David Flintoff doing so for Melbourne in 1988 and Gary Ablett for Geelong in 1989.
In the past three seasons there have been a spate of new instances with Josh Kennedy in 2012 and 2014; Luke McPharlin and Zac Dawson in 2013; and Ben McGlynn and Lance Franklin last season. Now, in 2015, Xavier Ellis will join the list.
If West Coast win, Ellis would join Barry Rowlings (Hawthorn 1976 and Richmond 1980) and Darren Jarman (Hawthorn 1991 and Adelaide 1997-98) as players to have been part of a Hawthorn Premiership team and then another elsewhere, but he would be the first to do so playing against his former club. Stuart Dew and Shaun Burgoyne have played in Hawthorn flags having already won one elsewhere.
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This week the Hawthorn number 2 will appear in its 18th Grand Final, relegating number 23 to second with 17 out of 19. The number 2 will have been worn by Chris Mew (seven Grand Finals), Jarryd Roughead (five - including this week), Graham Arthur (three) and Geoff Ablett (three). The only Grand Final where the number was not worn was 1983, after Ablett departed and before Mew moved down from number 46.
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The most goals kicked by a Hawthorn player in a Grand Final are the eight by Dermott Brereton in the 78-point loss to Essendon in 1985. Jason Dunstall kicked seven in 1988, plus six in 1986 and 1991.
Others to kick six were Leigh Matthews in 1983 and Paul Abbott in 1988. Jarryd Roughead’s eight goals in Launceston last season was a new Hawthorn record against West Coast, surpassing Dunstall’s seven in both 1988 and 1989.
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