This Saturday’s clash with West Coast gives Hawthorn the opportunity to record a win over a reigning premiership team for the first time in more than 10 years.

The last time the Hawks beat the flag-holders was in Round 16, 1996, when 1995 premiers Carlton were thrashed by 49 points on a Saturday night at Waverley Park

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The Round 9 match at Aurora Stadium will see Trent Croad become the 48th Hawk to play 150 League games for the Club. 

He would have been the 50th to reach the mark if two of his former teammates, Daniel Chick and Jonathan Hay, had managed one more game each.  If anyone had been asked at the commencement of the 2002 season which of the three players was the least likely to play 150 games for Hawthorn, the recently departed Croad would have been the obvious answer.  Of course, while, Croad returned to the Hawks after playing 38 matches for Fremantle, Chick departed the Club at the end of 2002, having played 149 games, while Hay left at the end of 2005, also having played 149 games.

Croad is one of only four Hawthorn players to have returned to the Club after playing for another League club.  The others were Lew Gough (12 Hawthorn games interrupted by 5 Melbourne games), George Bennett (92 Hawthorn games, plus 108 at Footscray) and 1976 Premiership player Bernie Jones (73 Hawthorn games and 13 at Essendon).

Players to have returned to their original club after a spell at Hawthorn are Keith Fleming, Paul Salmon and Aaron Lord.

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Last week’s Footy Flashbacks noted the unusual fact that Hawthorn had oscillated between 8th and 5th on the ladder for five weeks in a row.  Well as readers would know, the Round 8 win saw the Hawks bounce back up to 5th, extending the sequence to six and setting a new club record, breaking the previous mark of five set in Rounds 14-18, 1965 when Hawthorn were 12th, 10th, 12th, 10th and 12th over the last five weeks of that season.

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What is nowhere near a record is the fact that the Hawks have alternated victory and defeat for five consecutive rounds.  The club record for alternating results is 10, set between Rounds 11 and 20, 2000 when the Hawks lost in the five odd numbered rounds and won in the five even ones.

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2007 is only the third season since 1990 in which Hawthorn has recorded as many as five wins in the first eight rounds.  In 2001, the Hawks won the first eight games straight while, in 2002, the team also had a 5-3 record. 

In all four years from 1991 to 1994, the Hawks had four wins and a bye in the opening eight rounds and, as in each of those seasons the team won its Round 9 match, those seasons also saw Hawthorn with a 5-3 record at one stage.

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This Saturday will be the fourth clash between Hawthorn and West Coast at Aurora Stadium.  The previous three encounters have all been close with the Hawks winning by two points in Round 2, 2003, and the Eagles by four points in Round 15, 2004 and by 19 points in Round 7, 2005.  The sequence of close matches in Hawthorn’s home games against West Coast continued at the MCG in Round 14 last season, when the Eagles got home by 10 points.

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Hawthorn and West Coast have met a total of 31 times with the Hawks winning 10 and the Eagles 21. The head-to-head record got off to a poor start in 1987 when Hawthorn lost the two encounters by 12 points and one point, despite the Hawks being one of the year’s grand finalists and the Eagles non-finalists.

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Hawthorn has played 82 matches in Round 9 for 35 wins and 47 defeats. The Club has a poor recent record in Round 9, with the win against Fremantle in Perth in 2005 being the only success in the past six Round 9 starts.

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The leading individual goal-kicker in Round 9 for Hawthorn was Peter Hudson, who booted 10 (versus Fitzroy) in this round in 1968.  Jason Dunstall holds the record for the most goals by a Hawthorn player against West Coast, kicking seven in both 1988 and 1989.

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1957 – 50 years on

Round 7, 1957
Saturday, 1 June, 1957 at Glenferrie
Hawthorn 11.11.77 d. Footscray 7.8.50

Third placed Hawthorn consolidated its place in the Four with a 27 point win over fifth placed Footscray.  The match attracted a bumper Glenferrie crowd of 26,000, a tribute both to Hawthorn’s new status and to the unseasonably warm weather.

Hawthorn went into the game with the same XVIII that had won at Windy Hill the previous Saturday, as Les Kaine failed to recover from injury.  There was also an early bonus when Ted Whitten was a late withdrawal from the Footscray side.

While Essendon and Hawthorn had produced only three goals in the previous week’s first half, this week there was double that amount.  Still, the six goals led to a newspaper assessment that “it was not a game of inspiring football”.  However, it was also noted that “Hawthorn were slowly emerging as the better team”, a trend which was to become much more evident after half-time.

Terry Ingersoll had a terrific purple patch in the third term, booting three goals in less than five minutes.  The first came from a pass by Len Crane, the second from a free kick and the third from a pass by Brendan Edwards.   Ingersoll’s four goals for the match took him to 17 for the season and eighth place on the League goal-kicking table.

Age football writer, Percy Beames, was impressed by the fact that Hawthorn “after putting the game beyond doubt with a telling third quarter effort” still began the final quarter “as though the match was still in the balance”.  He saw this as an indication that “for the first time in years, the Hawks showed some sign of a killer instinct”.  Beames also opined that “evenness all over the field, rather than brilliance, is behind the success of the Hawks”.

Another match report described how the Hawks “backed up well and confused their opponents with snappy handball”.  Footscray’s goal-to-goal was less effective than expected as Hawthorn by-passed the key players by going around the flanks.  While in the early rounds of 1957 Hawthorn’s rovers had copped some criticism, on this occasion they “scouted cleverly” to a winning ruck combination.

The best players were Edwards, Kennedy, Gent, Arthur, Hughes and Ingersoll.

Defeats of other leading sides meant Hawthorn’s victory took them back to the top of the ladder.

Player of the week

Brendan Edwards was the unanimous choice as best-on-the-ground against Footscray in Round 7, 1957.

He played on the wing all day and it was noted that “his marking and clever ball handling gained him many kicks and each time he initiated forward moves for Hawthorn”.  In the third quarter when Hawthorn pulled away for a winning lead, Edwards gave terrific drive.  It was reported that the co-operation between Edwards and Graham Arthur “was the finest … for a long time”.

At this stage, 21 year old Edwards was in just his second season with Hawthorn, having joined the club from Sandhurst for the 1956 season.  He had managed nine games in his debut year, but was to miss only one in 1957.  In all, he played 109 games for the club - 100 of them in the six seasons to 1961, and then a further nine, when he made a short-lived comeback in 1963 that was ended by a knee injury. 

Edwards finished second in the 1958 Brownlow Medal and won the 1960 club best & fairest.

Edwards was well known as a fitness fanatic and he is given much credit for establishing the circuit training that, for many years, gave Hawthorn the fitness edge on its rivals. The Hard Way describes how initially in 1957, as a physical education student at Melbourne University, he was the sole team member doing circuit training outside normal team training sessions.  John Kennedy and Graham Arthur were impressed with the results and joined Edwards in the training in 1958.  When the three of them had excellent seasons coach, Jack Hale, made circuit work a part of the whole team’s training in 1959.

While few may remember Edwards best-on-the-ground performance in Round 7, 1957, as long as there is a Hawthorn, Edwards will be remembered for another best on the ground effort against Footscray on another more famous occasion – the 1961 Grand Final – a game in which he amassed 33 kicks.

 
Goals:              Ingersoll 4, Yeoman 2, Arthur, Young, Kennedy, O’Brien,
Falcolner.

Attendance:     26,000