HAWTHORN, says skipper Richie Vandenberg, must “move on veryquickly” from its demoralising 72-point trouncing by the Swans if it is to gainthe right mindset for next Saturday’s crunch elimination final against Adelaide at Telstra Dome.
“All year we’ve been able to bounce back from a bad loss,”Vandenberg said after the game in Sydney.
“The boys take losses pretty badly, and they’ve taken thisone to heart. At this time of year you’ve got to have a certain level ofconfidence without being too arrogant. With the young group we’ve got, if we’reable to erase this game from our minds we’ll go into the game pretty confident.We’ll be on our home deck. We’ll have our home ground. It’s going to be a great battle.”
Vandenberg believes the defeat by the Swans, which cost theHawks a top-four spot, will serve as a “good little lesson” going into thefinals series.
“We came up here with a reasonable level of confidence,knowing what was at stake. We thought if we could get our game going we’d be agood chance, but full credit to Sydney.They were spot-on today,” Vandenberg said.
The captain praised the Swans’ ability to peak at the businessend of the season.
“They’ve been a little bit up and down but they always seemto find the right form at the right time of year. They certainly did it again.”
The game was effectively over as a contest by half time,with the Sydneysiders ahead by 71 points, outscoring the Hawks by a stunning 14goals to three.
“We didn’t get our game going at all. We didn’t get ourstructures right early on. Certainly after half time we were much morecompetitive, and that’s because we were able to get our game going and ourstructures set up.”
Vandenberg believes his charges face a similar challenge fromthe Crows next weekend.
“Adelaideis a very good side. They play a good structured and disciplined game. Obviouslywe’ll do a lot of reviewing of their game against St. Kilda during the week.”
Despite the loss, the 30-year-old says that he and the othersenior players are just relieved to be in their first finals campaign since2001.
“Myself, Dico [Ben Dixon] and [Shane] Crawford have beenaround the club for 10 years and we’ve only played one finals campaign. It’sgoing to be a great experience for our young blokes also, and it’s somethingwe’ve been waiting for and looking forward to for a long time.”
