Prior to this season’s five, the previous record was four in 1962 when Rod Olsson, Des Dickson, Robert Porter and Norm Watson debuted. In 1979, there were three new players (Brendan McFaull, John Kennedy Jnr. and Robert Polkinghorne), plus one import club debutant (Terry Moore) in the opening ten rounds.
On several occasions, there have been three early debuts in post-Premiership seasons. For quality, it would be hard to go past 1972 which saw John Hendrie, Kelvin Matthews and Michael Tuck all appear within ten rounds, although the 1990 trio of Paul Hudson, Paul Cooper and Ben Allan were also pretty handy.
Alastair Clarkson and the coaching staff will have to keep introducing new players if they want to retain the record for a complete season. In 1962, the Hawks ended up playing eight debutants in that 18-game season, while 1972 had seven.
Looking at other clubs, the stand-out example in the modern era is Adelaide, which played ten new players (including two imports) as they successfully defended their title in 1998, and then another ten (one import) as they slumped to 13th in 1999.
Liam Shiels’ status as the youngest player on any club’s Senior list in 2009 has been well documented, but historically making one’s debut aged 18 years, 32 days is not strikingly young.
In the 1950s, two players made their Hawthorn debuts when only 16 years old. John Peck was 16 years, 255 days when he debuted in Round 1, 1954 and then, two years later, Garry Young made his first appearance when aged 16 years, 328 days. Both Peck and Young went on to be members of Hawthorn’s first Finals team in 1957 and first Premiership team in 1961.
Until the 1970s, players regularly debuted at 17, with names such as Leigh Matthews, Peter Knights, Alan Martello, Robert Dipierdomenico and Gary Ayres all beginning at that age. In recent decades, debuting at 17 has become rare at Hawthorn, with Jonathan Hay (17 years, 347 days) in 1997 and Luke Hodge (17 years, 315 days) in 2002 among the rare exceptions.
Three of the top four comebacks from half time deficits in Hawthorn history have occurred in years ending in 9. Most readers will remember the comeback from 49 points behind (56 points in second quarter) against Geelong in 1989 and the one from 44 points down (63 points in second quarter) against St Kilda in 1999, but few will remember the game 60 years ago this round when the 1949 Hawks overturned a 39 point half-time to beat St Kilda at Glenferrie.
The newspapers were not confident of Hawthorn success before the game, with The Sun commenting that “without Kevin Curran Hawthorn’s rucks look lamentably short of ability and physical strength”. These bleak assessments were proved correct when the Hawks were “outplayed everywhere in the first half” and were “unable to produce any semblance of system”. The only bright spots had been Col Austen, whose “uncanny ability in defence saved the team from further disaster” and ‘Butch’ Prior, who booted 3 goals in the second quarter – all from free kicks.
Captain-coach Alec Albiston made a series of positional changes at half time, the most significant of which was probably the move of Clive Philp to full-back, which cut the output of the Saints full-forward to one goal in the second half, after booting 5 to half-time.
While the Hawks looked better after half-time, it was not until late in the third quarter that they got the run of unanswered goals which put them right back in the game. Consecutive majors, from Le Nepveu, Prior, Anderson and Prior again, saw the margin cut to two goals at the final change. Goals to McKinnon and Albiston levelled the scores at 12.9 apiece, before a St Kilda major looked to have ended the Hawthorn charge. The Sporting Globe takes up the story: “It was a ding-dong struggle with Hawthorn battling tenaciously to keep position. They achieved their objective and finishing on, won a keenly contested game by 8 points.”
Prior 6, Anderson 3 and Le Nepveu 2 were the leading goal-kickers while best players were Austen (surely one of the games which contributed to his Brownlow win that season), Anderson, Albiston, Philp, Hopper, Prior, Prowse, Pearson and Robison.
Unfortunately, this was one of only three wins for Hawthorn in 1949, and the season ended with the club’s 8th wooden spoon in 25 League seasons, as they finished one win behind St Kilda on the ladder.
For those wondering what the only bigger comeback in a year not ending in 9, it was in 1973 when the Hawks overturned a 40 point half-time deficit to beat Melbourne by 7 points at the MCG.
Sydney is the only team that Hawthorn has only beaten once in the Clarkson era. That sole success was at the MCG in Round 15 last season – 15.16.106 to 10.15.75. Lance Franklin and Mark Williams each kicked 4 goals and Jarryd Roughead 3. Williams got 3 Brownlow votes and Franklin 1, while other good players were Osborne, Gilham, Hodge, Murphy and Brown.
The Swans had won six clashes in a row (2004-07), before the Hawks had success last season, and have already beaten the Hawks once in 2009 - at Stadium Australia in Round 2.
Overall, Hawthorn has played South Melbourne / Sydney 144 times for 78 wins, 64 defeats and two draws. The best sequence of wins was 13 from 1971 to 1977, followed by 11 from 1981 to 1986.
Two of the three draws in which Hawthorn has played in the past 40 years have taken place in Round 11. In this round in 1985, Hawthorn drew with North Melbourne at the MCG, in the first game in which John Kennedy Snr. coached against the Hawks, while in 1999 Hawthorn and the Bulldogs drew at Princes Park.
Hawthorn last played on the Monday of the Queen’s Birthday weekend back in 1995, beating Sydney at Waverley by 42 points, in a game best remembered for Shayne Stevenson kicking a goal with a broken leg. That was the second most recent time the two clubs have met in Round 11, the one since then being at the MCG in 2007, when the Swans won a tight encounter by 9 points.
Round 11 is one of Hawthorn’s worst rounds. Overall, the club has won just 31 of the 84 games it has played in the round (51 defeats and two draws). In the past ten seasons, Round 11 has produced just two wins (versus Adelaide in 2003 and Essendon last season) and one draw (against the Bulldogs at Princes Park in 1999).
Peter Hudson holds the individual goals record for Hawthorn against the Swans, twice kicking 13, one of which is also the Round 11 record. He kicked 13 goals against South Melbourne in consecutive matches in Round 11, 1969 and Round 8, 1970. Both matches were at Glenferrie and on both occasions he kicked the very accurate 13.2.
