Autopsy Round 5, 2024 - Suns destroy hopeless Hawks

[Sturty]

Butler nowhere near AFL level just yet
Our midfield falloff needs to be studied
First quarters horrendous, again.

 

[mustang]

I wasn't convinced we had bottomed out the last few years.

Looks like happening this year.

We need more A grade talent before we launch up the ladder.

And we have traded alot of our draft picks out this year.

 

[tommyk72]

I'm so so unsurprised by the outcome of last night. Multiple six day breaks where we put in a HEAP of effort to match it with very good sides, playing in the wet, etc. The outcome didn't surprise at all. I think I posted something earlier this week or last noting that everyone was very excited about the youngsters, but that people would be crucifying the team in a week. Exactly what has happened.

The one area I'm worried about is our onball brigade. Nash, Duke look lost out there. They should be providing the platform and the CMacs and Wards providing bit part contributions. Something seriously going wrong there. The problem is that the cupboard is bare. I don't think adding in any of the team from BHH (who also got smashed) would do us any good.

Hoping we can sneak a win next week. Otherwise, we'll just have to ride this out until mid year when we have Day, CJ, etc. back with a few more games under their belt.

 

[TylerDurden]

 

[TylerDurden]

Sicily looks shot. His last quarter fwd was absolutely putrid. He just gave up. When your best player and captain is doing that, what hope do you have?

Sam looked absolutely shattered. You hope we've bottomed out. Next week will tell us.

 

[danielG]

Absolutely. We have a group of guys that are exactly the same build with no tackling strength that run around like headless chickens. The most horrendous skill levels I’ve seen in 2024. VFL teams would beat us. This is not a rebuild but have employed Whelan the wrecker. Two players that have any currency on the open market are Weddle and Worpel. The rest wouldn’t get picked at a lunchtime school match. What is Sam Mitchell and his line coaches doing. Particularly midfield. Even Burgoyne in his TV commentary was saying to try something different in the midfield because whatever is going on in there is not working. Hawthorn is NOT working for whatever reason and we are other teams training drill.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

Went to the game last night… I’m not one to bag my team, they've given me great joy supporting for much of my life but that performance was weak as water.. There was no spirit, or hurt evident when they were being dismantled.. Pity Box Hill didn’t perform because there needs to be some Casualties at selection.. How does a starting midfielder get three possessions in a half? To get subbed at half time says a lot, I like McKenzie but he didn’t show up..Ward, same. Newcomb, passive, did nothing, he’s been a let down in all but one game this year.. Sicily is the captain and not leading by example at all.. something is amiss there because he’s been outrageously good for the last couple of years and not giving a yelp this year, looks overwhelmed by the responsibility. Maribor seemed defeated by the occasion and was a witches hat out there.. I liked the coaches comment’s afterwards, Not acceptable and requires change.. makes next week a very interesting clash against Kangas.. I hope we bring a different mindset than last night…

 

[FB19]

Noah Anderson

15

Noah Anderson

Age

23

Ht

192cm

Wt

88kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

12.0

3star

K

6.0

2star

HB

6.0

4star

M

2.0

2star

T

0.0

1star

CL

0.0

1star

D

12.0

3star

K

6.0

2star

HB

6.0

3star

M

2.0

2star

T

0.0

1star

CL

0.0

1star

D

12.0

3star

K

6.0

3star

HB

6.0

4star

M

2.0

3star

T

0.0

1star

CL

0.0

1star

son of hawthorn legend Dean Anderson had 2 more touches than our 3 starting mids combined. Never seen anything like that our midfield is deep but currently likely bottom 3 in the comp and besides Day no match winners. Nash has to be dropped for Hustwaite enough is enough and wtaf is up with Newk. Credit to Mass Finn Scrim Meek who I thought played well.’l Finn with the prominence of the HB role might have found his spot.
Anyone who thinks the clubs strategy of hitting the draft hard 2021-23 is enough doesn’t understand the definition of the phrase as I’ve said a lot. Our list is pretty average and our 2021 draft is a real worry. 2022 looks good however which is something.
I hate to say it but there is a part of me that thinks we need to lose to North next week to get people to wake up or we risk being St Kilda.

 

[Buckemenico]

Reality is this.
All teams have at least one top 5 pick in their midfield and usually more.
Presently we have none. Just do not have the talent to stack up to most teams at the moment. The mid plan has to change. Hustwaite was seriously our best mid at getting the ball and only played one half. Tired of watching the current lot of mids getting thumped weekly. But we don’t have talent sorry.

 

[Flamin Joe]

Chol needs to take those marks.

My other biggest criticism of Chol is that in general play he is slow to react and tries to do too much. Sometimes you just need to take the first option and fire a quick handball/kick off to another player in a better position instead of trying to do it all yourself. Instead he seems to think he's Buddy and tries to side-step around opponents and gets caught holding the ball, or in the case of the game vs Collingwood he's in the goal sqaure and decides to step around an opponent and spray the shot. There was no time or space for fancy manoeuvres he just needed to take the shot!

Right now I can’t see us beating North as our hunger for the contest is just not there.

I have a feeling we will respond after this game and beat North, only to come crashing down when Sydney "Ronke's" us at the G.

 

[HedgeFund]

Noah Anderson son of hawthorn legend Dean Anderson had 2 more touches than our 3 starting mids combined. Never seen anything like that our midfield is deep but currently likely bottom 3 in the comp and besides Day no match winners. Nash has to be dropped for Hustwaite enough is enough and wtaf is up with Newk.
Anyone who thinks the clubs strategy of hitting the draft hard 2021-23 is enough doesn’t understand the definition of the phrase as I’ve said a lot. Our list is pretty average and our 2021 draft is a real worry. 2022 looks good however which is something.
I hate to say it but there is a part of me that thinks we need to lose to North next week to get people to wake up or we risk being St Kilda.

Agree with your post save for the claim that our midfield is deep.

Our midfield isn’t deep. It simply isn’t. Gold Coast’s midfield, Melbourne’s midfield, they are both deep and full of elite players. We are far from that.

The top 4 spots in last years’ PCM were occupied by mids because elsewhere in the team on the ground (defence/forward) we didn’t click as well as they did.

That doesn’t make our midfield elite in 2023, and we can all agree they’ve been far from elite in 2024!

It just means they’re the guys who did what the coaches asked of them that season - and got votes as a result.

Our actual ball use in 2023 from that midfield was pretty ordinary once we got hands on it.

Slowly but surely we have to get cleaner ball users into our mix. One touch players like Miller, who never fumble, can scoop the ball up below their knees like it’s second nature, etc. at the moment, we have some hard headed “choppers” who seem lost and down in confidence.

Reckon we have to re-jig the midfield mix a bit and play North with a couple of “wildcards” plugged into the middle of the ground.

 

[FB19]

Agree with your post save for the claim that our midfield is deep.

Our midfield isn’t deep. It simply isn’t. Gold Coast’s midfield, Melbourne’s midfield, they are both deep and full of elite players. We are far from that.

The top 4 spots in last years’ PCM were occupied by mids because elsewhere in the team on the ground (defence/forward) we didn’t click as well as they did.

That doesn’t make our midfield elite in 2023, and we can all agree they’ve been far from elite in 2024!

It just means they’re the guys who did what the coaches asked of them that season - and got votes as a result.

Our actual ball use in 2023 from that midfield was pretty ordinary once we got hands on it.

Slowly but surely we have to get cleaner ball users into our mix. One touch players like Miller, who never fumble, can scoop the ball up below their knees like it’s second nature, etc. at the moment, we have some hard headed “choppers” who seem lost and down in confidence.

Reckon we have to re-jig the midfield mix a bit and play North with a couple of “wildcards” plugged into the middle of the ground.

It’s deep in volume not in proven talent you are totally right. Agree I would make a statement and send Nash Mackenzie Ward to box hill. Bring in hustwaite morrison Serong.

 

[hfc70]

Can you show Andy Maher and me, on this doll, where the Hawthorn Football Club has hurt you in 2024 ?

 

[lethalselbow]

Needing some KPPs into the side. Too small down back and up forward.

Unfortunately Ethan Phillips didn't play for Box Hill and Lewis is listed as a 1-2 weeks. Noodle on crutches isn't good for our ruck depth. DGB still 2 months away. The other talls too raw.

Serong to come in this week. He's list as 193cm, but how tall is he really?

 

[BobHawk]

The team has shown, in patches, that it can play quiet well. So I think we need to focus on there being a potential issue either at the club itself, the coaching staff or the playing group. I think it is pointless to constantly be throwing players names up in the air as the reason for the problem. It has to be something bigger than that. There is something not quite right.

 

[blackheart]

 

[daniel23]

Reality is this.
All teams have at least one top 5 pick in their midfield and usually more.
Presently we have none. Just do not have the talent to stack up to most teams at the moment. The mid plan has to change. Hustwaite was seriously our best mid at getting the ball and only played one half. Tired of watching the current lot of mids getting thumped weekly. But we don’t have talent sorry.

We have a pick 6+7 though, let's not pretend that the gap between pick 5 and 7 is that big. The players we have picked are cream on top, it's pretty obvious they don't have that inside ability.

 

[Billyc]

That was really grim. At 0-5 it’s our worst start to a season in 54 years. The biggest concern is the marked regression in so many players. Development of players and game plan a real concern now.

 

[LunchboxLegend]

The result was pretty much as expected.
Hopefully this post won't be deleted (yet again) but as I said pre-season (and got deleted), we will do well to win seven games this year, and I am certainly sticking with that.
Despite all the mis-guided optimism that seems to float all over here, the reality is we have a terrible list, and it is showing.
As a club with only two A grade players on the list, we just couldn't afford to lose one of them long-term, and even worse, the other is having his worst season thus far in memory.
There are so many players getting a game that are clearly not AFL standard at the moment, you couldn't expect anything else.
Still, the positives:
Hustwaite looked good, but was absolutely crucified by horrible, incompetent umpiring. Promising performance.
Meek looked good against one of the comps best ruckmen, I thought he at least broke even.
Scrimshaw is playing like the top 10 pick he is.
Amon putting together a great season, reckon at this stage he's in front in the B and F.
Impey also starting to get back to pre-knee reco form.

Of course, there are a lot more negatives, mostly centered around our horrible mid-field. Hawk coaches have learned an awful lot about certain players in Will Day's absence.
We will almost certainly be getting a top-three pick this year, they better get this one right, or we will be following in the shoes of Carlton's 25 year re-build.

Agree with most of this, except for Amon & Impey.

Amon is not a defenders bootlace. We’re wasting him there.
He has the ability to hit a target 50m laces out, but currently all his kicks are dumps down the line.

Impey is a shadow of his former self.
Lost a yard of pace, too many skill errors and bad decisions.

 

[Judd2Sewell]

Sicily looks shot. His last quarter fwd was absolutely putrid. He just gave up. When your best player and captain is doing that, what hope do you have?

Sam looked absolutely shattered. You hope we've bottomed out. Next week will tell us.

Mitchell look like he's completely out of ideas and Sicily looks like he has mentally checked out.

 

[Nomore4s]

Players kept trying to break tackles, they had options to handball but would try to break a tackle or ignore the handball option and want to kick it and end up under pressure or tackled. Worpel and Newcombe have been especially bad at this all year. It’s almost like they want to be the player to kick the ball even if it isn’t the best option.
Our recruiting over the last 5 years is really starting to come back to haunt us. Why are we so reluctant to recruit key position players and then try to get undersized players to play key position roles? It’s been happening for years, under Clarko and now under Mitchell.
We have drafted 1 key position player with a top pick in the last so many years, and he has turned out to be a dud. We keep recruiting discards for key position roles and wonder why we struggle.

 

[perrdan86]

One thing you notice sitting mid tier behind the goals is just the pure lack of movement when we have possession in the D50. There is no movement fwd of the ball. There are no overlap runners looking for the handball.. Zero run and carry. I don't know why we have gone so far away from the handball game especially in transition.

I don't know why aren't looking for people like Mass, Sicily, Amon, Scrim to overlap for a handball and use their foot skills to look for a someone leading into the half fwd area.

The slow ball movement is leading to just pure junk inside 50s. We rarely ever have fwds leading into space up to the ball carrier.

Why arent we seeing Mitchell use his pace coming out of the backline like we saw so often last season.

it seems like we are just trying to pin point our way out of defence with short kicks.. and when we cant do that its just dump kicks down the wing which in most cases end up in opposition hands and back in our D50.

The other thing that is standing out is just the skills. I think i heard Michell say we spent more preseason on gameplay rather than basic skills.. Its showing a lot. Just the inability to handball is staggering.

 

[Kanga Commando]

Sicily looks shot. His last quarter fwd was absolutely putrid. He just gave up. When your best player and captain is doing that, what hope do you have?

Sam looked absolutely shattered. You hope we've bottomed out. Next week will tell us.

“We cant play with that level of physicality and expect to be competitive”

 

[Yardie]

There's no ceiling on our VFLW side this year!

Fixed

At the moment there is no basement on our AFL side.....

 

[bigmaxi]

65 years and 13 flags with some very, very lean years as a kid. If this is our worst so be it, we can only go up from here. Bring on Clarko’s Roo’s and the rest of the season.
A slap around at training, some good hard looks and we will bounce back.
We are not that bad.

 

[Franko Armani]

Was at the game. Amazing in the warm up the boys skills were elite - nobody dropped a mark or missed a target! When the Suns came out for the warm up the difference in body bulk and muscle and height was astonishing. You could see just from that disparity before the ball was bounced that we were going to get smashed.

Felt sorry for Scrim all night and from the first clearance was just hung out to dry by our midfield and our captain who was no where to be seen all night. Frost competed hard and Sam kept sending Weddle to full back when they’d take a few marks on us in a row which would correct the ship in defence a little.

We were absolutely belted physically all night and the boys shat themselves as soon as the suns physical pressure came, hence the simple turnovers, dropped marks and useless handballs. You could see our guys were scared of the pressure coming.

That’s it really. Suns are very physically strong and playing a ruthless style of football under Hardwick. We cannot play at that ground either.

Don’t know how Amon ended up with so many touches in the end , looked useless so deep in defence all night.

One more thing - we’ve stuffed up the sub every week. Hustwaite should be starting , he is a quality player. Butler literally has zero. impact.

Meek was good, Scrim gave it all as did Frost. Worpel had a crack in all night. Seamus kept trying.

Pretty disheartening as a developing side playing the youth to see half of our backline playing up forward though - Sammy needs to get clear in his mind what is the plan and who are players that can give all and execute.