How hubris is hurting Hawthorn, and why Nick Watson should follow his own advice

Hawthorn tried so hard to get in the Bulldogs’ heads, they got in their own.

The Bulldogs played like they wanted to win the game, the Hawks like they wanted to win an argument. Hubris beat them.

“Let’s see if he (Michael Sellwood) can walk the walk in the second half,” Nick Watson said to the broadcaster at half-time. And good for him, it was zesty and made for more bite in a game that already had some spite.

Besides, small blokes who have strut and are unafraid of the big blokes should be encouraged. But they, too, have to back it up, and on this day Watson didn’t.

“I don’t care if he talks, as long as he walks the walk,” Watson added about his tussles with the fringe scrapper Sellwood, a player who has nothing of Watson’s talent but plays each game as if he thinks he is one bad moment away from his career being over. “I’d love to see it in the second half.”

Watson had one kick and one handball in the second half. One bloke walked the walk, the other was Watson. More often than not, Watson has walked the talk before. But when you lead with your chin, sometimes it gets hit. (It didn’t help that for some reason he was stuck on the bench at length in the last quarter unable to get back on).

Earlier this year, Hawthorn co-captain James Sicily told me in an interview for this masthead that he had reined his emotions in so much in recent years he felt numb in a lot of games, saying he wanted to get back to feeling something, to playing closer – ie probably over – the edge. He felt he played better that way. Often he does. This game he didn’t.

It was easy to understand what he meant, but what invigorates him might not always be right for his team. To have a leader drawn in and distracted by an argument with Will Lewis, who was there to distract you and stop him, was not helpful.

Hawks coach Sam Mitchell has encouraged individuality in his team. The young players are allowed to be punky, in the face of their opponents and to enjoy expressing themselves. If it gets under the skin of the opposition, then so be it. But there is a point where the better self-expression is getting a kick and kicking straight.

Hawthorn are a good team, but not one that can be complacent. They led this game by 29 points early in the third quarter and then played like a self-satisfied team that expected someone else would get them there. But there was no Jack Gunston to kick straight when others couldn’t. There was no one to stop Marcus Bontempelli or Ed Richards on the ball. No one to halt Tim English or stop Aaron Naughton. No young Hawk wanting to own the moments, like Jordan Croft did for the Dogs.

Battler Nick Coffield came at the contest in the final seconds, spoiled the ball and killed the game. Dylan Moore waited for the ball and the game to come to him.

The Hawks should not have lost this game, but they kicked 1.11 in the second half and did not walk the walk.

Trolls don’t love footy

The thing you need to know about Carlos, is he’s a family man. He needs you to know that, that’s why he has his young son sitting smiling on his lap in his photo. He’s a loving, caring dad. Great role model.

He loves his footy, he’s just a passionate guy. A man of the people, as long as those people are white. Carlos doesn’t seem to like black people. Carlos’ real passion actually isn’t footy, it’s bravely sitting behind a keyboard and troll-posting footballers.

Of course, after being called out for being a coward and a bigot, Carlos rushed to prove his cowardice by shutting down his social media account. Hopefully, he stays hiding under his bed and doesn’t tap another keyboard.

If police can identify Carlos he faces potential criminal charges.

Carlos was called out for his racist bile by Mabior Chol. He was also rightly condemned by AFL chief Andrew Dillon and by the Hawks’ boss Ash Klein, who was especially unsparing in his thoughts on his vile comments.

All three of them are right and Carlos pathetically wrong.

All fans know the AFL’s and clubs’ views – for no matter which club one you barrack for they all have players of colour and universally condemn racism – and yet people who purport to be supporters of football and of clubs persist in their dirty intrusions into players’ social media feeds with this nonsense.

But this de ja vu message from the AFL begs the question of whether calling out the bigot amplifies their dirty view. The league and clubs choose not to stay silent and take the risk of amplifying the view because the standard you walk by is the standard you accept and no one wants to accept that standard. They also don’t want to leave the player targeted feeling they are alone, that the game tolerates them being treated that way. And so they are right to do so.

Carlos needs to understand despite the apparent regularity of others making comments, he is alone.

Collingwood’s contradiction

Collingwood decided to go through the season this year without a new head of development to replace Josh Fraser, whose stocks rise weekly as caretaker coach of Carlton.

The club tried to find a replacement but couldn’t find a suitable one in time. So they carved up the job to other development and assistant coaches.

This method of loading up assistants or development coaches instead of hiring a head of development to oversee the entire program and players’ needs has been tried unsuccessfully before. One of the clubs that tried it was Collingwood, under Nathan Buckley. It lasted one season before it was scrapped. It does not appear to be working at Collingwood now.

On Friday the Collingwood coach Craig McRae lamented the poor form of the club’s VFL side, said he had spoken with all 25 academy players one-on-one in the last week about where they stood in the back half of the year and warned that time was running out on the careers for some to break through at AFL level.

It is hard to disentangle the two points. Of course a head of development only does so much and the first and primary issue is the quality of the players at the lower level. But not having a head of development then being concerned at the rate of development of your younger players would appear a fairly clear connection.

North’s sellout

This was a North home game. They got paid to be there, which is the only upside to going to the other side of the Nullarbor to play the top team on the ladder and being given a lesson in football and economics.

North aren’t good enough to beat Freo at the moment wherever they played them, though they would have been more competitive at home at Marvel. They’d have probably lost there by 10 goals not 20. So in one sense take the cash and be done with it.

But paying money to a very good side to play them at their preferred venue, in their state, and allow them to remain at home and burnish their chances of finishing on top of the ladder and make things even harder for yourselves, a team that is finding it hard enough to climb the ladder, is an especially cruel form of economic rationalism.

They play West Coast next week. It’s in Perth again, also a fully paid for North home game. They lost the first time they played the Eagles in round two, also in Perth.

North has already had the sort of draft concessions Essendon is now asking for. They have received variable funding to a level approximating the expansion clubs. They have hired a multiple- premiership coach after years of revolving-door coaches. And they’re still making it harder on their team to climb the ladder by selling their team out with home games in WA.

Yes, they have presently risen out of the bottom four after six successive years of bottom-four finishes.

But this week they play another long-term resident of the bottom four, West Coast, and they have gifted the Eagles a home game. North would be favourites to beat the Eagles at Marvel, while in Perth they might still beat them, but the task is a lot friendlier for the Eagles at home.

After the Eagles, they have Richmond, Essendon and Port Adelaide, who all sit below them on the ladder. They have won five games already this year, so if they were to beat the Eagles and that trio of teams they would have nine wins as a minimum and their best result in a season since 2012.

But, the Eagles beat them earlier this year, and while Port is one win below them on the ladder, they also have a percentage of 101, which is 14 per cent better than North’s and probably a better measure of their respective seasons.

North were never likely to be a team to seriously threaten finals this year, so in that sense take the money. But it all comes at a cost. And a cost of the $2 million a season is the message it sends your own players that we don’t expect you to win and giving you the best chance to win is not important to us.

The hierarchy would not believe that is the message they send, but it certainly looked like the message that was received. North played like a team that expected to lose and, after half-time were just there to be the witch’s hats for Freo’s training run.

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