We’re in the business of winning games of footy so we’ve been pretty happy on six occasions and pretty disappointed on six others. There are only two sides in the competition that could be really satisfied with how they’ve gone and that is the Cats and the Saints. We would have liked to have been a little bit better than 6-6. Having said that, we realise the competition is pretty even and it is hard to win from week to week. We’ve had to carry a few injuries which have unsettled us a little bit. We’re hoping to settle our side a little bit in the second half of the season and gain a bit of momentum.
The side is only now starting to get a bit of criticism. Do you think it is unfair or maybe is it due?
Given the high performance of last year, everyone’s expectations rose. The expectations of the football community, our own expectations and that of our players. In regard to our performance this year compared to some of our efforts we were able to produce both individually and collectively last year, we’ve been pretty disappointed with our output thus far this season. We are still working pretty hard as a group and are hopeful that we can build some momentum with some wins in the second half of the season. We know that the credits we built up over the course of the finishing part of last season will soon evaporate unless we get ourselves into gear in the last 10 rounds of the season.
How do you get yourselves into gear? What sort of things do you look at changing?
We don’t necessarily have to change anything. What we do need to do is give ourselves a chance to get our players on to the training track and train as regularly as they possibly can. We’ve had predicaments this year where we’ve had 25 or 26 players available to select from. It’s not just a lack of flexibility in terms of your ability to have a combination on any given Saturday, but your preparedness to train and play is severely hampered if you’ve only got 25 or 26 hitting the track – and some of those are on modified programs as well.
We’re pretty hopeful that after this week’s rest we will have six or eight guys who will come back into the mix of selection over the next two weeks. Following that there will be another two or three weeks before the likes of Trent Croad and Max Bailey are available to play too. We can’t pin our hopes on the guys that are returning although it will give us greater flexibility to select and also greater ability to do some of the things we’d like to do at training that we were able to do consistently last year.
Are you still a contender for the flag this year?
For as long as we’re a mathematical chance to position ourselves in the eight, we will go as hard at it as we possibly can until such time as the mathematics say we can’t feature. That might be at the end of the 22 home-and-away rounds or it might be in the finals. That will be dictated by our performance.
Do you put the injuries down to bad luck or has there been a problem with the workload?
We’ve carried a few injuries across from our late finish to last season. We went at it pretty hard in the latter stages of the year as you’ve got to do if you want to win finals. We had some pretty sore and sorry blokes and we’ve had interrupted starts to the season for five or six of our more senior players. All clubs have to deal with that at different stages but probably the late finish to the season for us meant we were a little bit behind a lot of clubs in preparing for 2009.
You mentioned Max Bailey earlier. He has spent an extraordinary amount of time on the sidelines. Can he come back and play regular senior football?
We think he can. The lad is only 21 years old. He has had a bit of misfortune to date. Beau Muston is a pretty clear example for him to follow. He has had a bit of misfortune in the early part of his career but he has been able to make it back. He has played four games of senior footy in a row and hopefully he will play many more. We picked these young lads with the view of them becoming 10-year players for our footy club and as long as we persevere and they continue to have belief in themselves and their bodies, if they can get themselves right then we give them every chance of playing a fair amount of senior footy for us.
It must be encouraging to see Trent Croad back training with the main group.
It’s great. He started ball work last week and he will steadily pick up the tempo over the next three to four weeks. We’ve then got to decide if he comes straight back in to our senior side or plays some games at Box Hill to get full match conditioning. As long as he is able to tick the boxes and continue to make the progress he has made over the last six or eight weeks then we are expecting him to return to footy at some stage in the next four to six weeks.
Brad Sewell is one player who seems to have improved this year. Has he been your most consistent player?
Sewelly’s continued on with his pretty consistent form. He and (Cyril) Rioli have probably been our most consistent contributors throughout the course of the year, which has been really pleasing. We’ve had other good contributors – (Sam) Mitchell’s been pretty consistent for us and (Luke) Hodge when he has played has been an important contributor for us. Unfortunately we haven’t had enough of the guys playing to the same consistent level that they did last year to really challenge in the amount of games we would have liked.
Is Lance Franklin unfairly judged because of his performance last year?
He set himself a pretty high standard last year and it is pretty hard to maintain that standard. He’s working hard on the training track but he has had a few interruptions and it is the first time in his career he has had to deal with not being able to train consistently over summer. Even this year he has had some issues mid-week which haven’t caused him to miss games but he has been carrying some niggling injuries which have made him unable to do the amount of training he usually does going into games. He has to deal with that. He is a young player and he is still learning the craft. The expectations of him in the wider football community have been a bit unrealistic in terms of the improvement we still think he has got in his game. We are hopeful we will work at that bit by bit and he will become a consistent and valuable contributor for us.
What are some of the positives to have come from the year so far?
We’ve been pleased that we’ve been able to inject a few more youngsters into our group. It’s pretty unusual for a premiership side to debut so many the following year. Most of them are young kids so that has been pleasing that they have at least had a taste of regular senior footy. That has been the thing. They haven’t played just one or two games, they’ve been able to play four, five or six. In the case of Brendan Whitecross he has played 10 of the 12 games. (Ryan) Schoenmakers has played five and (Beau) Dowler has played six or seven. Some of those kids have come into the system and played some footy that will hopefully mean they’ve acquitted themselves a little bit better next time they get a crack at it. And when we do get some injuries they are ready to go and give our side much greater depth. Maybe they can even attempt to cement a spot in the side themselves. It makes it more difficult for the senior players to get back in the side when they do become available.
Is it harder to execute the game plan you want when you have so many senior players out injured, especially when most of them are defenders?
We’ve been constrained in a couple of areas that are pretty important in the way we play. One is the amount of players who have been missing out of our back half. Defence is the plank on which all premiership assaults are built and we haven’t had the bulk of our defence stable for the year. We had six of our defenders last year who played 21 or more games. This season we’ve been unable to get that stability. That has been a bit of a dilemma for us, as well as the amount of run that has been out of our side with Clinton Young – who is a very important runner – as well as Rick Ladson and a couple of others. There is no surprise our game is built on a heavy work rate and a high level of running and we perhaps haven’t been able to execute that area of our game as well as we would have liked.
Have opposition teams worked out a way to get around the rolling zone or has it just been harder to execute it with the younger players in the side?
The whole zone concept is interesting. All clubs zone and all clubs go man-on-man. It is a balance of when it is and the great feature of what we were able to do last year was to roll from a zone into man-on-man at different stages. It made it very difficult for the opposition to get free and easy ball use. We haven’t been able to execute that as well as we would have liked this year. Whether that is the opposition working it out or us not being able to execute it as well, no one is certain. We know that we are not performing as well as a club, defensively, as we were last year.
One of your assistant coaches, Damien Hardwick, is constantly mentioned as someone who could be in line for a senior coaching position. How would you think he’d handle that responsibility?
With this role, some of it is just getting an opportunity. It’s not too dissimilar to a player who is on the verge and just waiting for a chance to get that go at it. Damien is one of a number of guys who have been assistant coaches for a fair period of time who would relish the opportunity to coach at senior level. I’m certain there are a number of guys throughout the industry who could do a very, very good job if they were given the role. We certainly hold Damien in a very high regard because we see him in close quarters. We’ve watched his development over the last five years at Hawthorn and think he certainly has something to offer as a senior coach of an AFL club.
Is the playing group as hungry as it was this time last year?
It’s difficult to say. We will be in a much better position to make a judgment on our list when we can make pretty accurate comparisons between the sides that have been representing Hawthorn from last year to this year. Until this time, we have not even been able to go close to putting together anything resembling the side that we had last year. That is not always the case and you don’t rely totally on the group from last year doing it all for you again.
The facts of the matter are we are a very young group. We still have the youngest list in the competition so naturally enough when we went so skinny at last year’s draft with picking three 17-year-olds, we are going to rely enormously on the premiership group from last year carrying us forward pretty strongly again this year. Until we get most of that group together again we won’t be able to make a real accurate judgement on our performances.
Finally, what can we expect to see in the second half of the year from the Hawks?
We’re expecting from ourselves that we will give it a pretty good nudge in terms of getting some consistent performances together. We can only judge our work on how well we train and how well we prepare. Up until this point in time, we have been unable to do that as well as we’d possibly like. If we get a chance to get our group together and get some solidarity and consistency with our training and preparation, then who knows what can happen. We will just have to wait and see over the course of the second half of the season.
