HAPPILY ensconced these days at Waverley Park, the Hawthorn Football Club returned to the heartland on Thursday to celebrate a special occasion.

The official 50th anniversary of the club's first premiership will be on September 23, but the occasion was marked on Thursday by the official reunion lunch at Leonda Receptions, nestled by the Yarra River, just a few Brendan Edwards drop kicks from Glenferrie Oval.

The Hawks of 1961 remain a hearty bunch and 16 of the surviving 17 members of the team made it to the function.

They were feted by about 350 family members, friends and supporters and will take centre stage at the MCG on Saturday, where they will be guests at Jeff Kennett's final presidents lunch at Hawthorn before stepping in to the MCG to welcome the 2011 Hawks for their match against the Western Bulldogs.

The Hawks did it well on Thursday. There were no premiership medallions back in 1961, so the Hawks struck medals of their own. And it wasn't just the 20 players who received them, but also every senior player from that season.

So among those also honoured on Thursday were dual Hawk premiership coach Alan Joyce, who played three games that season - his first with the club and David Parkin, who played one game on debut in 1961.

Parkin wasn't at the event because it clashed with the 30-year reunion of the 1981 Carlton premiership team he coached, which was held at Etihad Stadium.

As always happens at any celebration of Hawthorn's history, John Kennedy Snr, the 1961 coach and spiritual leader of the club took centre stage. "Marvellous hostility," he answered, when asked what drove the Hawks of 1961.

“We’d shake hands with the opposition at the start of the game and then again at the end, but while the game was on, just about any tactic was legitimate,” he said,

It was a fury driven by 30 years of being the easybeats and the laughing stock of the Victorian Football League. Less than 10 years before the breakthrough premiership, there were still calls for the Hawks to be disbanded and their place in the League given to another club considered more worthy.

What hasn't changed in footy is the importance of gaining momentum through the season. Hawthorn entered 1961 fuelled by the motivation of having missed the finals the year before on percentage. Those at Hawthorn at the time insist the side would have won the premiership if it had managed to scrape into the finals, such was the rush with which they finished that season.

"We were pretty deflated," said Kennedy of the bus trip back from Kardinia Park after the final round of 1960. "Expectations were high and we thought that this was our chance."

The Hawks won just four of their first eight games in '61, before skating through the remaining 10 home and away games without a loss. It was all about September for Hawthorn that year.

The '61 captain Graham Arthur used the occasion to put the record straight about the turning point in the second semi-final against Melbourne, an episode that history suggests might have won the flag for Hawthorn.

Nobody at Hawthorn has ever really owned up to the incident that left Melbourne star Laurie Mithen on the ground, a clash that sparked a melee from which Arthur earned a free kick, 60 metres out from goal.

Arthur more or less implicated John Winneke (who off the ground hailed from one of Melbourne's most distinguished legal families) and then told the story that while the ensuing pushing and shoving took place, he nonchalantly walked another 20 metres closer to goal to take his free kick.

"I looked up and reckoned I could kick it from there," he said. "And I did!"

It was a key goal and helped turn a brutal semi-final Hawthorn's way for good.

It was such a tough game that the legendary Jack Dyer told Arthur afterward that he had never witnessed such a physical game of finals football.

It took so much out of the Demons that they then lost to Footscray the following week. The Hawks needed every bit of two weeks to refresh and replenish for the Grand Final and were always confident they would overcome the Bulldogs, who were known for zipping around and starting fast.

"Footscray, they looked tired to me," Kennedy recalled. "I was a pessimist, so I thought they looked tired, then they were."

The Hawks ran away in the second half to win by 43 points, sparking scenes of unbridled joy. Half a century later, the glow of that first premiership still burns bright in the heartland and beyond.