HAWTHORN coach Sam Mitchell has pointed out the free kicks paid before the contentious holding the ball call on Jarman Impey in the final 30 seconds of Saturday's preliminary final loss to Brisbane.
The Hawks led across the final five minutes after Mitch Lewis' goal at the 30-minute mark of the fourth quarter, but then Hugh McCluggage was awarded a free kick tackling Impey inside 50, who was deemed not to make a sufficient attempt to get rid of the ball.
A clearly shattered Mitchell admitted he wanted to be anywhere other than sitting in the media centre inside the MCG answering questions about what went wrong and wouldn't be drawn on the Impey incident, but did reference two other decisions in the lead-up.
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"I haven't rewatched it. Maybe [it was there]. It's probably not the one I was focused on," Mitchell told reporters in his post-game press conference.
"A couple leading up to it and other key moments in the game. I'm sure the umpires will assess how they performed in the game in key moments. The Mitch Lewis out of bounds one and the [Dayne] Zorko free kick. It's not for me to say.
"I'm sure your narrative in the media world will be around that last final decision but the game goes for a long time."
With Hawthorn's season ending not long after McCluggage converted the goal from the pocket – before Will Ashcroft burst out of the last stoppage to ice the game – Hawks supporters threw bottles from the stands over the fence. Mitchell understood the emotion but said that behaviour shouldn't happen.
"I understand the emotion of sport is why we love it so much, our sport in particular. The beauty of the game is the emotion that makes you feel and how that expresses itself is really hard," he said.
"I had no idea what I wanted to do at the end of the game. Part of me wanted to break down in tears. Part of me wanted to scream with rage. Part of me wanted to throw chairs. You don't know how to feel when you're in the stand. You need to continue to be feeling that emotion because that's why we love it.
"But how it manifests itself we shouldn't be throwing things on the field and doing those types of things. But the passion in the stands and the passion of the game is why we love it so much, so I hope that for the vast majority it was felt responsibly."
While Nick Watson will draw the focus for a career high six goals in a preliminary final, Josh Ward showed why he was selected at pick No.7 with 25 disposals, 11 clearances – the most on the ground – nine tackles – equal most on the ground and four goal assists.
"This might be out of school. I probably shouldn't say it, but we're looking at best and fairest awards for this year and last year we had most improved and it was Josh Ward and he could nearly win it again; I don't know if it's ever been done before; most improved two years in a row," he said.
"He has become a very, very good player, which is no surprise to anyone who's seen the way he goes about it during the week. He'll continue to stand up in big moments, I'm sure, for the rest of his career, which will be very long."
Hawthorn is poised to land free agent Ben King and Essendon star Zach Merrett next month, but Mitchell is looking for growth across the entire club ahead of next season.
"Between now and March 15th or whenever round one is, our job is to improve our organisation as much as we can, so we will improve our playing list, we will improve our staff, we will improve our facilities, will improve every part of our organisation to continue to make growth and ago where we want to go, because it's not losing on preliminary final weekend because this feeling is the pits," he said.
"We need to play better. We shouldn't be putting ourselves in a situation where the last decision or the last three decisions made mean so much, so we need to improve. We'll start doing that soon, but not today."