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What are the actual chances? Two games against Collingwood in the same season. Two draws. The first time it has happened in VFL/AFL history.
And because apparently that wasn’t ridiculous enough, Dylan Moore had the footy in his hands with the game on the line. Again.
Football is weird.
The problem is, once you get beyond the sheer absurdity of what happened at the MCG, we’re not sure how happy we should actually be about it.
At half-time, we’d kicked 3.7, trailed by 23 points and looked every bit like the side that had been dismantled at the Gabba a week earlier. Collingwood’s pressure was enormous and once again we weren’t handling it. We fumbled, over-possessed the footy, invited pressure and repeatedly left ourselves horribly exposed on turnover.
Then, because this Hawthorn team continues to make absolutely no sense, we came out after half-time and played some of our best football in weeks.
Five unanswered goals. Josh Ward taking over around the contest. Our ball movement suddenly opening up. A 23-point deficit became a 21-point lead early in the last. And then we gave that up too.
So, relieved to escape with two points? Frustrated that we didn’t take four? Concerned that, with finals almost here, our best and worst football can still appear within about 15 minutes of each other? All of the above.
The draw isn’t a disaster. Beat West Coast next week and we finish in the top four, which was exactly where we wanted to be when this season began.
But we’re two weeks out from finals now. And we’re still waiting to see our best football for four quarters.
Apparently lightning really can strike twice. No two teams had ever drawn twice in the same VFL/AFL season before. And somehow Dylan Moore was involved in the final act of both
James Sicily deserved better in game 200. It wasn’t a milestone game he’ll be rushing to rewatch, and he had a couple of moments he’d want back, but he was also part of a back six that held up remarkably well when Collingwood had 38 inside 50s to our 20 in the first half. Two hundred games is a serious achievement. Just a shame such a bizarre night didn’t quite give our captain the celebration it deserved.
The first half was grim. Collingwood’s pressure was excellent, but too much of what went wrong was self-inflicted. One unnecessary handball became another, we invited pressure and then missed targets that left our defensive structure completely exposed.
The tackle numbers are becoming impossible to ignore, even more concerningly the tackles inside forward 50. After the lack of forward-half pressure against Brisbane, that’s now a trend rather than a one-off.
Damning. But when we got outside, everything changed. The third quarter was a reminder of what this team can look like. Win it at the source, get the ball from inside to outside and suddenly we were moving with speed and finding space everywhere.
Josh Ward changed the game. His second half was enormous. Rather than worrying about Nick Daicos, Ward made Daicos worry about him. He helped drag us back into the contest around the ball and then kicked two huge goals at the start of the last quarter.
Our footy IQ deserted us at some pretty important moments. The final minute was almost a case study. We saved the game on the goal line, worked it out of defence and then, with the clock disappearing and Hawthorn having the final possession, Lloyd Meek had his back to the footy, handballed the ball out of bounds, and Collingwood got another opportunity. Suddenly a game that looked safe was back in their hands. There were other examples throughout the night, but with finals around the corner, the lack of awareness in some critical moments needs to improve. One reckons they’ll be doing a bit of match sim down at the KCC.
Harry Morrison has made himself very difficult to drop. We’ve spent plenty of time discussing his ceiling over the years, but that’s almost irrelevant right now. He was clean when others weren’t, ran all night and used the footy at 90 per cent efficiency. Heading into September, he’s in the team.
Mitch Lewis kept working. It was a difficult night for our key forwards, but Lewis worked himself into the game after half-time, kept presenting and gave us a target when we desperately needed one. His two goals were deserved reward. Chol had a decent response to last week, too.
Will Day needs a pre-season. We probably built unrealistic expectations around his return, but he hasn’t been the difference-maker we hoped for over the past few weeks. After everything his body has been through, a full pre-season might be what he needs before we see the explosive Day again.
Karl Amon looks cooked from the injury. This one worries us. The player who was such a dynamic weapon off half-back last year just doesn’t look physically capable of doing the same things at the moment. The lateral movement and defensive sharpness aren’t there, and without them he’s struggling to have his usual impact going the other way.
The disconnected forward line remains a concern. Three tackles inside 50 tells its own story. When our smaller forwards are being asked to work so far up the ground and Gunston is isolated deep, there’s simply not enough pressure when we don’t win the initial contest.
We’re not playing like a premiership side right now. That doesn’t mean we can’t become one. Our best football remains very, very good. But we’re simply not producing enough of it, consistently enough, at the time of the year when we’d hoped to be building towards our best.
Isn’t it great to see Josh Ward taking the next step in his development and hitting the scoreboard? Yes, the bounce was lucky and the Wizard could’ve been selfish and helped it through, but wasn’t it great to see Ward make a statement to start the fourth quarter.
And then again a minute later. This time putting himself (and his left peg) in prime position to snap truly and give us some breathing room.
From 3,000 people to 77,000. Not a bad little jump. But Max Beattie looked like he belonged there. And with the game completely bonkers in the final quarter, he found himself in exactly the right spot to soccer through his first AFL goal and put us back in front. Could he play a role in finals? Next week will almost certainly answer that.
Like his breakout final against the Dogs, this feels like one of those games we’ll look back on as an important marker in Josh Ward’s career. His first half was relatively quiet. His second was anything but. With Hawthorn desperately needing someone to change the game around the contest, Ward went head-to-head with Nick Daicos and made one of the competition’s best players accountable.
Then came the goals. Two of them in the opening minutes of the last quarter, including a brilliant snap that suddenly had us 21 points clear and wondering how the hell we’d gone from being comprehensively outplayed to potentially running away with it. As Sam Mitchell said afterwards, it showed a level of maturity you need from your players in big moments. He was our most improved player last year. In 2026 he’s improved again.
We’ve been hard on Harry Morrison at times. So when he plays like that, he deserves his flowers. This was comfortably his best performance of the season and potentially one of the better games of his career. When Hawthorn was struggling badly in the first half, Morrison was one of the few players who looked composed.
After Brisbane, we deliberately left this section blank and wondered whether injecting some of the fearlessness of our debutants might be exactly what this side needed.
Seven days later, our mid-season draftee Max Beattie brought exactly what we hoped he would. Ten touches doesn’t leap off the page, but a goal saving tackle and five score involvements from 47% game time certainly does. More importantly, on the biggest stage of his football life, he didn’t look overwhelmed by any of it.
This one comes with a fairly enormous caveat. Josh Weddle is 22. He’s played plenty of very good football already and possesses a combination of athletic traits that almost nobody else on our list has. We also thought his defensive work against Collingwood was pretty good.
But we’re about to play finals, and his use of the football is becoming difficult to ignore. There were missed handballs, poor decisions and a kick through the middle that felt like trouble almost from the moment it left his boot. When so much of our best football relies on generating transition from half-back, those mistakes hurt.
This isn’t about giving up on Weddle. Far from it. It’s about the balance between development and trust when you’re trying to win a premiership.
Does Hawthorn keep backing him to play through it? Almost certainly. But with September almost here, the conversation is now justified.
On the sheer weirdness of another draw:
“When the scores were level it was like, is a draw... do we want a draw or do we need to win this game? It was quite an odd moment.”
On being Dylan Moore’s coach with the game in his hands:
“You got no control at that time. You can’t get a message out. You can’t do anything. So I’m a glorified fan at that point, to be honest.”
On Collingwood’s first-half pressure:
“They’re a very good pressure side. Statistically they’re the best pressure team in the competition and they invest a lot of numbers there. You can expose them on the outside if you’re clean enough and we didn’t do that often enough tonight.”
On the half-time response:
“We changed some tactical, structural things at half-time and I thought it was a pretty mature response.”
On Josh Ward:
“Those two goals he kicked at the start of the last I thought just showed a level of maturity that you need from your players.”
And on Max Beattie’s debut:
“He’s got a bit of a spark about him and he’s got some confidence and some energy... I thought he looked quite composed.”
On the ‘arm wrestle’ game:
“We know how good Collingwood is. They were in the game the whole time. They had momentum swings, we had the same thing.”
On the strange feeling of debuting in a draw:
“To debut in a draw is a pretty weird feeling. I don’t really know how to describe it. I was so happy because I was out there and I’d made my debut, but then to have a draw … it’s a weird feeling.”
On having his family and friends there:
“They’ve been a big part of my journey. There were times I thought about just giving up on the dream and stuff, and they’ve always been there for me. So that was awesome.”
On Massimo D’Ambrosio taking him under his wing:
“Massimo D’Ambrosio’s probably been the main one. He’s a great bloke and he’s made me feel really comfortable. He sent me a really nice text last night telling me that he thinks I belong, and they wouldn’t have picked me if they didn’t think the same thing. He’s been really good.”
One game left. And by the time we run out against West Coast, we’ll know exactly what we need to do.
Playing the final game of Round 24 means every other top-four result will already be in. So this isn’t necessarily as simple as just beating the Eagles. How much we win by could determine where we’re heading for the first week of finals.
All of a sudden, percentage become very real.
West Coast have improved and playing them in Perth is no freebie, but there can be no ambiguity about the expectation. We need to win, and depending on what happens earlier in the weekend, we may need to win well.
The upside? There’ll be no calculators required during the game. We’ll know the number. Let’s get it.
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