Sydney young gun Nick Blakey celebrates one of his two goals in a big final quarter. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Sydney and Hawthorn have staged some epic contests over the last six or seven years, always hard-fought, and almost always close, the average margin of their previous five clashes, incredibly, less than seven points.
Friday night’s meeting at the SCG was close enough, too, eventually won by only 19 points by the Swans.
But in terms of standard, this was a pale imitation of the sort of fireworks two of the modern era’s most durable powers have so often delivered, the headlines involving not a piece of play as such, but a hamstring injury to Lance Franklin which will put on hold the 300th game he was due to play next week, and a comical brain fade by a couple of Swans.
Thankfully for John Longmire’s team, those moments were the only disasters for a side which had the edge essentially for the whole evening.
Sydney certainly couldn’t have started any better. From the first bounce, Luke Parker’s kick off the ground found Tom Papley, who found Franklin’s chest, Result, a goal in under a minute.
The Swans had two in under five, when Papley converted a pass from Zak Jones after the Hawks had turned the ball over.
James Sicily, again being used as forward by the Hawks, got their account underway, but the next three goals for Sydney came in a burst of less than 10 minutes, Papley booting his second, then creating another for Dan Menzel.
By the time Will Hayward snapped another and Franklin smashed one through on his left foot, it was already five goals the difference, and looking quite likely to blow out to many, many more, the Swans well ahead in virtually every statistical measure.
If you’d said at that stage Hawthorn would kick five of the next six goals and reduce the gap to just seven points by half-time, you would have wondered how on earth that was going to happen. But bit by bit, Hawthorn chipped away at their opponent, and the scoreboard.
Jaeger O’Meara, being held on a tight leash by Swans tagger George Hewett, and Jonathon Ceglar jagged two goals for the Hawks just before quarter-time.
And after Franklin again got another quarter off to a perfect start for Sydney, it was the Hawks making the most of their opportunities, fewer of them that there were given how effectively Hawthorn was able to close down the run the Swans had early.
Sydney had booted its first six goals from only 12 inside 50s, a phenomenal efficiency. It would managed just one more major from 15 more entries come the long break.
Ricky Henderson, yet again the most prolific of the Hawks’ midfield group, led the way as his team started to square the ledger on the contested front, and his goal and a snap from Hawk favourite Jarryd Roughead had them all but squared on the scoreboard, too.
The third term began the way the previous two had, a Franklin goal before anyone had time to settle. This one was in under two minutes following a turnover gifted by a dangerous centred ball from the Hawks’ Tim O’Brien.
And while it sounds implausible, that was about all that happened for the next 30-odd minutes, Hawthorn adding only behinds, the Swans not able to add to their tally of majors.
The two most pivotal moments came right at the end of the term. The first involved Franklin, who after cooling his heels on the interchange bench for nearly 10 minutes, sprinted off it and pinged his hamstring.
The other was farcical. Gunston throwing the ball on his boot from a mile out, the kick still hanging in the air as the siren rang.
Incredibly, not one but two Swans within easy chasing distance of the kick, Callum Sinclair and co-captain Dane Rampe, just stopped when they heard the bell, as Gunston’s kick rolled through for a goal, Hawthorn’s only six-pointer for the term.
They wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere near coach John Longmire when he emerged for his three-quarter time address, particularly Rampe after his post-climbing efforts and giving away of a late and costly 50-metre penalty in previous home games against Essendon and Collingwood.
Fortunately for the Swans, it ended up counting for little. Sinclair didn’t have to wait long to redeem himself for that howler, marking and converting from 30 metres out, again a goal for Sydney within two minutes of the start to the quarter.
That would be it for the ruckman, too, who only a couple of minutes later banged his head on the ground as he grabbed a diving mark and was concussed.
With the big man off and Franklin nursing a huge ice pack on his leg looking on disconsolately from the bench, things could have got more than a little tricky. But now the prodigiously-talented Nick Blakey stepped up.
A huge leap and grab was arguably the highlight of the game, and his subsequent goal made it 20 points the difference, Hawthorn with a lot of work to do.
Soon after, Hayward got boot to a ball bobbling around in the goal square and it was as good as over. And no sooner had Jarman Impey, after a 50-metre penalty, given Hawthorn just the faintest sniff than it was extinguished again, Blakey taking another grab and kicking his second.
It was a big quarter from the kid. And significant given Franklin’s departure from the ground, then Sinclair’s, while Sam Reid simply couldn’t get into the contest at all.
Blakey and the likes of Hayward, Ollie Florent, Jordan Dawson are the new guard upon whose continued development Sydney will be sweating. They’ve already had some ups and downs, but there’s some good signs.
And that’s a story which will be Hawthorn’s, too, for the next little while. The eventual 19-point loss was the Hawks’ third defeat in a row by that same margin, and their fourth defeat in the past five games.
Time catches up with even the greatest teams. And while the Swans and Hawks slugged it out again, the quality of this match-up was a league below their memorable jousts of recent seasons, another sign that there’s been a significant shift in power at the top of the AFL table.
SYDNEY 6.1 7.4 8.9 12.10 (82)
HAWTHORN 3.1 6.3 7.7 9.9 (63)
GOALS – Sydney: Franklin 4, Papley 2, Hayward 2, Blakey 2, Menzel, Sinclair
Hawthorn: Sicily, O’Meara, Ceglar, Breust, Henderson, Roughead, Gunston, Impey, Shiels
BEST – Sydney: Parker, Franklin, Rampe, Blakey, Jones
Hawthorn: O’Meara, Henderson, Shiels, Glass
INJURIES – Sydney: Franklin (hamstring), Sinclair (concussion)
Hawthorn: Nil
CROWD: 29,553 at the SCG
