Jack Scrimshaw (left) and Jack Ginnivan celebrate Hawthorn’s elimination final win over Western Bulldogs. Photo: AFL MEDIA
Everywhere you looked at the MCG last Friday night, it was like “old home week” for Hawthorn, the legacy of the most successful football club of the past 50-odd years all over the place.
It was in the Channel 7 commentary box, where premiership skipper Luke Hodge was calling the Hawks’ commanding win over the Western Bulldogs. In the radio boxes, where two more generational greats in Shane Crawford and Robert DiPierdomenico were doing their thing.
And it was in the emotionally-charged Hawthorn rooms after the win, where the likes of Campbell Brown and Tony Woods rubbed shoulders with the current generation, and another premiership player turned club president Andy Gowers led Prime Minister (and Hawk fan) Anthony Albanese around the merry throng.
The closed confines simply wreaked of success, with one important element added. Now even the current generation of Hawks could finally claim a little bit of success of their own.
When you’re part of a club which between 1971 and 2015 won 12 premierships, at an average of one every 3.75 years, even a couple of seasons without a finals appearance feels like a long time, let alone the nine years since the Hawks had actually won one.
And on that score, Hawthorn defender Jack Scrimshaw’s timing hadn’t been great. One of the Hawks’ very best in their 37-point win, Scrimshaw turned 26 last Wednesday, the elimination final his 106th game over eight seasons, the first two spent with Gold Coast, where he made just four senior appearances.
Scrimshaw’s uncle Ian, played with the Hawks and Richmond in the 1970s and early ‘80s. His father, David, was also on the Hawthorn senior list. Jack had grown up a massive Hawk fan. He’d even managed to high-five Brad Hill during the 2013 grand final win.
But unlike so many Hawthorn brethren of the past 50 years, on-field success had to date eluded him. Until now. So this, in front of a crowd of more than 97,000, is what it felt like.
“Just awesome,” he beamed, speaking with ESPN. “That’s why we play footy, to play finals, and obviously we as a club haven’t been there for a while. It’s good to be back!
“I was talking to the other boys at quarter-time, just saying: ‘How different is this compared to regular home and away footy’. So yeah, unbelievable, I had a great night. I feel like I’ve been itching for this moment for a while, and I’m glad that I was able to take it with both hands and contribute.”
Things have come together remarkably quickly for Sam Mitchell’s team, which won only seven games last year and was 0-5 then just three wins from 10 games this season, but has now won 12 of its last 14.
But while Nick Watson and Calsher Dear have so far known little at senior AFL level other than excitement and victory in their debut seasons, moments such as the final siren on Friday evening have special resonance with those more senior Hawks who have, by this amazing club’s lofty standards, done it relatively tough.
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“It’s pretty crazy to think I’m now one of the older guys around the club (only nine Hawks have played more games),” Scrimshaw said.
“I’ve just had to grind away for the last six years since I got here. But we’ve been working hard towards this ever since Sam (Mitchell) got to the club, just trying to learn and grow and to be able to contend for premierships. We’ve always had that belief. We know we’ve got the talent. Obviously, starting 0-5 hurt our confidence a bit, but we’ve been able to regroup and play some really confident footy.”
And the reason for that shocking start? Not structure, personnel, nor game style, says Scrimshaw, but again, simply confidence.
“I just think we weren’t realising what we’re capable of,” he says. “Not saying we were expecting to lose every week, but we didn’t really have that belief. It took that game against the Bulldogs in Round 8 to get some belief (and a narrow seven-point win) and we were able to build some momentum from there.”
As is often the case with emerging young teams, it’s the runners and the Hawks’ army of pint-sized goalsneaks getting much of the attention, but it’s the likes of Scrimshaw, skipper James Sicily, hard-as-nails Blake Hardwick and (now injured) key defender Sam Frost whose dependability in defence has helped given the Hawks’ attackers the freedom they require.
“They’ve got a lot of confidence in each other, they’ve played a lot of footy together now,” coach Mitchell said after the game on Friday.
“They (the defence) trust the midfield enough to put on enough pressure to give them a chance, and they trust each other to win and halve their contests and to get it out of there quickly. So when you have all those things working together for a longer period of time, I think that’s what’s given them great value as a collective.”
That’s an assessment with which Scrimshaw himself concurs 100 per cent.
“There’s been a bit said about us being a bit undersized, but we’re so connected as a group, and we know we’re really versatile, whether it’s in the air or at ground level. So yeah, we’re really backing ourselves in and we’re holding up really well.”
And so are the Hawks as a whole, who for more than three months now seem to have determined that the greater the challenge, the greater the satisfaction in bowling it over.
And now players such as Scrimshaw have that first finals win notched on their belts, who’d dare suggest they can’t answer the next call, a knockout semi-final in Adelaide against the Power. Or the next. Or the one which could come the week after that, the biggest one of all on grand final day.
This article first appeared at ESPN.
