Last Saturday’s 116 point winning margin is the tenth biggest winning margin in Hawthorn history.

The thrashing of Fremantle means that Hawthorn has now recorded more 100 point wins than it has suffered 100 point losses - by 20 to 19.  The margin was the biggest since the Hawks beat Essendon by the Club’s recording winning margin of 160 points in 1992.  The club’s previous biggest winning margin against Fremantle was 89 points in 1998.  There are now ten clubs which Hawthorn has beaten by 100 points or more at least once.



Chance Bateman has now played the second highest number of games by a Western Australian for Hawthorn.  Bateman’s 155th appearance for the Hawks against Fremantle took him past Gary Buckenara’s tally of 154 and thus second only to Ted Pool, who played exactly 200 games after his recruitment from Kalgoorlie.  Every state has a higher record with Victoria (Tuck 426), New South Wales (Crawford 305), Queensland (Dunstall 269), South Australia (Platten 258), and Tasmania (Eade 229).  

Other Western Australians apart from Pool, Bateman and Buckenara to play 100 games for the Hawks have been Daniel Chick, Jonathan Hay, Lance Franklin and Mark Williams.



This Saturday, Hawthorn will play Collingwood in the final round of the home and away season for the first time in 68 years.

The final round of the wartime 1942 season was Round 16 and the two teams went into the Victoria Park clash in the bottom two positions on the ladder.  Each had only won one game, the Mayblooms against Collingwood at Glenferrie (the first ever victory in a meeting of the two clubs) while the Magpies had beaten Melbourne.  However, because Collingwood had had two byes and Hawthorn only one, Collingwood was in the lucky situation of being four points ahead on the ladder, plus some percentage, so even if Hawthorn won it would almost certainly still claim the wooded spoon.

And win is what Hawthorn would have done if not for a disastrous second quarter, when outscored 9.10 to 0.2.  A 10 point quarter time lead had become a 52 point half time deficit, yet the Mayblooms fought back so well that they got within eight points half way through the final term.

The catalyst for the fightback was a half time move by coach Roy Cazaly which saw George Bennett shifted from full-back to centre half forward.  The Sporting Globe reported that early in the third term “the tall veteran kicked two beautiful goals from some distance out”.   Bennett followed this up by kicking three more goals in the final quarter, meaning he had kicked a total of five in the second half of the final game of the season, having only kicked one for the rest of the season.  1942 was Bennett’s first year back at Hawthorn after playing seven seasons for Footscray.

Another to kick five goals was Jim Bohan, while other good players were Jack Burke, Tommy Lahiff, Jack King, Bob Williams and Harold Daly.  The Sun particularly liked King’s game lauding his “brilliant dashes from the packs and long driving kicks”.



The game against Collingwood in Round 16 1942 is also notable for being the only game of Alex Nash.  Nash has the tragic claim to fame of being the Hawthorn player to have died younger than any other.  Pilot Officer Nash was just 21 years and 78 days old when the Beaufort bomber in which he was flying was shot down off Bourgainville on 28 March 1944. 

Nash was a local Auburn boy, whose father was on the Hawthorn committee.  The half-back was on leave in Melbourne when originally named as an emergency for the game against Collingwood, but was then promoted to 19th man.  Press reports of the game indicate that he did not get onto the ground.



Hawthorn’s score of 24.11.155 last Saturday was the Club’s highest since kicking 24.15.159 in Round 22 2008.  It was the highest ever score against Fremantle eclipsing the 22.17.149 in Jason Dunstall’s farewell match at Waverley in Round 22 1998.  Overall, it was the Hawks 99th score of 150 points or higher.  Of these 99 scores, 84 came in the quarter century from 1971 to 1995, an era where high scores and Hawthorn success coincided. 

The Fremantle score of 5.9.39 was the lowest to which Hawthorn had kept an opponent for exactly four years.  In Round 21 2006, the Hawks restricted North Melbourne to a score of 4.12.36, in a game also played at Aurora Stadium.  It was also clearly the lowest Fremantle score against Hawthorn, the previous low being 7.11.53 in 1996. 



In the 17 seasons since the introduction of the Final Eight in 1994, Hawthorn is one of only two clubs to have only featured once in the top four on the ladder at the end of the home and away season.  That solitary appearance was, of course, in 2008.  Hawthorn did also finish in the post-Finals top four in 2001, when a home and away sixth became a final fourth after winning two finals.

The other team with just with one home and away top four appearance since the Eight was introduced is Fremantle, while next on the list with two are Melbourne and Richmond.



Lance Franklin has the amazing record of having kicked five goals on 11 occasions since he last exceeded that figure with his bag of eight in the 2008 Qualifying Final.  He kicked five goals five times in 2009 and has done so six times already in 2010.



Round 22 was first contested in 1970 and, in the 40 seasons since, Hawthorn has won 25 and lost 15.  In recent years the round has been notable for big margins, in wins in 2006 and 2008, and losses in 2004, 2005 and 2007.  Last year’s 17 point loss to Essendon was the first comparatively close result since 2003.



Hawthorn has now guaranteed that it will finish higher on the ladder than it did in the previous season for the tenth time in the past 13 seasons.  As one would expect the three exceptions all saw big falls - from fourth to tenth in 2002, from ninth to fifteenth in 2004, and from Premiers to ninth in 2009.



Last Saturday’s injuries to Grant Birchall and Luke Hodge could end two of the Club’s three longest current sequences of consecutive games.  Birchall has played 37 in a row and Hodge 31, placing them behind only Jordan Lewis who has appeared in the past 40.  The only other player with a sequence stretching back into 2009 is Stephen Gilham (28), while Xavier Ellis, Brent Guerra and Jarryd Roughead are others to have played every game this season.



Hawthorn’s overall record in 149 matches against Collingwood is 55 wins and 94 defeats.  Hawthorn has won four of the past five encounters - by eight points at Docklands in 2007, by 65 points and 54 points in 2008, and by 45 points last season.  Collingwood won by 64 points at the MCG in Round 4 this season.



Collingwood supporters may be interested to know how many times Hawthorn’s final round opponent has gone onto win the Premiership.  The answer is seven - Melbourne (1926), Richmond (1934), Geelong (1951), Footscray (1954), Geelong (1963), St Kilda (1966) and Sydney (2005).  In all cases, the eventual premier won the final round game.



Both Peter Hudson and Jason Dunstall regularly kicked large tallies of goals in Round 22.  Hudson kicked 11 in 1970, 10 in 1971 and seven in 1977, while Dunstall contributed 10 in 1988, 11 in 1989, 12 in 1992 (not the final round), 10 in 1993 and 10 in 1996. 

Dunstall’s 10 in 1996 is the last occasion that a Hawthorn player has reached 10 in any round.  The 14 season gap without a 10 is the third longest in the Club’s history, only exceeded by the 23 year period from 1945 to 1967 and the 15 years from 1925 to 1939.

The best goal-kicking effort by a Hawk against Collingwood is 11 by Jason Dunstall in both 1989 and 1990, followed by Michael Moncrieff with 10 in 1976.