The Cup for Crimmo - the Story of the ‘76 Hawks, written by Richard Allsop, Rachel Bradshaw and Peter Haby, is the fourth instalment of a series that honours the 50th Anniversary of landmark Hawthorn teams.

50 years ago, the VFL consisted of eleven local Melbourne clubs and one team from country Victoria, Geelong. The games were played on Saturday afternoons. The clubs trained on Tuesday & Thursday nights, with the players all holding down day jobs.

1976 – Hawthorn’s third premiership. The team won 23 of the 29 games they played, which includes the night competition. Michael Moncrieff, David O’Halloran, Barry Rowlings played in all 29 games, with Kelvin Moore playing 28 games. What an amazing feat!

1976 was the first year in the Club’s history that the Seniors, the Reserves and Under 19s all made the finals. In the Home & Away section of the book, match results and the teams selected for the Reserves & Under 19s are included. This makes the book unique as these scores have been recorded in a single publication for the first time.

The ’76 book’s 188 pages feature countless photos of the players and prized memorabilia and detail:

  • The Building of a Premiership team
  • The Practice Matches,
  • The Home & Away games, including the four National Football League Night games where the first game was in Western Australia on a Monday night & the following three games were in South Australia on a Tuesday Night. The Hawks won this NFL Night Premiership.  The prize money financed the players’ end of season trip! 
  • The Finals – with many wonderful photos and reflections from supporters who attended the ’76 Grand Final.
  • The Club – with bios of the year’s Coaching Staff, Administration, the Premiership Team and the supporting players – 41 player bios in total.
  • Club Awards & Reunions

A special feature is Hawks fan Ashley Browne’s superb interview, Crimmo's Cup – The Story behind the Hawks' 1976 Triumph and the Famous Photo, which was originally published in the 2016 AFL Grand Final Record.  Ashley is the AFL Record’s managing editor.

The book’s front cover features the prized caricature of John Kennedy Snr, Don Scott and Leigh Matthews with the ’76 cup.  This is the work of George Haddon, the renowned cartoonist from the 1970s.

There are many fascinating Hawthorn stories, including John Hendrie’s interview for Hawk Talk, given in the Social Club in 1996.  He talks about growing up in a Hawk family, living his dream of playing in a premiership for his beloved Club.

Another is by Peter DiSisto. An account of Pete, aged 8, listening to the game on the radio while playing every minute of the Grand Final in his parents’ back garden, dressed in his Hawks gear, kicking a plastic footy for every big moment and every goal, including Bomber Hendrie’s 2 goals 10 behinds and then running victory laps when the final siren sounded! 

Pete would work at the club as a publicity officer and editor of Hawk Talk, before enjoying a long career at the AFL as lead writer for The Footy Record, covering Grand Finals. Now, he is editor for the HFC Past Players’ Newsletter.

A Cup for Crimmo is available at the Hawks Museum, KCC. The price is $50. Please note, if postage is required, there is an extra charge of $20.