3 things
Would you take a flag if we won ugly?
We don't exactly lean to that style of play, but did you see any side last night throwing their hands in the air when in possession trying to slow the game?
Hawks will go to 11 flags, personally I'm sick of sides going past us the last 35 years!
Okay, this comes up every time the "winning ugly" debate rears its' head, so I want to hopefully clear this misapprehension up once and for all, and make this clear. I am NOT advocating that we play "pretty" football, and I am DEFINITELY NOT a fan of the "tempo footy" that the Tigers have unsuccessfully trialled in recent times.
No team EVER won a Premiership by playing pretty football. I was watching that documentary on the BRILLIANT 1989 GF the other night, and it was a brutal, tough, uncompromising, last-man-standing affair, and a great advert for the way the game should be played, and the intensity that I want the Tigers to play with AT ALL TIMES. Yet at no stage did either team throw every single player into every single contest, and turn the game into one long, rolling rugby scrum devoid of any highlights. And before anybody accuses me of living in the distant past, well, last night's game was a tough and see-sawing encounter, but thankfully it wasn't one of those boring Fremantle suffocating efforts by the same token. I meant it when I said that Ross Lyon is a stain on the game. And the more success his side has, the more praise he garners in the media, the more other clubs strive to copy his style, the more stubborn that stain will become, until all the Preen in the world wont remove it. So arrogant or not, next week I say "GO THE HAWKS".
As for tempo footy, I believe that waving the ball above your head and chipping the ball backwards and sideways is akin to waving a white flag to the opposition and saying "we're tired and want to take the pace out of the game momentarily, please don't come at us while we get our breath back." Yeah, right.
