Media articles and stats - Tigers fall to Hawks

[one-eyed]

Hawks cruise to 53-point victory
15 July 2007   Herald Sun

 HAWTHORN has secured second spot on the ladder with a comfortable 19.15 (129) to 11.10 (76) win over bottom-placed Richmond at the MCG today.

While the Tigers led by five points at the first change, the Hawks got on top in the second term to lead by nine points at half-time and were never challenged as they ran away with the game in the second half.

Tall forward Jarryd Roughead starred with five goals, four of them coming in the first half, with his opponent Joel Bowden allowing him plenty of space.

Fellow key forward Lance Franklin booted four majors, all of them coming after half-time.

But the key to the match was in the midfield, where Hawks rover Sam Mitchell was superb, regularly dishing the ball out of the packs to send his side forward.

He was helped by the control held by Hawthorn ruckmen Simon Taylor and Robert Campbell.

A highlight came early in the second term when at a centre ball-up Taylor knocked the ball into the path of Mitchell, whose long handball set up veteran Shane Crawford to score a running goal seconds after the ball was bounced.

It was part of a four-goal run by the Hawks in the opening 15 minutes of the second term - two of them to Roughead - which established their control.

Crawford was one of the Hawks' best, with his hard running and precise kicking helping to set up many of his side's best attacking moves.

Richmond was not helped by regular sloppy disposal and slow ball movement, which made life difficult for their forwards.

After scoring five goals in the first term, they managed only six more for the rest of the match.

Nathan Foley battled hard in the midfield for the Tigers to make a strong contribution, despite the attention of tagger Brad Sewell, and was his side's best player.

Graham Polak and Chris Newman tried hard against the odds in defence. Nathan Brown provided some glimpses of class in attack.

AAP

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,22078199%255E20322,00.html

[one-eyed]

Team Stats

Kicks:        218 - 210
Handballs: 180 - 167
Disposals:  398 - 377
Marks:       138 - 118
Hitouts:       21 - 35
Tackles:       41 - 45
Frees:           9 - 17

Inside 50s:   47 - 70
Clearances:   26 - 34
Errors:          47 - 36

Individual Stats

Player                            Kicks    Handballs   Marks        Frees  Tackles     Score   
                                   1 2 3 4 T   1 2 3 4 T   1 2 3 4 T For Ag                G B

BOWDEN,Joel               8 2 6 5 21 2 7 2 2 13 5 3 4 3 15 0 0 1 0 0
TUCK,Shane                 1 5 4 2 12 4 3 4 7 18 1 4 4 4 13 0 0 2 1 0
JOHNSON,Kane            4 6 5 2 17 3 3 2 3 11 0 2 3 2 7 0 0 3 1 2
RAINES,Andrew           3 4 1 4 12 3 8 2 3 16 2 1 0 1 4 0 2 1 0 0
FOLEY,Nathan              2 3 3 3 11 4 5 4 3 16 1 1 2 1 5 0 0 6 0 0
NEWMAN,Chris            5 4 4 3 16 4 2 1 3 10 4 2 1 2 9 0 0 3 0 0
TIVENDALE,Greg         3 3 5 3 14 5 2 1 3 11 2 0 1 2 5 1 1 2 0 0
POLAK,Graham            1 0 6 3 10 4 4 1 2 11 2 2 4 4 12 0 0 0 0 0
HYDE,Chris                  2 4 2 1 9 3 2 3 4 12 1 1 2 2 6 0 0 2 0 1
JACKSON,Daniel          5 0 3 0 8 4 6 1 1 12 3 1 0 1 5 0 0 3 0 1
BROWN,Nathan G.       4 4 3 5 16 2 0 0 1 3 3 2 2 2 9 0 0 0 2 3
HOWAT,Cameron         4 5 2 3 14 1 2 2 0 5 2 4 2 1 9 1 1 3 0 0
KING,Jake                   6 3 1 3 13 0 2 3 1 6 1 2 1 2 6 4 1 5 1 0
EDWARDS,Shane         4 1 2 1 8 1 2 2 1 6 4 1 2 0 7 1 1 2 1 1
RICHARDSON,Matthew 3 0 1 4 8 1 1 3 0 5 1 0 1 3 5 0 2 0 1 1
PETTIFER,Kayne          4 2 1 4 11 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 4 5 0 2 1 2 0
PATTISON,Adam          2 0 1 0 3 3 0 3 0 6 3 0 2 0 5 1 0 1 0 0
SCHULZ,Jay                 1 1 2 1 5 1 1 1 0 3 1 0 2 1 4 0 3 2 2 0
SIMMONDS,Troy           2 0 0 1 3 2 1 2 0 5 1 1 1 0 3 1 1 2 0 0
THURSFIELD,Will          2 0 1 0 3 1 1 2 0 4 2 0 1 0 3 0 2 0 0 0
HARTIGAN,Brent          2 0 0 1 3 0 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0
TAMBLING,Richard       1 0 0 0 1 2 2 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
 Rushed  1
TOTAL 69 47 53 49 218 51 55 39 35 180 41 27 35 35 138 9 17 41 11 10
 
50m PENALTIES: 4
GOALS: Free 0; Play 6; Mark 5
DISTANCE OF GOALS: 0-15m 3; 15-30m 3; 30-40m 2; 40+m 3

Top 5's

Contested possessions

Franklin         10
Foley              9
Smith             9
Johnson          8
King               8

Uncontested possessions

Bowden         29
Tuck              25
Lewis             25
Crawford        24
Mitchell          24

Effective Kicks

Bowden         20
Newman        16
N.Brown         14
Mitchell          13
Crawford        12

Inside 50s

Mitchell          9
Smith            7 
McGlynn        7
Crawford        6
Johnson         6

Rebound 50s

Bowden         8
Tivendale       5
Raines           5
Foley             5
Newman        4

[one-eyed]

Richmond fall away in loss to Hawks
Sun 15 July, 2007
By Jennifer Witham
for richmondfc.com.au

RICHMOND has gone down to a hard-working Hawthorn unit by 53 points, with the Hawks dominating the second half at the MCG on Sunday afternoon.

The Tigers were in the contest in the first half, but simply couldn't match the class of the Hawks after the long break and consequently lost the match, 19.15 (129) to 11.10 (76).

Joel Bowden worked hard throughout the game and was pitted against the tough opponents of Jarryd Roughead and Lance Franklin, while Chris Newman and Jake King also made decent contributions. 

While the Tigers had three players who snared multiple goals, they lacked the type of all-conquering forward the Hawks possessed. Matthew Richardson struggled against Trent Croad, while Roughead and Franklin shared nine goals between them up the other end.

The first half was a see-sawing contest with the Tigers holding the upper hand early and the Hawks stealing back the initiative before the long break.

Richardson kicked off proceedings in the opening term when he ran into goal, and young gun Jake King quickly followed it up with another major on the run.

The Hawks quickly answered the early challenge when Roughead marked and converted what would be the first of his five goals for the afternoon.

The Tigers refused to let the Hawks employ their running game, and the result was successive goals to Shane Edwards and Jay Schulz, which gave the Tigers their biggest lead of the game - 18 points.

The Hawks pulled two back via Luke Hodge and Ben McGlynn, but when Richardson found Kayne Pettifer with a handball in the goal square, the margin was back to 12 points before Roughead rounded out the term with his second.

The Tigers held a five-point lead at quarter time, but the Hawks quickly went about dismantling it as they enacted their pacy style of play. They kicked the first four goals of the second term, which blew the margin out to 20 points in their favour.

The Tigers responded when Nathan Brown bobbed up and snapped truly after crumbing a centering kick from Kane Johnson, before Schulz kicked an impressive goal from the boundary to keep his side in touch.

Another goal to Brown and a few minor scores to both sides meant the difference was only nine points at the long break, and it was the Tigers' defenders in Bowden and Andrew Raines that were leading the possession count with 19 and 18 disposals respectively.

The problems for the Tigers began early in the third when first-gamer Mitchell Thorp used his second kick in league football to boot his first goal. The difference became 14 points, which soon became 28 after McGlynn and Franklin slotted majors of their own.

Faced with a 28-point deficit and a quarter to play, the Tigers came out determined in the fourth, but it was still the Hawks that got the first goal when Campbell Brown streaked down the wing and kicked a superb major on the run.

The highlights were few and fair between for Tigers fans, and although Richardson and Pettifer both chipped in with goals to round out the game, the four points went to the Hawks after the home side staged a 10-goal-to-three second half.

The Tigers will return to the MCG next Sunday to host Port Adelaide, while the Hawks face St Kilda at Telstra Dome on Saturday night.

HAWTHORN: 4.2, 9.7, 14.10, 19.15 (129)
RICHMOND: 5.1, 8.4, 10.6, 11.10 (76)

Goals
Hawthorn: Roughead 5, Franklin 4, McGlynn 2, Crawford, Dixon, Lewis, Thorp, Hodge, Brown, Ladson, Campbell
Richmond: Schulz 2, Brown 2, Pettifer 2, Richardson, King, Edwards, Tuck, Johnson

Best
Hawthorn: Mitchell, Roughead, Franklin, Crawford, Lewis, Guerra, McGlynn
Richmond: Bowden, Newman, King, Johnson, Tuck

Injuries: Nil
Reports: Nil

Umpires: Stevic, Grun, Goldspink

Official crowd: 41,770 at the MCG

http://www.richmondfc.com.au/Season2007/News/NewsArticle/tabid/6301/Default.aspx?newsId=47308

[Passionfruit]

More Kicks , More handballs , more marks and we get flogged.
Does anyone thinks the game plan is ok now  .
There is a huge problem with the way we play.
If you think Wallace is the answer ? have a look at the stats.

[one-eyed]

A snippet from Sportal's match report:
Full article at: http://sportal.com.au/default.aspx/afl-news-display/polished-hawks-overcome-indirect-tigers-31191

As they have been for much of the year, the Tigers were competitive for periods of the game but were brought undone time and time again by a combination of poor field kicking and questionable decision making.

The Hawks were nowhere near their best but did not have to be against a Richmond side bereft of polish.

 It must have been frustrating for Matthew Richardson and Nathan Brown to watch their team-mates clumsily zigzag the ball up the field only to see the ball swept up the other end where Lance Franklin and Jarryd Roughead benefited from one-on-one contests.

Richmond's errors proved costly in the second half so much so that their demise was not brought about by any bullet Hawthorn fired but rather from the blood loss caused by constantly shooting one's self in the foot.

[Passionfruit]

Zig Zag the ball, been the game plan since pre-season
What ever happened to the run and carry and the overlap from 2005-2006

[one-eyed]

Hawks thrive on Tiger generosity
Michael Gleeson | July 16, 2007

LUKE Hodge noted on radio after yesterday's win that Hawthorn was always confident when playing Richmond that if the Hawks stuck to their game, eventually the ball would come to them.

Diplomatically you could interpret that as saying he knew his team's skills were superior, cynically you would say he was suggesting he knew Richmond's skills were poor and that if his teammates held fast the Tigers would give the ball, and the game, back. Succinctly, it was how things went.

Richmond had 408 possessions yesterday to Hawthorn's 390, which in part explained why they lost. With Richmond's skill level, having the ball more often is not necessarily a good thing.

Hawthorn played the more complete game, although it was one that rode on a couple of scoring bursts. It was the better structured and disciplined side that, irrespective of an early Richmond burst, did not lose composure.

The Tigers were admirable for a half in endeavour and run, but still had too few clear winners. They kept in touch with the game but after half-time were never in it.

Richmond found early opportunities through Matthew Richardson and Jake King, before Shane Edwards provided a flourish with a stylish blind turn and goal. When Jay Schulz marked strongly and goaled Richmond led by three goals.

Hawthorn, however, remained unshaken. Sam Mitchell persisted in the middle, with Shane Tuck nominally playing on him without playing close to him. Lance "Buddy" Franklin and Jarryd Roughhead finished the game with nine goals between them — and Franklin should have had several more but for wayward kicking — but it was Mitchell who provided them with their opportunities. Two bursts in each of the second and the third quarters from Mitchell were instrumental in the Hawks kicking clear.

The Hawks structured their side, as they do, with a four-man forward line and another two players further afield, one playing as a half-forward or de facto midfielder and the other, when not playing the same role, often loose in defence.

Richmond did not get drawn into following them and retained six players in their back line. For most of the game, it tried to keep Graham Polak as its loose player, joining contests as the third man up to support the other key backs.

The logic of Polak loose is obvious: he reads the ball well and marks strongly. He is not as creative by hand or foot as say a Joel Bowden, whom the Tigers previously preferred in that sweeping quarterback role, but Polak plays in a slightly different way. He, and the other Richmond defenders, however, were only able to do so much when so much work was being undone further afield.

Consider that the Hawks took the ball inside 50 an astonishing 23 more times than the Tigers. They had 15 marks inside 50 — Richmond, in contrast, had four. As stripling full-back Will Thursfield conceded after the game, when the ball is being turned over up the field and not held up in the midfield it is "almost impossible" for full-backs. Particularly against players such as Franklin and Roughhead.

The Hawks' glamour forward pair were joined by the much-anticipated Mitch Thorp, who in his first game played with a swagger to suggest a comfort at AFL level and a purpose in his leads to confirm as much.

Polak said combating the Hawks' multi-pronged attack and knowing which option to join was the difficulty. "It is one of the things you have to get used to playing that role — trying to see where the ball is going to go and cut off their leads and just try to read the flight. It is pretty hard. They set up a wall so you can't just run it out and kick it or it comes back at you.

"It is one of our key areas, I think, costly turnovers. They kicked, I think, eight or nine goals from our turnovers. That hurts and obviously the inside 50s were 20 more than us."

Richmond coach Terry Wallace admitted as much, saying the Tigers' skill level was inferior and their run lacking. He could have added that in the second half their accountability was equally poor.

But then this was the second side playing the bottom side, and the second-half contest very much reflected their respective positions.

BEST: Richmond: Foley, Polak, Hyde, Tivendale, Newman, Brown, Raines.

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfmatchreport/hawks-thrive-on-tiger-generosity/2007/07/15/1184438150858.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

[one-eyed]

Tigers cough it up, again
16 July 2007   Herald Sun
Mark Robinson

WHEN you watch Richmond massacre the sport of football, they do it by halves. Bluntly, they were pathetic after halftime yesterday.

At their worst, they ran around like school kids, chasing the ball and forgoing any sense of sacrifice for the betterment of the team.

As a consequence, they were directionless and haphazard. They played with hope instead of conviction and, combined with an inability to find teammates by hand or foot, it made for a very ugly yellow and black concoction.

Don't know what stood out more yesterday, the unaccountability or the poor disposal.

It was ridiculous the ease in which Hawthorn ran away with this game after leading by just nine points at the main break. They won by 53. This from a team that had 377 disposals to Richmond's 398.

Skipper Kane Johnson was brutally honest.

"It was disappointing," he started.

We set ourselves against Hawthorn. They are a young team like us, and they've had a fairly good year and we've been disappointing, so we set ourselves to have a good crack at them today.

"I thought we did early, and then our skill level and our run was not up to standard compared to them."

Accountability? "They just ran so much harder. They gave us an absolute lesson in what modern-day football is, and that's run hard, run fast."

Turnovers? "It's probably cost us all year. It's one thing we speak about and we are trying to do something about it."

Johnson said the club had to cut players who could not cut it. "We've got seven weeks to find out who can go with us for the future and who can't because we need to turn this club around," he said. "We need, as a group, to sit down and talk about where we're going in the seven weeks."

Mental disintegration is cancer at a footy club.

At Richmond, it envelops the team at every missed handball, at every time the ball falls short of a leading forward and every time someone decides they don't want to chase. And when that happens, finger pointing becomes an Olympic sport.

The Hawks, exposed last week against the physical Crows in the midfield, did exactly the same to Richmond yesterday.

They knew, as Luke Hodge relayed on radio afterwards, that if they kept the pressure on Richmond, that the Tigers would eventually turn it over and, very possibly, be exposed coming back the other way. That was their game plan, anyhow. It worked.

You can pose many intriguing questions about Richmond, but try this one: who would you rather be - the full-forward for the Tiges or the full-back?

We've seen Richo go insane with the delivery to him. But up the other end, youngster Will Thursfield might need psychological help after trying to counter Lance Franklin mainly and Jarryd Roughead.

Up against a midfield that swarmed through the MCG like the Zulus, Thursfield and Co had little chance, and Thursfield actually described it as "impossible".

He has an excuse, and if you watched the tape you could probably find some others deserving of latitude, but too many players were a let-down.

He is a fighter, Shane Tuck, but his foot skills hurt his worth. Nathan Foley is cut from the same cloth as in hardness, but his education with the boot needs to continue. You can keep naming them: Howat, Tivendale, Raines, Johnson, and even the usually exquisite Nathan Brown.

Brown and and Johnson both missed easy goals in the final quarter. Brown finished with 2.3.

Throw in the fact that he didn't want to do too much chasing of opponent Campbell Brown yesterday - once when he took two bounces and goaled from 50m - and Browny was as much to blame as anyone else. But at least he contributed something.

Richard Tambling remains an enigma. Brilliant and progressive one week, four touches and the last 20 minutes on the bench the nextr. It's not good enough. Simmonds, Hartigan, Schulz, King just have to contribute more.

Again, a lot of questions are asked, but this one is a constant: why can't they kick?

Wallace says it's a work in progress and that the VFL side Coburg had another great win yesterday.

Good ol' Coburg. Every week it's Coburg this, Coburg that, and it's probably understandable. With one win from 15 games, there's not a lot to crow about in the ones.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,22080092%255E19742,00.html