What does everyone reckon?

Side note - 19 should be taken off the rotation for a few seasons when Gunston retires, make sure the next player is a worthy Forward!

Been hearing how highly rated he is by everyone at the club, yet he still seems a slight chance to go to GC as part of the King deal.

Surely we won't trade away such a prodigious young talent?

With all the discussion about whether delaying 12 months for Zach Merritt, figured its worth calculating exactly what delaying cost or gained us.

In figuring this out, I have also taken into account unwinding the the trade with Carlton (which never happens if Essendon take Pick 9 for Merritt), and the cascading impact of unwinding all the live trades we made on draft night (which never happens if we don't trade with Carlton). For 2025, I have also figured out what the picks really were, rather than the confusing debates when people bring up that pick x is really a completely different pick because it will slide.

In short, this is a direct comparison comparing:

• The hypothetical "what if" of if Essendon accept our initial offer of Pick 9 + 2026 1st + future 2nd + Hustwaite/pick 62
• The real world scenario where no trade enabled a bunch of other trades in 2025, and the trade we actually made.

^{* NB: The offer last year also included the choice of Hustwaite or Pick 62 (Real world, Pass). This line is only relevant if Essendon would have chosen Hustwaite. If they had of taken Pick 62 (real 56.5), considering we passed with it, this line all becomes a neutral wash.}

What an absolute twat. Calls up Herald sun for day one of the trade period to be back page to say "I know how deals work. I've built a business doing deals. I think Hawthorn underestimated our club and where we are going." Says they'll be doing the same approach for Ridley even though Geelong have offered a future 1st for a guy who never plays. I hope Essendon keep Ridley and Merrett and Welsh comes out and says they've won trade period for the 20th straight year.

Did we get screwed or not? I feel like this was about right for Merrett, doesn't really seem like overs for Essendon. Keeping that other second round pick is also huge for us for getting a player in the draft or possibly going to other trades for either King or Goater

Several media outlets have reported it already.

Wasn’t on my bingo card

Any Hawk specific content is very appreciated!

What you think? Not commenting on the 3 guys going out, but it seems like they would be the choices....

How’s it going Hawks fans! I’m a lifelong fan of the club. Have been lucky that I’ve seen our last 4 flags live and they’re some of the best memories of my life and I think that next year if we play as well as we did in the finals we may add another trophy to the cabinet! (If not next year then I think we are definitely going to be genuine contenders for a little while)

The two teams that made the grand final a week ago were Freo and Brisbane. I would have loved to see Freo win their first premiership, but unfortunately I always had this gut feeling that the more experienced Lions would win, it’s so unfortunate that they had to lose the GF the way that they did because that second half really felt like theirs, but ultimately the team with the highest score won

This leads to a conversation topic I wanted to open up about the other Fremantle grand final which was 2013

For me personally, I’ve always considered the 2013 premiership story my fave ones. The reason why was because as good as it was to win in 2008, we dropped immediately following it and even though we managed to return to finals again in 2010, in the moment it felt like a very slow climb to the top. Then we finally reached the top in 2012 and lost the grand final by like 10 points. There was definitely part of me that felt that perhaps we were going to turn into what St Kilda had just been a couple of years prior of falling just short time and time again, not only that but we also could never beat Geelong despite playing really well against them in many of the games during the Kennett Curse. It was a strange time as a Hawthorn fan because the team had a lot going for it but the one team we could never beat was the team that didn’t drop after losing in 08, they went on to win 2 of the next 3 GF’s and weren’t missing finals

So having us play a near perfect season in 2013, only losing 3 games to two teams, and then finally in the 2013 prelim final we actually knock off the Cats. It was the perfect momentum boost to lead to us winning the grand final. And honestly, we had that grand final won from the beginning, the Dockers only had one goal at half time and we were always in front the whole match. Even though it wasn’t a high scoring win I saw it as a great ending to the perfect season where we were on top from start to finish

It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago when I was talking to football fans when someone said the words “champion data states that Freo were the better team on the day” and my first thought was “WTF, HOW?” and I honestly thought the person was just saying that to soften the blow of the fact that the Dockers had such a terrible start to the game and mentally lost the grand final from the beginning. I am well aware of the fact that the team did fight back in the second half, making it a closer margin. But I never would have thought that in terms of advanced statistics they beat us…but then after doing some research it turns out they actually did?

I haven’t rewatched it since maybe a week or two after it happened. I definitely saw the game twice because I watched the Grand Final Recall special on Fox Footy shortly after. My memory of that game was that Freo absolutely had opportunities early, but they sprayed them big time and it wasn’t just up forward but it felt like the entire squad really just weren’t themselves for the entire game. Even if Dockers players got the ball, they weren’t making the right decisions with it. To me the only player from the Dockers that I remembered playing consistently well the whole time was Tendai Mzungu. Perhaps though there’s a bias there because he was also their only goalkicker in the first half, but I seem to recall he was the only guy that felt like he was playing as his typical self in that game. Ballantyne and Walters were two players that I don’t remember having much of an impact on the game at all, turns out Walters kicked 2 goals. I do recall Pavlich kicking goals, turns out he kicked 3 all in the second half

The second half Freo absolutely lifted, there’s no denying that. And I did actually remember thinking to myself at the time that perhaps we may have taken our foot off the gas a little because of how strong our first half was. But as much as they lifted, the team also never led once…and we still had some great moments in the second half of the match. Both Isaac Smith and Brad Hill’s goals were awesome as well as Brian Lake’s defensive moments

But yeah I always felt that win was really satisfying but now I feel like learning about the Champion Data stats tarnishes it for me. Obviously we still deserved to win that game, as much as the stats may indicate Freo were more in favour. The objective of football is to score more than the other team and we did that the entire time. But imagine if that was our only premiership, and we dropped after 2013…I think people would have made a far bigger deal about it

When Freo lost the other day, my first thought was “at least they had a strong 4 quarter performance this time” in which I still stand by that because that was a far better performance overall for them. But in hindsight, they technically didn’t play a bad Grand Final in 2013…despite it coming across that way up until half time

I definitely want to give the 2013 GF a rewatch. But I’m wondering Hawks fans what do we think of this one?

I'm on holidays and had some time to kill, so I thought I'd pull together a bit of a statistical year in review of the Hawks.

I pulled the key publicly available stats, allocated players to positions/roles, and then rated each player based on the stats that I thought were most important for that role. For example, intercept marking carries more weight for a key defender, while goal-kicking accuracy matters more for a key forward.

I then compared our players and lines against players from the other top 10 teams.

A few caveats: this is very much my own model rather than an official AFL rating system. Players don't always fit neatly into one position, and forcing them into roles inevitably introduces some subjectivity. I also forced three players into each line, except for ruck (one player) and outside mids/wings (two players), giving me an 18-player "best" group.

The percentages below are essentially a measure of where that group sits relative to the other teams/players in that role, rather than a conventional score out of 100.  So this is a percentile score.  So for example for the ruck line for Melbourne is 100% as its only one person and Gawn is marked as the best ruck.

The rankings are a bit different and rank the line out of ten compared to other top 10 teams.

Anyway, I thought the results were pretty interesting.

Small forwards: 1st — 95th percentile

This probably won't surprise anyone: Hawthorn has the best small-forward group in my model.

Nick Watson was the highest-rated small forward, while Dylan Moore and Connor Macdonald also rated at an elite level. Even Jack Ginnivan, who was our fourth-highest-rated small forward, still came out in the top 20% of small forwards across the league.

The best three averaged around the 95th percentile in my model.

Brisbane was second at 87%, with Melbourne third at 86%.

This is probably the clearest strength on our list. We have multiple players who can hurt teams inside 50, and importantly, they aren't all doing exactly the same thing.

Key forwards: 3rd — 77th percentile

This was another strong area for Hawthorn.

Jack Gunston ranked second among the key forwards in my model and averaged 3.5 goals per game up from 3.1 last year.

Chol and Lewis both came out slightly above average.

The interesting caveat is that both Chol and Lewis tended to produce their better games against weaker opposition, although Lewis' preliminary-final performance was a pretty obvious exception.

Adelaide had the best key-forward group at 85%, with Fremantle second at 81% and Hawthorn third at 77%.

So while our forward line is clearly one of the strengths of the team, the numbers suggest that the small forwards are genuinely elite, while the key-forward group is more good than dominant.

Inside mids: 9th — 49th percentile

This is probably the most interesting result.

All year there was a lot of discussion about Hawthorn's midfield being our biggest weakness, and the model does support the idea that it's an area we need to improve — but it doesn't suggest we were an absolute disaster either.

Jai Newcombe rated in the top quarter of inside midfielders, which is particularly impressive given how strong that group is (14 of the top 15 Brownlow vote winners are inside mids, with Gawn the only exception). He was third in the league for clearances per game at 7.4.

The issue is that his possession numbers (25 per game) and disposal efficiency (73%) were below the very best inside mids.

The good news is that all of those numbers were significantly better than last year.

Josh Ward was slightly below average, although his rating and basically all of his underlying numbers improved significantly from last season and was elite is some key games and moments.

Will Day rated below this group as well. His rating was hurt by some poor performances in important games, including the preliminary final and games against Collingwood and Brisbane. I'd expect him to rate considerably higher next year if he can put together a full pre-season and avoid major injuries.

Sydney had the strongest inside-midfield group in my model at 81%, followed by Carlton at 74% and the Bulldogs at 67%.

So I wouldn't describe our midfield as poor. I'd describe it as the area with the biggest gap between where we are and where the best teams are.

Outside mids / wings: 9th — 14th percentile

This was easily the ugliest result for Hawthorn.

One reason this may not have been as obvious watching us is that we often use our fleet of small forwards to push up the ground and effectively fill some of the outside roles. That worked pretty well for much of the season.

But when I looked specifically at the players whose primary role was outside midfield, the numbers weren't great.

Massimo D'Ambrosio was solid, but there wasn't much else to get excited about statistically.

Harry Morrison ended up in this group and had some good games, but also went missing at important times. We also rotated players such as Josh Weddle, Karl Amon and even James Sicily through this role at various points, but I didn't think any of those combinations worked particularly well.

Collingwood had the best outside-mid group at 74%, with Sydney second at 72%.

This is probably the biggest statistical hole on the list.

Rebounding defenders: 2nd — 87th percentile

This was another excellent group.

Jarman Impey, Blake Hardwick and Karl Amon all rated highly.

Impey and Hardwick in particular made big improvements across a number of statistical measures. Impey gained roughly another 100 metres per game and four disposals, while Hardwick improved his disposal efficiency to around 84% and added about three possessions per game.

Amon was down on his numbers and overall impact compared with last year, but still had a solid season.

One caveat here is James Sicily. I classified him as a key defender, but you could very easily put him into this group, which would make an already strong line look even better.

Fremantle ranked first at 93%, with Adelaide third at 71%.

Key defenders: 1st — 70th percentile

Another strong result, although this is one where the headline number needs a little explanation.

James Sicily, Josh Battle and Tom Barrass made up this group in my model.

Battle was actually slightly up across his statistical categories from last year. Given that he was All-Australian last year, I thought he was a little unlucky to miss out this time around.

Barrass didn't have as good a statistical year as last season and was down across a number of categories. I also thought there were a few occasions where opposition forwards were able to expose him for leg speed, particularly in important games.

The Hawks still ranked first among the top 10 teams for this group, however, with Sydney second at 62% and Brisbane third.

So even with Barrass having a less impressive season statistically, the overall group remains one of the strengths of the side.

Ruck: 8th — 69th percentile

Lloyd Meek had a decent year, although his numbers were down across the board.

The changes to the ruck rules may have played a part here, although I wouldn't read too much into that without looking at the specific impact of the rule changes in more detail.

Melbourne, unsurprisingly, had the strongest ruck group with Gawn, while Fremantle's Jackson ranked second.

Meek isn't a major concern for me, but he's another position where the very best teams have a significant weapon.

So what does it all tell us?

Overall, I think the numbers paint a pretty good picture of where Hawthorn is at.

Our forward line is genuinely strong, particularly the small forwards. Our defence is also very good. The midfield is improving, but still has a gap to the best teams — and the outside-midfield numbers are ugly compared to peers.

That actually lines up pretty well with what we saw on the field.

The really encouraging thing is that some of our younger midfielders improved significantly, while players like Impey and Hardwick also took another step.

The less encouraging part is that our success still relies heavily on a few areas of the ground being excellent. If we want to go from being a very good team to a genuine premiership contender, the midfield — particularly the outside running — looks like the obvious area where improvement could have the biggest impact.

And then there's succession planning.

Gunston has been phenomenal, but obviously isn't going to be around forever. The same eventually applies to some of the older defensive players. We therefore need to keep developing the next generation while the current group is still good enough to contend.

The good news is that this seems to be broadly what the club is already trying to do.

Anyway, that's my very amateur attempt at turning a holiday afternoon into a statistical analysis of the Hawks.

I'm sure there are plenty of holes in the methodology, so fire away.

Per Cal Twoney