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Hawks away from home: Inside Sicily’s pre-game speech
Andrew Slevison • September 8th, 2025 1:55 pm
Hawthorn captain James Sicily was full of inspiration in his pre-game speech on Saturday.
The Hawks entered the Elimination Final against GWS at ENGIE Stadium as slight outsiders given they had never won at the venue.
But they came out 19-point winners after a seesawing affair which had them in front by 28 points at half-time, up by 42 points midway through the third, and narrowly behind early in the fourth.
Vice-captain Dylan Moore gave some insight into what was said when the skipper addressed his teammates prior to the game.
“We genuinely want the person next to us to perform really well,” Moore said on SEN’s Fireball.
“Even Sicily’s pre-game speech was, ‘Are you willing to bleed for your mate next to you? Are you willing to die for the guy next to you?’
“I think that’s what we’ve got - we’ve got the mentality that we will die for each other because we want it so bad and we’re so close.
“I feel like you can see that in spades.”
Moore explained the specifics of Sicily’s messaging which centred around the Hawks’ inability to win on the road in 2025, aside from Opening Round in Sydney.
“Occasionally he’ll really rev you up and get you motivated,” Moore added.
“It was all about that we haven’t had a big win away from home and that’s we needed today. We needed to show that we can win away from home and to do that we needed to kind of fake it in a way with our connection, and go over the top and overboard.
“We’ve lacked a bit of soul away from home recently and ‘Sis’ was like, ‘Nah, this is what we need to do today. Even if you’re not feeling it and it’s not you, you’ve just got to get it out’.
“And I feel like we saw that in the first quarter especially.”
That mindset had the Hawks 24 points ahead at quarter-time.
But as the Giants piled on six goals in a row in 15 minutes to end the third term, Moore and his teammates felt helpless.
In the end they were able to settle at the final break, soak up more Giants pressure, and then fight back hard late in the game.
“It was actually pretty crazy,” Moore admitted.
“A few of us after the game were like, ‘We felt the full force of the tsunami’.
“Their big players stepped up and absolutely dominated that second half of the third quarter.
“It kind of felt hopeless out there. It was like ‘we don’t know what to do’. They got the run-on and it was really hard to stop.
“Three-quarter time came at a good time, we could just settle down and go again. We had some positivity at three-quarter time, we were still up by a goal.
“We wanted a close final, we expected this, this is fine. Credit to the boys, we came in the last quarter and did well.”
The Hawks will next travel to Adelaide to meet the Crows in a cut-throat Semi Final at the Adelaide Oval on Friday night.
Last season they beat the Western Bulldogs in an Elimination Final before travelling to the City of Churches where they lost narrowly to Port Adelaide.
Can they overcome the 2025 minor premiers away from home? Back-to-back travel could be seen as an issue but Moore is confident the playing group can handle the task ahead.
“The six-day break actually helps. We’ve done it during the year and we’ll be fine,” he said further.
