Racing
League
Rugby
Cricket
Golf
Olympics
Football
Netball
Motorsport
Combat Sports
Basketball
Other Sports
Sport Nation
Full Noise by SN
How Hawthorn's biggest strength has become its biggest weakness
Nicholas Quinlan • March 8th, 2026 3:37 pm
After being beaten by the injury-ravaged Giants, Liam Pickering and Josh Jenkins believes that it exposed several problems with Hawthorn’s depth.
Despite having only won once at ENGIE Stadium in their 10 matches there, the Hawks were the favourites to start their season with a win against GWS.
But the Giants flipped the script to win by 27 points with Jake Stringer booting five goals while the midfield, led by Finn Callaghan and Clayton Oliver won the clearance battle.
Following their loss, Pickering sensed that this loss showed why the Hawks were desperate to get Zach Merrett during the trade period.
“I don’t think Hawthorn have improved enough to beat the big boys,” the former North Melbourne and Geelong midfielder said on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“They went after Merrett; they didn’t get him. I think yesterday proved (why they needed him).
“The Giants, who were really wounded, like a lot of top-line players.
“I think they (the Hawks) have a really shallow midfield, especially without Will Day and their forward line to me is still suspect.
“For a team that made the preliminary last year…I know it’s Opening Round and it's only early days. I just don’t think they have improved.
“What I suspected going into the season was sort of shown yesterday with the lack of depth that the Giants had and the fact that the Hawks never looked like winning.”
While for Jenkins, he thinks that Hawthorn’s defeat exposed a bigger problem for coach Sam Mitchell.
“I think Hawthorn’s biggest strength under Sam Mitchell has become their biggest weakness,” he added.
“And that is around their midfield. The flexibility of the group, ‘Oh, we can run more and (Connor) Macdonald and (Nick) Watson and (Cam) McKenzie when he’s out there, we can run these guys through the midfield’.
“But when the you know what’s hitting the fan, who do you call on?
“You call on (Jai) Newcombe, we know that, and you would call on (Will) Day, but he’s not there.
“If you think about the other teams around the competition, they’ve got three or four genuine hard midfielders that if it is a problem around the footy or you need to play some field position game, you’d call on these guys.
“Hawthorn don’t know, aside from Newcombe, who they are going to go to.”
The Hawks will hope to recover from their loss when they play arch rivals Essendon next Friday at the MCG.
