Cricket
Racing
Rugby
League
Motorsport
Football
Golf
Combat Sports
Basketball
Tennis
Other Sports
Sport Nation
In-stadium commentary at Mt SmartThe challenge for Hawthorn ahead of unfavourable fixture run
Jaiden Sciberras • May 23rd, 2025 7:00 pm
Prior to Round 9, the Hawks were faced with the most difficult run in the AFL.
In the lead up to their scheduled bye round in Round 15, Hawthorn were tasked with the Gold Coast Suns in Darwin, falling short by eight points, followed by Brisbane and Collingwood at the MCG, the Bulldogs at Marvel and Adelaide in Tasmania.
Entering their awfully unfavourable run, the Hawks currently sit at 7-3, however are yet to hit their stride in 2025.
Off the back of an incredibly exciting year that saw Sam Mitchell’s side fall just three points short of a Preliminary Final, Hawthorn have won just one of their three contests against current top eight sides, losing to both Geelong and Gold Coast while slightly edging out the eighth placed Giants in Tasmania.
With that being said, Collingwood legend Nathan Buckley believes that entering the remaining four games of their horror run, the challenge for the Hawks is to free themselves of the expectations of last season.
“As strange as it sounds for a team that’s 7-3 and sitting in the top four, you can get mired in your form,” Buckley told SEN’s Whateley.
“I think Adelaide are an example of that, I think that their best footy has been exceptional over the last three seasons, but how do you go from good to great?
“Hawthorn were that team late last year, and it was all breaking new ground, and so the challenge now - and was always going to be - from a motivation standpoint.
“When you get hunted, and its not just from external but inside, when you’re getting hunted externally, and when you’ve had these amazing games and this amazing growth in the back two thirds of a year, you go into the next year with all this expectation.
“It’s not just external expectations, it’s internal expectations and then when you’re not meeting that, even when you’re 7-3, ‘we are not playing the way we’d like to play, we’re not beating sides by 10 goals the way that I felt we were late last year’, you feel a little less than.
“When you feel a little less than it’s hard to be at your creative, expressive best.
“That’s the challenge for Hawthorn. How can they free themselves up of this internal expectation to be able to find their best and be able to play with that freedom and abandon that they played with late last year.”
Despite a highly successful year, Buckley believes that the Hawks need to build beyond their identity of 2024 in order to establish themselves amongst the competition’s best.
“It’s easier said than done,” he continued.
"Sam Mitchell knows exactly what the go is, and his players know exactly what the go is. He is saying exactly what you have to say, but do you have to land a couple of bombs in terms of selection or shifts in position to change the dynamic.
“'We’re not trying to be what we were; we’re going to try to be something better'.
“Craig McRae’s language has said that around Collingwood as well. I think that’s a really important mindset for a team to have and if Hawthorn have got a mindset, whether it’s exposed or not, a mindset of getting back to what they were because we loved that feeling, they’re not going to get there.
“If they’ve got a mindset of becoming something better than they are in the moment, and in their next evolution, then they’re a chance.
“The Gold Coast was a really challenging fixture. (During the) early stages it looked like they might’ve fallen away but they had the pluck, and they had the endeavour, and they had the contest and the will, which they displayed in spades this year.
“But we haven’t seen the slickness, the clean movement, the synergy and the connection that we saw last year, we haven’t seen that as much this year.
“They face a couple of great opposition, this next couple of weeks is going to be excellent to ascertain where their head space is at, and what their bonafides are for the end of the season.”
The Hawks take on the Lions on Saturday afternoon at the MCG as they look to maintain their place within the top four.
