‘You become the hunted’: Early losses have Pies on back foot in bid for back-to-back AFL premierships

As Geelong champion Tom Hawkins was travelling to the MCG on St Patrick’s Day last year, he was bracing for an onslaught from Collingwood and the mighty Magpie army.

Not quite six months had passed since the Cats capped a stunning 16-game winning streak with a dominant victory over Sydney in the 2022 Grand Final, but their status had changed as they prepared for the opening game of the 2023 season.

Having ended an 11-year premiership drought in emphatic fashion, the Cats had become ‘the hunted’ going into 2023 and were the side every team wanted to beat.

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It is a mindset Hawkins, who will feature on Fox Footy’s AFL 360 next week, was familiar with having been part of a Geelong team trying to do exactly the same for the previous decade.

“You go there thinking, ‘Collingwood are going to be revved up to the eyeballs’. They will be thinking, ‘if we can rock’n’roll the Cats, we’re on’,” Hawkins told foxfooty.com earlier in March.

“To build your side up to find out where you are at, there is nothing like playing the best, playing the reigning premier, to see where you stand.

“That is how it was always paraphrased for us when we were playing a reigning premier, that ‘we have the opportunity to knock this side off now (so) let’s go after them’.

“That can never be underestimated. I don’t think it has anything to do with the reigning premiers and how mentally strong they are. It is about everyone else and their desire to beat the best.

“It just reminds me of how unbelievable back-to-back successes and back-to-back-to-back flags are, because you become the hunted.”

The Cats ultimately started their flag defence last year with losses to Collingwood, Carlton and Gold Coast on their way to finishing a couple of games outside the eight.

The spotlight is again on the reigning premiers in 2024, with Collingwood heading into its clash with St Kilda at the MCG on Thursday night off the back of two consecutive losses.

For the first time in VFL/AFL history, the Grand Finalists from the previous year have opened a season with successive defeats, with Brisbane similarly disappointing to date in 2024.

Just six months after Collingwood’s triumph over Brisbane at the MCG, Magpies coach Craig McRae has been quizzed already as to whether the club is suffering from a premiership hangover, while his Lions counterpart Chris Fagan is also facing some tough questions.

Dating back to 1999, only 18 per cent of teams that have started with successive losses have reached the finals, though both Brisbane and Collingwood are capable of quick recoveries.

But exacerbating the challenge is that they clash next Thursday at The Gabba, which means at least one will be conceding a significant start, regardless of the result between Collingwood and St Kilda.

History suggests it is extremely difficult to defend a premiership, with only three clubs managing the feat in the first quarter of this century — each one of them outstanding.

McRae was a member of the Brisbane team that managed a hat-trick between 2001 and 2003. Hawthorn three-peated between 2013 and 2015 and Richmond went back-to-back in 2019 and 2020 after a drought-breaking success in 2017.

A couple of early losses sparks a usual refrain. Is this the start of a premiership hangover?

“The hangovers and not (being at) the same (level as last year) … we’re here to qualify. That’s it,” McRae said.

“We’re in the process of qualifying and before we do any of that, there is no point in talking about anything else.”

Former Hawthorn best and fairest Brad Sewell, who played in his club’s 2008 and 2013 premierships, agrees with Hawkins’ assertion that opposition clubs hunt the premiers.

Sewell, who provides expert analysis for ABC Radio and is a former Fox Footy AFL 360 panellist, said the external attention that comes with being the reigning premiers adds to the challenge.

“It is a scalp to knock off the reigning premiers, definitely. You certainly feel the expectation, or the external expectation, and it depends on the club’s ability to filter that effectively,” he said.

“There is a heightened emphasis from the opposition on you, but the media are also waiting to see signs of a drop off as well. They will be loving this 0-2 start at the moment from Collingwood and you can’t be entirely immune to that.

“There is certainly a different focus on the preparation and results when you are the reigning premier.”

Sewell’s former teammate Jordan Lewis, who played in four Hawks premierships, said it can be tough for Grand Finalists to avoid sluggish starts to a season the next year.

“Anyone that’s played in a Grand Final and won a Grand Final … you go away and have a pre-season, the biggest challenge for teams that have been through that is to find motivation for the start of the season,” Lewis told Fox Footy’s AFL 360 on Wednesday night. “That is real and that is the hardest thing you could possibly find.

“For sides who are wanting to go back-to-back and become teams that we’ll speak about for years and years, you have to be better in the early part of the season. That is what I’ve learnt over the years and being part of it.”

Triple premiership Tiger Jack Riewoldt added on AFL 360: “It can be a really slippery slope, especially when you’re used to winning. You start to question things that you did over summer — ‘did I do that the right way?’ — or ‘are we going about it the right way’? You start to focus on who you don’t have in your team if you have injuries.

“It is so hard to go back-to-back. You go from being the hunter … and now they’re the hunted. So when you’re looking at what you want to copy as an opposition club, of course you’re going to look at the best team in the competition and say: ‘What are they doing that we’re not?’”

Sewell has seen both sides of the coin when it comes to suffering a premiership hangover and then successfully defending a flag.

He was a pivotal member in the midfield when the Hawks stunned Geelong in the 2008 Grand Final and said the celebrations afterwards were a factor in the club’s failure to make finals the following year.

Hawthorn started 2009 with losses to Geelong and the Swans and ultimately managed to win only nine games for the year.

“The 2009 season was clearly different to 2014 for a number of reasons,” he said.

“List composition was a factor. We were much older in 2009. ‘Crawf’ (Shane Crawford) had just hung on to get to the premiership and then we had some significant injuries with Clinton Young and Trent Croad, who badly broke his foot.

“But the biggest thing was that we came back and our skinfolds were so much higher than they had ever been before. It is a pretty crude measure, but also a very accurate measure that we had enjoyed the off-season.

“I can’t remember how they got to this number, but effectively they had arrived at the figure that we had come back 18kg overweight as a collective. And it was a factor.”

He said there is another clear issue that cannot be ignored despite the professionalism and competitive instincts of players.

“It is intangible because your only goal throughout your entire career is to win a premiership,” he said.

“So once you have done that, you can tell yourself that your motivation is the same, but it is not. You are just a little bit softer.

“You might have had a couple of more beers or celebrated a little bit more in the off-season, but ultimately you have done what you set out to do.

“It is why … those different focuses for us (between 2013 and 2015) were really important, because they enabled us to perform well without focusing on the results, per se.”

Sewell, who ultimately missed selection for the 2014 Grand Final after an injury-riddled season then retired at the end of the year, identified a few factors as crucial to Hawthorn’s repeat successes between 2013 and 2015.

The elder players had learnt from what went wrong in 2009 and were determined to avoid that occurring again. The club also had an insight into the pain that stems from losing a Grand Final after narrowly falling to the Swans in 2012, while there was a drive to ensure those who missed out on playing in the flags in 2013 and 2014 had an opportunity to join the extended party as well.

But Sewell also said the Hawks’ ability to set internal goals and milestones to achieve in small blocks throughout the year was critical.

As difficult as the illnesses suffered by then-senior coach Alastair Clarkson in 2014 and key forward Jarryd Roughead a year later proved to be, the battles of both men had an impact in shifting the focus for players. Clarkson suffered from Guillain Barre Syndrome in 2014 and was forced to take a break from coaching for a period, while Roughead was diagnosed with a melanoma on his lip the following year.

“We were not solely focused on winning the Grand Final. One of the things we were quite good at was breaking down blocks within a season and setting milestones within a year,” Sewell said.

“It was obviously a difficult time for ‘Clarko’ and his family, but the benefit of that is that it took all of the pressure off us for a period, because the focus was shifted somewhere else.

“‘Bolts’ (Brendon Bolton) was an interim coach for seven weeks and I think it was actually really important to hear a different voice. Clarko may have been pulling the strings in the background, who knows, but just to have that different motivation, if you like, was a factor.

“It kind of altered priorities a little bit too, because that last game in September was not as important by comparison to your health. I reckon that gave us a bit of freedom, the slight shift in focus.”

Hawkins, who is on track to play his 350th game against Hawthorn on Easter Monday at the MCG, said prior to the start of the season there are clear benefits to starting a year well.

“Footy is an imperfect sport. When things are not going well, or if something is slightly off, it can be hard to bridge the gap back to excellence, and when you are trying to bridge that gap and everyone is coming at you, it can be harder,” he said.

“Eventually that can wear you down, because those games become physical and they are unrelenting. You are always up for the fight as a player, but some games are just played at a more ferocious level than others and I think that happens more often when you are the premiers. You know that everyone is watching those matches.”

Fagan was Hawthorn’s head of football during the later stages of Sewell’s 200-game career. The former Hawk can remember challenging him about a theory during the infancy of the club’s hat-trick.

“The important thing for a club to do is to change the goalposts, to measure yourself differently, once you are a premiership side,” Sewell said.

“As opposed to stating, ‘our goal is to win the premiership’, instead our emphasis was to finish top four, because if you finish top four, then you are giving yourself a chance.

“I remember challenging ‘Fages’ at one stage, saying to him: ‘Why are we focusing on finishing in the top four? Shouldn’t we be focused on winning it?’

“But ultimately they were right in terms of saying: ‘Give yourselves a chance to win it, because then you can worry about that later on. Give yourself a chance to play in the Grand Final by finishing in the top four, then we can worry about that game later on.’”

While the Lions have the bye, the Magpies face 2023 finalists St Kilda on Thursday night, with many pundits giving the Saints every chance to send Collingwood to a 0-3 start.

“No side wants to start 0-3, whether you are the reigning premiers or the side at the bottom,” Lewis said.

“Every player is human, every player will go through certain thoughts and don’t for a minute believe if a player says ‘we are only looking at this week’. When you’re 0-2, you start to try and calculate when you can get back to an even keel and then to see if you can get in front of the ledger. That plays on your mind.

“There’s so many things now that players mentally have to deal with because they’re 0-2, other than playing the game. You’re looking for moments earlier in the game that give you that jolt of confidence. If that’s not happening, then all these other thoughts that have been coming in throughout the week when you’ve had some down time start to appear.”

With the Grand Final still six months away, there is little doubt Fagan and McRae will be stressing a similar message to their sides.

“We’re trying to get better every single day; that has been our mantra for two years and it is not going to change,” McRae said.

“Our system has been really, really strong for us in recent times. We’ve got to get back being that team. Having trust in the system is the only way through. Process and system.”