The season needed some bangers for Round 8 to distract from one of the AFL’s worst weeks in living memory.
Once again, the game bailed out the competition across all the games on Thursday and Friday night, but really the whole round. Try as they might, the AFL’s consistent ineptitude isn’t enough to drag the best game in the world down with them.
But the game I want to focus is the one that set the tone for a bonkers run of bangers: Collingwood v Hawthorn
Dylan Moore’s goal after the siren drove Hawthorn to a draw against the Pies, who remain the very best in the competition at making teams play left-handed. While the Pies were outgunned in terms of talent on the field, they were zonally perfect and gummed the Hawks’ number one way to score, which is Jack Gunston having space to lead into.
The Pies structure essentially destroyed Hawthorn’s ability to kick goals the way they want to, especially in the first quarter.
While some changes from Sam Mitchell made a difference, like having Gunston play the second half almost as a winger and instead dragging Billy Frampton down to full forward where he had his hands full with the bigger and stronger Mitch Lewis, the biggest thing that drove Hawthorn’s resurgence was the individual brilliance of their smaller players like Ginnivan, Watson, Moore and especially Connor Macdonald.
When a structure is dominating you like Craig McRae’s was on Thursday night, you generally need a Joker-type agent of chaos to torch it. Those four are the Hawks’ Jokers, who lay waste to opposition structures for fun.
My favourite of the awesome foursome is Connor Macdonald because, while Watson gets most of the plaudits, Macdonald is playing a crucial role as the connective tissue between Hawthorn’s midfield and forward line.
If you have a look at Macdonald’s possession map for the season, he gets 16 of his 21 disposals inside the forward half, 11 of those coming in attacking midfield. Thursday night was a perfect example of it, where he got the ball almost exclusively between the centre circle and the forward 50 arc.
For the night he had 28 and 3 with 8 score involvements. In a game that the Hawks should have won but for wasteful ball use going inside 50, he was the one who consistently generated good shots for teammates.
For the year, he’s leading the Hawks in score involvements, score assists and inside 50s.
He’s playing a new age centre half forward role in a team that has three key forwards in Gunston, Calsher Dear and the emerging Mitch Lewis. While the three keys have other responsibilities in bailing out their defence and competing deep in the forward line, Macdonald patrols the area that used to be Wayne Carey’s domain and uses his footy IQ, leg speed, and exceptional ball use to work his way into areas that defences just don’t want him to be in and then destroys them from there.
It’s almost a centre half forward, number 10 in soccer hybrid role where he exists in the liminal spaces between midfield and defence and just makes a nuisance of himself kind of like how Dustin Martin used but with better mobility and less centre bounce work.
He’s our Alessandro Del Piero.
For instance, with 8:18 to go in the third quarter of Thursday’s game with the score at 64-63 in favour of the Hawks, Lloyd Meek took an uncontested mark on centre wing. The Hawks had switched the ball to the fat side to get it to Meek and the Pies sagged back to clog up Hawthorn’s leading lanes or any space to crumb in as they did for most of the night.
Understanding that the Pies had played a zonal defence for the entire night because nobody has the horses to just man the Hawks up, Macdonald parked himself at right half forward in the space between the third and fourth line of Collingwood’s defence. Meek turkey-holed a beautiful kick to Macdonald between three Pies, who were aware of him but had to decide whether to sit on him or open up a different hole in their structure.
After the mark, Macdonald played on quickly and squared the ball to an open Josh Ward on centre 50, who got the space because the gravity of Macdonald’s positioning. Ward then hit a leading Jack Gunston, again who had been opened up by Macdonald’s gravity, but it was only a 20m kick so it was paid not 15 and it ultimately ended up in a missed Newcombe set shot.
The outcome isn’t the point. The point is Macdonald’s positioning and game sense time and again proving a nuisance for the Pies structure. He has a keen understanding for when pain points are in systems, and he just lives in them. He’s like Piers Morgan in that Russell Brand interview, where he’s at his best sitting inside the discomfort.
He’s not just a set-up man, however. He’s got a bit of Michael Bluth to him, where he spends most of his setting up jokes for others, but he still gets the best joke himself sometimes.
On Thursday night, with three goals, he got his “her” moment.
He is a star and he gets to play a starring role, but it’s not just Macdonald. This new number 10 role has proliferated across the league as teams look to have their highest damage players in positions where they can inflict maximum damage.
Good teams these days tend to be prioritising the high-IQ, mobile, clean ball-using Allen key player. As mid-forward connection becomes even more important, getting the ball to the maximum damage players playing in a maximum damage role is going to become even more crucial as games slow down.
The Hawks have four players who can play the role, but there’s nobody better at it right now than Macdonald. Last year, I thought the Hawks had a superstar problem which precluded them from winning the flag. This year, with the ascension of Watson, Newcombe, and of course Macdonald that’s no longer an issue.
They have to be among the premiership favourites.