Mighty Fighting Hawks

by Martin Blake

The rare feat of winning back-to-back flags in 2013 and 2014 cemented coach Alastair Clarkson's men as a truly great team and Hawthorn FC as a great club.
At the end of the 2004 season Hawthorn was an unholy mess, with no coach, no chief executive and no captain. Enter Clarkson, who established a club culture based on endurance, courage, mateship and sacrifice and in 2008, won the first of his three premierships. It was an unlikely win since Geelong was clearly the best team of the year.
All premierships are different, and if the 2013 flag was about redemption - following the 2012 loss to the Sydney Swans - the 2014 flag was about resilience. After a season where injuries, illness and the absence of Lance Franklin dominated the headlines, the Hawks shook off their arch rival Sydney in a stunning victory against the odds. Under Clarkson, there is always a way to win.
From Jeff Kennett's reign to the defection of Franklin; from Sam Mitchell standing down as captain to make way for Luke Hodge to the key roles of Jarryd Roughead and Cyril Rioli, this is the story of the team that Alastair Clarkson built, in a decade of success.
'This club is here to stay and we plan to be a juggernaut of the AFL.' � A ndrew Newbold, president of Hawthorn Football Club, 28 September 2014
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Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2015

About the author

Martin Blake has written on sport for more than 25 years, most of it with The Age in Melbourne. He has covered every AFL season since 1986, and several Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, US Masters golf tournaments, the British Open Championship and various Australian cricket tours. He has won numerous awards for writing on Australian football, cricket and golf, and is a member of the MCG Media Hall of Fame. He also broadcasts on sport for the ABC. Martin plays far too much golf, and lives in Melbourne.

Reviews

[Oliver Hodson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a different project to Michael Gordon's 'playing to win', this was a celebration while Gordon's book more of an analysis. This book was a bit frustrating with repeat anecdotes in the main narrative and the player profiles, when it would have been great to have a bit more access to new material on players and coaches. It would also have helped to have a little perspective, I would have loved to hear rivals opinions of the hawks from those matches. Finally, as much as it is a nice problem to have, it was clear enough that it would have been good to wait til 2015 (or hopefully 16) to capture the clarkson era, but even what they had about the swans flag in 14 felt a bit tacked on. Uneven, but big and mighty like the hawkers!

[Tom Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mighty fighting Hawks. Wow!! this book really got me into reading. It talks about the Hawthorn Football Club going on to win 3 premierships in a row, and also talking about players ups and downs. I truly would recommend this book to any age group and any gender. I'm giving this book a 5 out of 5.