Some finals are won. This one was survived.
Brisbane 20.11 (131) defeated Hawthorn 19.8 (122) at the MCG on Saturday night in front of 97,835 people, in a preliminary final that produced 39 goals, twelve of them in the last quarter, and an ending that will be replayed in Hawthorn for a decade.
The Hawks led with three minutes to play. With 36 seconds left, Jarman Impey was penalised for holding the ball. Hugh McCluggage kicked the goal. Kai Lohmann kicked his fifth after the siren. Nine points.
The scoreboard
Quarter time: Brisbane 5.2 to Hawthorn 5.1.
Half time: Hawthorn 11.1 (67) to Brisbane 8.5 (53).
Three-quarter time: Brisbane 15.7 (97) to Hawthorn 12.5 (77).
Full time: Brisbane 20.11 (131) to Hawthorn 19.8 (122).
Look at the Hawthorn half-time line: 11.1. Eleven goals and a single behind in a preliminary final. That is about as close to perfect as a half of finals football gets, and it still was not enough.
Brisbane then kicked seven goals to one in the third to take a 20-point lead. Hawthorn responded with 7.3 in the final quarter. Brisbane answered with 5.4. Twelve goals in twenty minutes of preliminary final football.
Nick Watson kicked six and lost
Nick Watson kicked six goals in a preliminary final and finished on the losing side. Jack Gunston kicked five. Mitch Lewis kicked four. Fifteen of Hawthorn’s nineteen goals came from three players, and Hawthorn still lost.
Will Ward, Jordan D’Ambrosio, James Sicily and Tom Barrass were the others who stood up. Sicily and Barrass had conceded five goals in a qualifying final a fortnight earlier; on Saturday they conceded twenty. That is not a criticism of them — it is a measure of what Brisbane became once the game opened up.
For Brisbane, Kai Lohmann kicked five, Charlie Cameron, Eric Hipwood and McCluggage three each. Will Ashcroft, Lachie Neale, Josh Dunkley and Harris Andrews were the spine of it.
The call
It will be the only thing anyone remembers, and that is both unfair and inevitable.
Impey was penalised for holding the ball with the game in the balance and 36 seconds on the clock. McCluggage goaled from the free. Lohmann finished it after the siren. Hawthorn supporters threw bottles at the umpires as they left the ground.
Two things are true at once. A holding-the-ball decision in the last minute of a preliminary final is the hardest call in football to make and the hardest to accept, and reasonable people watched the same vision and saw different things. And Hawthorn kicked 11.1 in a half and did not win the game, which means the free kick was the last of a long list of moments rather than the only one.
That is not a comfort to anyone in brown and gold this week. It is just what the scoreboard says.
