Founded in 1902, Hawthorn are the youngest team from Victoria playing in the AFL today. Despite struggling to find their feet for a long time in the nation’s premier Australian Rules competition, Hawthorn have been arguably the most successful club of the past 40 years, and definitely the standout force of the last decade.
Entering the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1902, before securing a promotion to the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1925, the ‘Mayblooms’ as they were then known failed to blossom. Not securing a finals birth in the VFL until 1957, Hawthorn picked up 10 wooden spoons on the way.
Then coach and legend of the game Roy Cazaly is thought to have given Hawthorn their ‘Hawks’ nickname in 1942. However, it wasn’t until their second premiership in 1971 that the Hawks put the perennial disappointments of their Mayblooms days behind them, emerging as a powerhouse of the league.
Blessed by a golden generation of players, the Hawks were unstoppable in the 1980s. With Michael Tuck, who holds the record for the second most games ever played, and the third highest goal scorer of all time Jason Dunstall, who averaged a remarkable 4.66 goals a game, Hawthorn made seven consecutive grand finals from 1983 to 1989. They won four flags in this run, with their 1989 triumph over Geelong by 144 points to 138 regarded by some as the best grand final of all time.
The appointment of Alastair Clarkson as head coach in 2005 signified the beginning of the most recent Hawthorn era of greatness. In this time the Hawks have won another four flags, three of which came in succession with the threepeat of 2013-2015. With majority of the key players from this triple-triumph having now departed, the end of the Clarkson era is on the horizon. Hawks fans may be in for a tough few years.
