HAWKS LEARN HARSH LESSON
INVERLEIGH coach Adam Donohue says his Hawks were given a timely reminder about work rate as they were handed their first loss in 986 days by East Geelong.
Having won all of their 17 matches since the 2019 semifinal, the Hawks squandered chances and kicked 2.5 with the wind in the final term to go down by eight points on Saturday.
While Inverleigh coach Adam Donohue said his side played well enough to win, East Geelong “raised the bar” in the final term.
“I think it just came down to work rate in that last quarter and they worked a little bit harder than us,” Donohue said.
“It’s not like we don’t know how to do it, that was just one occasion in the last 18 games where we didn’t run it out.”
In a back-and-forth game at Inverleigh, the Hawks had a chance to break the game open when leading by 14 points in the second term but could not expand the gap and kicked three goals to East Geelong’s six in the second half.
After walking into the rooms and not singing the team song as has become customary, Donohue was measured when speaking to his players post-match.
“It was just telling them, ‘it is OK to lose’,” he said.
“You can’t win every game. It wasn’t as if we played bad, we thought we should have won the game but we didn’t take our opportunities in the last quarter.
“If you play poorly it is probably a different story, but we thought we executed what we wanted to for most of the day and in the end we kicked (2.5) in the last quarter.
“If you nail two of those (shots) you probably win the game but in the end East were the better team.”
Despite a previously undefeated start to the season, Inverleigh has been without four star players.
Billy Cations, Scott Condy, Casey Meehan and Brad Surkitt are due back after next month’s bye to provide a boost to the flag favourites.
“We are really missing those guys and they are all really important players for us, hence why we are having a bit of inconsistency at the moment because you just don’t have the quality of players you normally would,” Donohue said.
“We are just hoping we don’t get any more injuries and after the bye they can come in and play their games, and heading towards finals we are pretty settled.”
Stalwart midfielder Blake Hutchinson and Lachie Buyel could return this week to face Thomson.
Michael Grozdanovski is due to have scans on his foot after it was landed on during the East Geelong loss, his first game back from a hamstring injury.