Dermott Brereton gets a reminder of the price he paid in the 1989 grand final every time he slides on to his surfboard.
Sharper than the sting of Victorian waters in winter, the Hawthorn legend gets a jab of pain in the ribs from an injury sustained in arguably the greatest grand final ever 36 years ago.
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Those ribs Cat Mark Yeates smashed in the infamous opening to the 1989 grand final have never healed properly but the memories Dermie carries with him make up for their mashing.
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“The actual moment doesn’t bother me. The aftermath does,” he told foxsports.com.au
“When I go for a surf, when I lie on the board – the two broken ribs never healed properly and they dig into the board whenever I am surfing or when I lie on the ground for whatever reason – so that’s a constant reminder of how I broke two ribs in that instance.
Dermott Brereton is crunched by Mark Yeates at the opening bounce. 1989 Grand Final. Hawthorn v Geelong. MCG. Screen grab.Source: News Limited
“But it is not as if it is like in a movie, where you wake up in a cold sweat each night. No. I kind of look back at it and it was hard, hard bloody work, but it was fun. It was enjoyable.”
Brereton will be at the MCG on Friday night for the latest instalment of what has become arguably football’s most famous rivalry when his beloved Hawks tackle Geelong.
At stake is a spot in the grand final, with the victor to face either Collingwood or Brisbane. And the Fox Footy favourite cannot wait.
“How much am I looking forward to it? We are in a drought. We haven’t won a premiership for ten years,” he said.
“It’s ten years since I saw the Hawks have a shot at getting into a grand final and I’ll be at the bloody ground, so yeah I’m looking forward to it.”
From 1989’s stunning grand final to the “Kennett Curse” that followed the corker of a decider in 2008, to Tomahawk’s goal after the siren in 2012 and Shaun Burgoyne’s heroics in a 2013 preliminary final, this has become one of football’s most famous rivalries.
“That ‘89 grand final and the heroics of both Hawthorn and Geelong that day, that sort of lives forever, and so will the ‘Kennett curse’ for you know, the next 20 to 30 years, that will continue to be talked about,” Hawkins said.
“Great sides tend to have great players and those games often came down to big moments, and the thing about those moments and what made those games so good is that they were tight and they were tough and they were skilful … and they had those special moments to go back to.”
Brereton is at pains to point out that for the champions of his generation, the rivalry “we will take to our graves” is against Essendon given their brilliant battles in the 1980s.
“But that era of players … I don’t think they’re going to say the Essendon rivalry would be greater than their Geelong rivalry,” he said.
“For Gary Ayers, myself, Jason Dunstall, Chris, Langford, Chris Mew, all of our era, we’ll take that to our graves. That’s our greatest rivalry. There’s no other that would come near it.
“But we understand that there’s history there with the Cats and our continuation of our breed at Hawthorn. That has morphed into a natural dislike of each other, Geelong and Hawthorn, that aspect of it.”
Hawthorn star James Sicily emulates club legend Dermott Brereton’s iconic moment from the 1989 Grand Final after he was taken out by Geelong hard man Mark Yeates.Source: Supplied
HOW IT BECAME FOOTY’S GREATEST RIVALRY
Former Hawthorn best-and-fairest Brad Sewell agrees that Geelong is the main rival of his generation. But as a quick touch point, that does not mean the enmity with Essendon is over.
Sewell believes it still lingers given there are personnel at Hawthorn, including coach Sam Mitchell and development coach Andy Collins who were schooled under Brereton and others, and noted there were “instances” of the rivalry firing up at different stages.
He has reason to remember — or perhaps forget — given he was on the wrong end of a ferocious shirt-front from Matthew Lloyd at the MCG in 2009 with significant ramifications.
Lloyd, who was Essendon’s skipper, was suspended for four weeks and never played again, while Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson had to be restrained by now Gold Coast chief executive Mark Evans afterwards and was fined for an expletive-laden spray of the Bomber.
The “line in the sand” game from 2004, in which Hawthorn skipper Richie Vandenberg let loose after former great Don Scott approached he and Campbell Brown at a cafe a day before the match to pass on how the past players were feeling before Dermott Brereton and coach Peter Schwab poured fuel on the feistiness at half-time, is also infamous.
The Geelong-Hawthorn rivalry, which flourished again from late in 2008, has been characterised more by moments of absolute brilliance than extremes of violence.
There have been instances, including Joel Selwood’s clash with Brent Guerra in 2011, and the Geelong skipper and his Hawthorn counterpart Luke Hodge were proper hard heads.
But both Sewell and Hawkins said this week they felt genuine respect for their rivals and marvelled at the quality of the champions they competed alongside and against.
Hawkins said a combined-best 22 from those who featured between the 2008 grand final through to the 2013 preliminary final would rival most club’s Teams of the Century.
Lance Franklin. Gary Ablett Jnr. Hodge. Selwood. Jarryd Roughead. Matthew Scarlett. Jimmy Bartel. Shaun Burgoyne. Steve Johnson. Sam Mitchell. You could go on and on.
But Cameron Mooney noted with interest the comments from Hawthorn’s 2008 premiership captain and now coach Mitchell leading into Friday’s nights preliminary final at the MCG.
Mooney believes it has become the greatest rivalry in footy, with perhaps the showdown in Adelaide and the derby in Perth a rival, given the excellence of the two clubs this century.
“I just hope both playing groups understand this rivalry, because when you look at it, none of these guys other than probably (Jack) Gunston and, to a lesser degree, probably ‘Danger’ and Tommy Stewart were around through that truly massive period,” Mooney said.
“You just hope that they understand just how big this is for both clubs and how exciting it is. The MCG will be heaving tomorrow night. But both coaches have been there through it.
“Whether they use it – I loved Mitch’s comments that that club (Geelong) has been so great for so long and it’s been annoying and we’d love to be the ones that knock them off – that, to me, was great because he was a guy who lived through it and he has still got that little bit of dislike and distaste. There’s a huge amount of respect, yeah, but no doubt there’s a little bit of this dislike as well, and that is fantastic. That is how it should be.”
2008 Grand Final. Geelong v Hawthorn. MCG. Cameron Mooney spills a mark over Luke HodgeSource: News Limited
THE GREATEST GRAND FINAL THERE WAS
Brereton calls it the flagstone moment in the history between Geelong and Hawthorn. And few would argue with the assertion the 1989 grand final is among the greatest ever played.
There is the flow of the game. Hawthorn bounced out of the blocks kicking eight goals to two in the first term and still led by six goals at three-quarter time, only for the Cats to surge.
Gary Ablett managed to kick nine goals in a beaten team, but Brereton credits the remarkable athleticism of Chris Langford with stopping him snaring at least a couple more in the final quarter as Hawthorn held on to win 21.18 (144) to 21.12 (138).
Then there are the heroics of players. Brereton somehow managed to kick three goals after being poleaxed by Yeates and sustaining broken ribs and a kidney tear in the first seconds.
Brownlow Medallist Robert DiPierdomenico suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung when barrelled into by Ablett in the first term yet played on before being rushed to hospital later.
The Hawks was also suspended for five weeks for his own involvement when elbowing Garry Hocking in the head in the third term, while John Platten was also concussed in the game.
MMark Knight cartoon: ‘One of the greatest grand finals ever was in 1989 between Geelong and Hawthorn. The Hawks won by a goal, but the game was one of courage, skill and ‘Eighties’ haircuts … The opening bounce saw Dermie pole axed … he got up, straightened his poodle mullet and played a blinder! Dipper played with broken ribs and a punctured lung! He could barely say ‘Dimmeys and Forges’ at the end … Ablett kicked nine goals to win the Norm Smith in a losing side … he walked back to Geelong … across the bay! Will the 2008 grand final measure up to this historic contest? Will the Geelong mascot take down the Hawthorn president in the opening minutes?’Source: Supplied
So brutal was the grand final, FA Cup winning Scottish soccer player Ray Stewart, who was at the MCG, reportedly said; “I would not play this game for a million dollars.”
“Those who participated in it, whether it be a player, official or a supporter from that era, most of us say it was the best game we have ever participated in,” Brereton said.
“It’s funny because people talk about the rivalry between Geelong and Hawthorn but we had a strong, deep seated rivalry with Essendon, and Geelong were a team that just happened to play against us on that day … in one of the greatest games of all time, that 89 grand final.
“For us, we weren’t aware of a long blood-lust historical rivalry. It was 26 years since Hawthorn and Geelong had played in a grand final, a quarter century, so there was no real regular, ongoing rivalry. That didn’t really come until the Geelong-Hawthorn dominance period in the 2000 and the teens.
‘But the historical element of how great the clashes had been and how violent they were on occasion – I mean the ‘85 game at Princess Park with Leigh Matthews and (Neville) ‘Brunsey’ and Jacko (Mark Jackson) getting out of control – I don’t think that participated in or contributed to any rivalry. It was just a very violent game. And then four years later, we had the great clash which was full of violence, full of madness, full of valour. But it was four years apart, so it doesn’t really say that there was a rivalry there. At that time, they were just … another team to be beaten.
“But that was a signature moment in time for Hawthorn, where it was perhaps viewed as one of the hardest fought, greatest victories that they’ve ever participated in, and the guys led by Mitch and Hodgie in the 2000s and ‘10s, they cemented a new rivalry with the Cats, because every meeting they had was fantastic.”
Gary Ablett accepts the Norm Smith Medal from Bill Goggin. 1989 Grand Final. Hawthorn v Geelong. He kicked 9 goals in a losing side.Source: News Corp Australia
A SHOCK RESULT SPARKS A NEW DAWN
Geelong appealed as invincible in 2008 as they sought to defend a premiership for the first time since 1951-52 and were hotly fancied leading into the decider against the Hawks.
The Cats had lost just one match – an 86-point aberration against Collingwood in Rd 9 – when continuing on from their astonishing dominance from a season earlier.
Sewell distinctly remembers coach Alastair Clarkson using a tipping sheet from the Herald Sun for the grand final, which universally favoured the Cats, in a pre-match discussion.
But wasted chances – the Cats had nine more scoring shots but kicked 6.20 (many due to Hawthorn’s deliberate decision to rush behinds) after quarter-time – against a team with growing belief led to an upset result.
Sewell said it was not until an 11-point loss to the Cats in Rd 17 that season that his club realised that a premiership was potentially within reach that year.
Despite several Hawks performing below their best in that game, they matched the Cats, which is something Clarkson seized upon afterwards.
“A lot of our key players had stinkers. Hodgey in particular, because his wife was heavily pregnant and expecting their first, and he had an absolute shocker,” Sewell said.
“But after that game, Clarko was adamant that we could actually win this. That was the first time the idea of actually winning the premiership dawned on the group.
“From that point on, the sense of self belief snowballed, but it was only internally. The rest of the footy landscape certainly didn’t have that sense of belief but we … believed we could give it a real shake.
“I don’t think a single Herald Sun tipster gave us a chance, and that was mentioned in the pre-game as well, but we had this innate sense of belief.
“And, of course, the way the game panned out with Geelong missing a lot of chances and us absorbing the pressure with a lot of rushed behinds, and then we came out after half-time with belief and Dewy (Stuart Dew) just turned the game on its head, basically, and everything fell into place from there.”
2008 Grand Final. Geelong v Hawthorn. MCG. Brad Sewell in the last quarter.Source: News Limited
The Herald Sun tipping sheet was not the only pre-game motivator.
More importantly, Clarkson drew on the white board a picture of a shark to explain what proved a critical strategy of slowing Geelong’s movement down at every opportunity.
“The shark was pre-game and the analogy is that a shark needs to move forward for water to go through its gills and that was Geelong’s style of play,” Sewell said.
“They were aggressive and took the game on with constant movement and that is where the game plan of slowing down and trying to stop them, that analogy, came from.”
The loss in a grand final that drew more than 100,000 fans still stings Geelong.
Mooney, who finished with 2.3 for the game and missed a couple of critical shots, said it remains a particularly bitter memory.
“We just had a bitterness about us because of 2008. That was heartbreaking for us, it really was, because it was the one that we should not have lost,” he said.
“A few of us just had some bad moments in that game that proved costly, so from then on there was a part of it from our point of view that you just did not want to lose to those guys again.”
2008 Grand Final. Geelong v Hawthorn. MCG. Cameron Mooney is left looking at the scoreboardSource: News Limited
A CURSE IS BORN
Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. What were you thinking? That is the question Hawthorn officials and players must have been thinking after the former Victorian premier opened his mouth in 2009.
“What they don’t have, I think, is the quality of some of our players. They don’t have the psychological drive we have. We have beaten Geelong when it matters,” Kennett said.
Geelong’s response was emphatic and the “Kennett Curse” was born.
The Cats opened the season with an eight point win in the grand final replay and then delighted in snaring a one point win in Rd 17 when, after Geelong had trailed by 28 points early in the last term, Brownlow Medallist Jimmy Bartel kicked a behind after the siren.
“We got to knock them out of the finals with the Jimmy Bartel point. For us, that was as good as anything at that time, to make sure that they didn’t play finals the next year,” Mooney said.
“(There were) just little things like that along the way, just those little storylines as well … that made it so special. And then you would see Jeff in the stands, after all those losses. It was great.”
The pain of the 2008 grand final loss drove the Cats to the premiership the following year.
While Hawkins and Mooney both believe St Kilda was probably the better side in 2009, Mooney said Mark Thompson referred to the grand final defeat the year before and the pain stemming from it during his three-quarter time address in the grand final against the Saints.
From then on, the Cats kept on winning, stringing together 11 wins on the trot, with many of them corkers as the clubs made Easter Monday at the MCG a must-attend occasion.
Tom Hawkins celebrates after kicking a goal. (AAP image/David Crosling)Source: AAP
Arguably the most memorable of the lot was the Hawkins matchwinner after the siren in 2012, with the Cats racing the ball from defence to his hands in the final 15 seconds before the three-time premiership forward booted a monster from well outside 50 metres.
“It’s certainly right up there. You break things down from the home-and-away season to finals
and playing well in big matches and capitalising on big moments and when it comes to home-and-away, that’s really special,” Hawkins said.
“A couple of years before the goal I kicked after the siren, when Jimmy Bartel kicked that point after the siren, the feeling of beating the best in the last second was so euphoric,” he said.
“The first two or so minutes after (my goal) I will never forget and then the adrenaline keeps pumping through your body at a high level for the next couple of days, but then what you are able to take forward from being a part of them is pretty cool.
“It is right up there with my time in football and to be able to do that on the biggest stage during that period where Hawthorn and Geelong were always the best sides during the ‘Kennett Curse’, it was like a final because it was tough and skilful.”
How much of a factor was the ‘Kennett Curse’? It depends on who you ask.
Sewell, who still laments just falling short of spoiling Selwood in the instance before the Cats skipper kicked the footy to Hawkins in 2012, said he was not surprised Geelong responded.
“The impetus for the rivalry was Jeff being Jeff and it led to the ‘Kennett Curse’, that reference that we were psychologically stronger than them, or something along those lines,” he said.
“But Geelong were a strong club with strong, proud and talented players, and they responded accordingly the next ten or so times we played them.”
Hawkins suspects he has softened when it comes to considering the comments from Kennett, but has no doubt it inspired some of his older teammates after the 2008 pain.
“You just try and draw down on anything you know that you can (use to) move forward and take with you and Jeff’s comments certainly hit home to a few players. That’s what they needed to take forward with them into the next season,” Hawkins said.
“I think they (all) tapped into it, but particularly Chappy (Paul Chapman). (The dislike was) not necessarily directed towards Jeff, but it was more that the idea that people were thinking Chappy was mentally weak (or) fragile, whatever you want to call it, when that was just absolutely not in Chappy’s DNA and that’s what he used.
“And that filtered through the group, where there was already a bit of a grudge, but more because they had beaten us (in 2008) as opposed to the comments that were made. But that just made it even more colourful. It was great theatre and I think it certainly started something pretty special.”
Geelong players pile on top of Tom Hawkins. (AAP Image/David Crosling)Source: AAP
ENDING A CURSE AND CREATING A DYNASTY
Just over a decade before Chris Fagan ended Brisbane’s premiership drought, he was working at Hawthorn as the club’s footy manager and he had seen all he could stomach.
Enough, he said, was enough. According to Sewell, the now-premiership coach made a crucial intervention that changed the way the Hawks considered the rivalry with Geelong.
“It was ‘Fages’ that helped us make the shift. He identified after the ninth or tenth game that the narrative around those games was that, ‘Yep, the rivalry is great, that they’re always a great game and we really enjoy playing in them’” Sewell said.
“He said we needed to lose that narrative and stop being happy to play in these good games, saying they’re not great games because we always lose, effectively, and that it was bullshit.
“That forced a mental shift. I can’t remember if we won the next game or not but that was kind of a pivot for the group’s psychology and we started to think about it differently.”
The curse was finally snapped in the preliminary final of 2013 when Shaun Burgoyne snared his third goal for the match in the latter stages to clinch the lead for the Hawks.
Hawthorn’s Shaun Burgoyne celebrates. (Photo: David Callow/AFL Media)Source: Supplied
With 20 seconds to go, Sewell’s desperate lunge to smother Travis Varcoe as he was kicking for a goal that would have tied the scores failed, but the Cat narrowly missed and a week later the Hawks won the first of three successive premierships.
“That win played a big part. As a young group, we were happy to be playing in big games and we won a premiership that maybe we weren’t expected to win in 2008,” Sewell said.
“So we lost a bit of an edge for a period but the culmination of the ‘Kennett Curse’, if you like, because we were always on the wrong side of it, it just fed into the narrative … and you compound that with the trajectory of the club of losing a prelim in 2011 against Collingwood and losing a grand final in 2012. So that preliminary final win, finally getting over them, was massive for us.”
A DECADE ON AND THE TOMAHAWK IS BARRACKING FOR … A THRILLER
Geelong has won four premierships and played in six grand finals over the last two decades.
The Hawks have also claimed four flags, including the threepeat between 2013 and 2015, from five grand final appearances. Both clubs have been the envy of the AFL. And another premierships is at stake, though Brisbane and Collingwood are clearly strong contenders.
Dermie will be sitting in the stands on Friday night, perhaps feeling his ribs, but roaring with as much passion as he once played with for his mighty Hawks.
Mooney will also be there, on edge and hoping his Cats can land another great blow.
Sewell, the lucky bugger, will be tuning in from San Francisco, where he is attending the Laver Cup after an invitation from dual-US Open champion Pat Rafter.
And Hawkins will be on the boundary line providing analysis for Fox Footy and barracking for the type of thriller that captured the footy world’s attention back when he was starring.
“I’ve quickly gone into the mode of the Cats and wanting them to win by 30 or 40 points (when playing) into ‘give me an all time game. Give me the 2013 prelim classic between the Hawks and the Cats, with both sides at their very best’,” Hawkins said.
“I want Geelong to win, but I also want to get the special comments part of my role fight exactly right, so my bias is on hold. Just give me a good game.
“I won’t be nervous. The pre-game nerves are gone. Now it is just about the excitement and hoping the preliminary final can live up to being as good as it possibly can be.”