Full AFL finals fixture confirmed as Suns book tricky away test in September debut<\/a><\/p>\nFormer Hawthorn sharpshooter Ben Dixon laid out the blueprint for his former club on Wednesday night after Gold Coast\u2019s 95-point win over Essendon cemented the Hawks in eighth position. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Hawks, they go to ENGIE (Stadium to play GWS), then they go G, G, G (MCG) \u2014 four Gs,\u201d Dixon jokingly began on Fox Footy\u2019s First Crack. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey get three home finals after their first week, if they can get through. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou finish in eighth spot, and guess what happens? \u2026 I cannot believe how much it\u2019s worked in their favour. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t want to go to Fremantle \u2014 they go to Sydney, they play the Giants, who I think (the Hawks) are a massive chance to beat, then they go home final, home final, home final from eighth spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, in six all-time attempts, the Hawks have never beaten the Giants at the Sydney Showgrounds. <\/p>\n
No club has won the premiership from eighth. The Western Bulldogs in 2016 came from seventh, while Brisbane last year surged from fifth. <\/p>\n
And in just as possible a scenario as the one Dixon laid out, the Hawks could cop the Crows in Adelaide in a semi-final before travelling to Brisbane to play in a prelim if they won. <\/p>\n
Dimma relieved after Suns make Finals | 10:05<\/p>\n
It could\u2019ve been a very different story for the Hawks this September in terms of how the bracket came to be. <\/p>\n
As most predicted, the Suns belted the Bombers in the regular season finale, but if the script had been different and they\u2019d won by less, the Hawks might\u2019ve been preparing for a trip to Perth \u2014 and found themselves on the other side of the draw. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut on the flipside, if they (the Hawks) did finish in seventh spot, like Gold Coast \u2014 if we\u2019re talking flight paths \u2026 how much turbulence on that one? That is a hard way to land, if you look at that,\u201d Dixon said. <\/p>\n
In which case, one of the possible routes to the grand final that Gold Coast is now faced with sees the Suns potentially play a semi-final in Brisbane after their Perth trip, before a preliminary final in Adelaide if they were good enough to get there. <\/p>\n
It\u2019d be fair to say most Hawthorn supporters are glad the Suns won big on Wednesday night. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite finishing eighth, Hawthorn could prime itself for a run at the premiership with three \u2018home\u2019 finals if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,689,7491,73532,651,10133,14385,32121,73533,10398,13213,1127,2105,2485,11288,7492,43,38433,54902,19100,647,673,44,677,46,19095,701,73534,3247,12936,670,41,39,42,40,660,3439,698],"class_list":["post-101101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-ben-dixon","tag-bracket-twists","tag-brisbane","tag-collingwood-magpies","tag-damien-hardwick","tag-elimination-final","tag-finals-fixture","tag-finals-run","tag-finals-series","tag-fox-footy","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-gold-coast","tag-grand-final","tag-hawthorn-hawks","tag-headlines","tag-home-final","tag-home-finals","tag-jai-newcombe","tag-melbourne","tag-new-south-wales","tag-news","tag-oceania","tag-perth","tag-preliminary-final","tag-queensland","tag-regular-season-finale","tag-robert-cianflone","tag-sam-mitchell","tag-sydney","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-victoria","tag-western-australia","tag-western-bulldogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}