Stunning Freo fail as greats expose biggest flaws in \u2018nightmare\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThat felt really in sync and I loved our attitude, the team D (defence),\u201d Sicily told Fox Footypost-match. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve put a focus on it the last couple of weeks, to commit better, and I thought it was an amazing effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes the backline\u2019s job so much easier when we\u2019ve got our mids helping out and our forwards coming up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat makes Freo so good, they\u2019re well structured and well drilled and you know what you\u2019re going to get, but it\u2019s still pretty hard to beat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought our discipline around long down the line contests and if we were to lose a contested mark, it\u2019s not really a big deal. We didn\u2019t want to over-resource long down the line, just back the big boys in and get the ground level done well.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the way we were in sync tonight is going to give us so much confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where did Justin Longmuir go wrong? | 04:59<\/p>\n
Sicily was among his side\u2019s best in a dominant night in defence to lead Hawthorn\u2019s back six. He racked up 26 disposals and 10 marks with a game-high 12 intercepts to constantly thwart Freo\u2019s attacking entries.<\/p>\n
The stunning upset booked the Hawks into a home preliminary final, while Fremantle will try and avoid a straight-sets September exit when it hosts either Geelong or Carlton back in Perth next week.<\/p>\n
Even Sicily didn\u2019t anticipate Hawthorn clamping Freo as effectively as it did, with the visitors wary of the Dockers\u2019 ability to rapidly thrust themselves back into games.<\/p>\n
But in the end, Freo barely fired a shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect us to keep them to five goals, to be honest. I thought it was going to be a close one,\u201d Sicily said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all on edge around them being so dominant for 10 to 15-minute patches, like they\u2019ve been all year.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I thought our maturity to handle momentum and when they tried to get going with their handball game to energise the ball, I thought we were just all over it tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Genuine final’: Mitchell lauds Hawks | 12:13<\/p>\n
Sicily said the \u201ctough\u201d Hawks\u2019 strong start was crucial in setting the tone early. He said they took great confidence out of their 62-point win over West Coast at Optus Stadium a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell yourself any story, both around how to get motivation and release the pressure valve,\u201d Sicily added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to commit to being tough and commit to taking the game on.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, we were able to start the game really well, so we didn\u2019t really need to take as much risk throughout the game, we were able to control it a bit more.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of confidence around the prep we had a couple of weeks ago with West Coast.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty sick ground, it suits us as well as it suits Freo. I know, hostile crowd, 60,000 against us. But it\u2019s an amazing venue to play at.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even Hawks co-captain James Sicily was surprised by how comprehensively his \u201cin sync\u201d side handled Fremantle at Optus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,85,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-879158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879158","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=879158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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