“Best team in it right now”: Can Hawthorn win the flag from outside the top four?

Can Hawthorn win the 2024 premiership despite a likely finish in the bottom half of the top eight?

That was the question posed by Brad Johnson to Kane Cornes with the eighth-placed Hawks winning nine of their last 11 games to roar into contention.

While the Hawks are the form team of the competition, they’re already eight points behind fourth-placed Geelong with two games remaining in the home and away season and will most likely finish somewhere from sixth to eighth if they play in September.

Cornes thinks that the Hawks are the best team in the AFL on current form but won’t go all the way as one slip-up in September will equate to season over.

Johnson, on the other hand, thinks that the Hawks are on such a role that they can win every game they play in for the rest of the campaign to lift the cup aloft this year.

Johnson: “Can I ask, do we seriously think Hawthorn can win the flag this year? Is that a question we need to start asking?”

Cornes: “I think they're the best team in it right now. I think they’re the AFL’s best team right now.

“They’re the most consistent, high-performing team for the longest stretch and they have the best form line of any team in it since about Round 8.

“But can they win it? No. Every game has so much riding on it, you can’t afford a slip-up because of the slow start.

“To this point, it hasn't phased them, take out the Geelong game and their performance has been really good. Their performances have been really consistent, but there's going to be a slip-up.

“When it gets cut-throat, you can't have a slip-up.”

Johnson: “But there mightn’t be a slip-up, that might be next year.”

Cornes: “But you're going to have to go on the road. You’re going to have to go to Sydney, Brisbane or Adelaide … that makes it tough.”

Johnson: “I understand that, but they're on a roll at the moment and you get to that point where they’re just doing things differently that the opposition can't stop at the moment.

“It's a completeness with their 23, and I love listening to Sam Mitchell and he's been open with them about where they sit in the season.

“He’s not hiding from the fact that, ‘We're taking this one week at a time’, it’s, ‘We have to win this block of games, or we will not put ourselves in a position to play finals’.”

Cornes: “So, do you think they can win it?”

Johnson: “I think they can. I think they're on a roll and their confidence is so high at the moment that they need 18 of the 23 to play well every week from here on in.

“I think they're good enough to be able to do that and reach it.”

All of the last seven premiers have come from inside the top four. The last team to win from the bottom half of the top eight was the Western Bulldogs in 2016.

The Hawks play the Tigers and Kangaroos in their remaining two home and away games of the season.