“Everyone was so hurt”: The loss that became the catalyst for remarkable Hawthorn turnaround

Dylan Moore has pinpointed exactly when and where things started turning for Hawthorn.

The Hawks found themselves sitting 16th on the ladder with a 0-5 record and a percentage of 68.7 after losing to Gold Coast by 53 points back in Round 5.

Immediately after their fifth straight loss the playing group got together for an honest chat in the People First Stadium change rooms in a bid to understand where they were going wrong.

Co-vice captain Moore spoke to media in the aftermath of that disappointing defeat and set the tone by saying standards needed to lift.

He suggests that the buy-in from the players has been top notch ever since and has been the catalyst for the run of form that now has them on the verge of playing finals footy.

“We thought we were training hard and we felt like we were going alright and heading in the right direction,” Moore said on SEN Breakfast.

“After zero and five, everyone was just kind of sick of losing and losing by big margins. We weren’t even in games at the start of the year.

“So we had real honest conversations in the change rooms after the Gold Coast game. As players we all just said that we have to lift the standards at training, our intent, our effort, everything just needs to become better.

“I had a few words at the airport with the media about how we all needed to lift the standards at training. Not to hop out of a couple of drills but ‘let’s get to work’.

“Since then our intensity has gone up and we’ve been able to translate that to game day.”

Hawthorn’s thumping 63-point victory over Richmond on the weekend was the club’s 13th in 17 games since their winless start to the season and fourth in a row by 60 or more points.

Moore insists the feedback from coach Sam Mitchell which filtered through to the players was much needed after they were “hurt” by that calamitous loss to the Suns in April.

“It was the conversations after Gold Coast,” he added.

“Sam is very big on feedback and we’d been giving each other feedback for the last two years. It was never really actioned for more than a couple of weeks, we’d go onto the next shiny new thing.

“I felt like this time that everyone was so hurt in the change rooms after the Gold Coast game that we needed change. The feedback was given was, ‘alright, this is actually going to change things’.

“It was the first time we actually understood what standards we need to set and how to follow through with that. From then onwards it was lifting everything around the football club, let’s act like a premiership side. We’ve got premiership stars around us that can help us.

“Ever since that everyone has just bought into our culture. You get a couple of wins on the board and you start building momentum, then it becomes easier and easier.”

Hawthorn now sits seventh on the ladder with a 13-9 record ahead of Saturday’s clash with North Melbourne in Launceston.

If the Hawks beat the Kangaroos, which many expect they will, then they’ll lock in a finals spot for the first time since 2018.