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Jesse Hogan feeds off hostile crowd as GWS Giants breach Geelong fortress again

Jesse Hogan is one of those footballers who could easily have been lost to the game. He could be kicking bags and collecting cheques in local and country footy. He gradually fell out of favour at Melbourne. He was miserable at Fremantle. He was a worrier and catastrophiser. The key forward was a speculative pick up for GWS Giants.

All the things that were missing in his life – a clean bill of health, a sound body, a quiet mind, a stable home life, a good team and a coach who believes in him – have aligned at the Giants. Against Geelong, Hogan kicked seven goals and helped drag his team over the line. He’s had some big hauls in recent years – he kicked nine on a West Coast debutant a month ago – but this was in a hot game, in front of a hostile crowd and against one of the best backlines in football. Sam De Koning, a fine player and athlete, had no answers.

At first glance, Hogan presents as a highly unorthodox footballer. The stutter steps, the Flintstones run up, and the way he punches at his kicks suggest a player still learning his craft. But his craft is the best in the competition. He shuffles, pivots, positions himself precisely where he wants to be, sticks his arms out, puffs his chest and gobbles it. He’s an incredibly hard man to budge. It sounds obvious but, like the best cricketers, he always keeps his eye on the ball. He has quick feet, he never stops moving, and he roams far and wide. In the dying seconds on Sunday, he was in the back pocket, clearing and directing.

Hogan also has a fleet of domestiques who separate, block, divert and screen to free him up. My colleague Jack Snape and Hogan recently delved into his love of chess. When he broke his thumb in a bus toilet door earlier this year, his very impressive chess.com score dipped. This time it was the Giants and coach Adam Kingsley who shuffled their pieces; protecting, releasing and emboldening their colossus.

Giants skipper Toby Greene says Hogan is the best key forward of the past decade. Certainly he plays a game that would have dominated in previous generations. He’s the most accurate Coleman medallist since Fraser Gehrig and Matthew Lloyd. The closest modern comparison is probably Tom Hawkins. But Hawkins sought more one-on-one mismatches. Hogan seems to prefer two on five.

There was more to the Giants’ win over the Cats than Jesse Hogan. Tom Green vied with him for best afield honours. At stoppages, Green fought for front position and positioned himself as close as possible to his ruck Kieren Briggs, who was also excellent. Green is a big man but much like Lachie Neale, he gets down low and never fumbles. He’s one of the best and most creative handballers in the game, and he got GWS moving.

For a large part of autumn, the Giants’ home ground in usually unavailable because of the Sydney Royal Easter Show. They’re bumped off by a bunch of woodchoppers, wool classers and alpacas. They’d happily relocate to Kardinia Park, where they’ve won their past five games.

The Cats were left ruing some tardy goalkicking. Patrick Dangerfield, who was like a SWAT team leader last weekend, was well held by Jack Buckley. Mark Blicavs, also a keen chess player and footy’s ultimate deploy-where-required option, has pretty much performed every role on the football field this year – ruck, spare, goalkeeper, winger, cooler, everything but carting the water. In the dying stages of the game on Sunday, he drifted forward and had the game on his boot, but his set shot hit the post.

Eight of the nine games this weekend were decided by 14 points or less. Beginning in Perth on Thursday, round nine was highlighted by the draw in Hobart between Brisbane and North Melbourne, by Richmond’s Tom Brown suddenly morphing into Gout Gout to mow down West Coast’s Tom Gross, and by Mark Keane hurling himself back into traffic to shore up the Showdown for Adelaide. Keane later explained his thought process in his melodic Cork accent; “Yer, I just threw meself back and prayed”.

The worst moment was the serious injury to Essendon’s first gamer Lewis Hayes. The key defender was taken at pick 25 in the 2022 draft and has been patiently developed for two years in the VFL. He was playing well on debut, getting a heap of the ball, and looked to be exactly the player the Bombers needed after their glut of injuries. And then his left knee buckled. Michael Tuck once described footy as “an endless series of kicks in the guts”. Tucky, to be fair, played about a thousand games and half of those were finals. Hayes has played three quarters of a senior game. But he’d no doubt concur right now.

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