Kennedy Community Centre

And he just, from that moment on, raised the standards, firstly as a player, then as captain, then as coach, and his values go through the whole club.

And that's why it's going to be the Kennedy Community Centre at Dingley next year.

He is clearly...

The club, three-time premiership coach, clearly the greatest figure in the history of the club.

You are listening to The Bench as we recap Hawthorne's 25-point victory over the Brisbane Lions in round 10 of the 2026 AFLW season.

And it's fair to say, going into Sunday's clash at the Kennedy Community Centre, it was two teams who were both very desperate for a win to try and keep alive their finals chances.

In the first quarter, the Brisbane Lions kicked with the win, kicking three goals to the Hawks, one taking a 12-point lead at the quarter-time break.

The second quarter, it was all Hawthorne as the Hawks kept the line scoreless while piling on five goals to create a very handy 21-point buffer at the halftime change.

Beating Brisbane for the second time in a row, winning again at home, celebrating some milestones, which we'll touch on a bit later.

And playing in some tricky conditions, the sun was out, it was a beautiful day at the football, but my word was it windy.

Yeah, that's one of the things that when you think about the Kennedy Community Centre, especially with that wind, that could become a real benefit for our side.

When I say benefit, Liam listens to probably sitting there going, how is it a benefit? But if you train in those conditions, it becomes a bit easier to play in and You know, you look at the teams such as the Western Bulldogs with the Witten Oval, where they're able to use the breeze that they have there, knowing what it does.

So you go, great.

Once again, Kennedy Community Centre should be a game where we can put on a bit of percentage.

And then we get to that last game against the West Coast Eagles, 7.15pm on that Saturday evening.

And that's going to be potentially, Liam, the game that either makes or breaks our season.

It's just part of the growing pains of competition.

Anyway, so they are home to Brisbane on Sunday back at the Kennedy Community Centre, which is great.

They've been sort of away for several weeks now, so could be back playing in front of a home crowd.

And given their position on the ladder, they pretty much need to just about win out, I think, Mick, to make the finals probably.

I think when you look at when we've been playing some of our better footy, it's been on these bigger grounds.

We know that the training base at the Kennedy Community Centre and obviously being able to play our home games there on that ground means that we've got that vast amount of space and we're able to to win the ball in close and then be able to spread and to link and to do what we need to be able to do.

And I don't think we were able to manipulate our game plan to suit the ground in terms of where we were playing.

And I think, one, the ground factor certainly got us, but I think also the short break as well.