This is an insiders view of how the Hawthorn Football Club won its 11th premiership in 2013 and, in the process, established itself as Australias most successful football club over the past 60 years. From an unexpected flag in 2008 to redemption in 2013, Playing to Win captures the memorable moments that enrich this clubs already colourful history -- a history that began as the perennial easy-beats of the competition. Award-winning author Michael Gordon takes the reader inside the private meetings at the key moments during the highs and lows of a five-year journey, offering extraordinary insights into the pressures and realities of elite professional sport. Based on unparalleled access and frank interviews with all the key figures, including Alastair Clarkson, Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Jarryd Roughead and many more players and coaches, Playing to Win reveals how the Kennett Curse was overcome; how Jeff Kennett considered dropping the coach to the VFL in 2010; and the coach's formula for transforming his players when they crossed 'the white line' in the 2013 Preliminary Final against Geelong. This is compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand how successful organisations work together to create a winning culture.
Michael Gordon is political editor at The Age and has written biographies of surfer Layne Beachley and former prime minister Paul Keating, a history of Bells Beach, and (with his father Harry Gordon) One for All, the story of the Hawthorn Football Club. A Walkley Award winner, he has also won the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year (in 2005).
"Why is Hawthorn so good? The story starts with John Kennedy, the prophet who guided his tribe from the football wilderness to the land of premiership glory. Kennedy was intelligent, passionate, fearless and selfless. Hawthorn's best sides have all been courageous and had an ethic of selflessness. But what has accompanied those virtues has been a relentless capacity to adapt and change. Michael Gordon's Playing to Win is as good an insight as we're going to get into the Hawks' latest surge, which carried them to last year's premiership, the club's 11th. Gordon, who works for The Age, is a skilful reporter who diligently records what he sees and hears and is told. That's why this book is, in one sense, disenchanting. We go to sport because we love action, but most of what goes on inside an AFL club is - talk!" -- Martin Flanagan
