The Hollywood Hawks are top of the pops, and here’s where Sam Mitchell thinks they’ll improve

When the game is played at high speed, there are few sides who can match the Hawks’ pace and rapid ball movement.

Take Karl Amon’s laser-like kick streaming forward on the wing in the first term. Afforded too much latitude by the Bombers, Amon had the spatial awareness to detect players fanning out to the boundary and skill to land a 40-metre pass for the 170-centimetre Nick Watson to mark in a pocket of space that should not have been there.

Or there was the coast-to-coast play in the last quarter when James Sicily weighted his kick-in for Jarman Impey to run onto on the Shane Warne Stand wing, resulting in a mark and goal for Connor Macdonald.

“There’s different types of speed: running speed and brain speed,” Mitchell said. “We’ve got some players that are good in one or both of those areas.”

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Such a play takes high skill but also requires sacrifice by teammates so the space can be created – and sloppy defending from Essendon, a point Brad Scott lamented.

“They’re very good kicks,” Scott said of the Hawks. “They sliced us up through the middle at different stages, and we sat back off them a little bit too much, particularly in the first quarter.”

The Hawks do not have the elite of the elite – yet – but they have a deeper roll call than most of good-to-very-good players.

They won comfortably enough without a major contribution from Will Day, who was bettered by Jye Caldwell after starring last week against Sydney. Jai Newcombe, subdued against the Swans, stepped up with 25 possessions and seven clearances in a midfield that was, despite the scoreline, well-beaten.

Clearances (31-50), contested ball (126-149) and tackles (58-78) all went Essendon’s way, which Mitchell acknowledged was a concern. A six-day break, where recovery will be paramount after a taxing match, poses challenges for fixing that part of their game.

“The story we’ve thought about is: we’ve got a fair bit of work to do, but our best is pretty good,” Mitchell said.

“There are a lot of areas that need attention for us, but we were able to kick 111 points and win the game. That part makes me happy, but [on] some of the underlying stuff we’ve got some work to do.

The Bombers, who twice closed the margin to three goals in the last term, were not disgraced in defeat, but they are a long way off the flag contenders.

“I thought in the second half we controlled parts of it,” Scott said of the game. “The screen I looked at was flashing green on most metrics – the one I don’t look at so much was the scoreboard, which wasn’t flashing green.”

England’s cricketers might call that a moral victory, but Scott is more pragmatic. Kick-in goals are rare, and Essendon gave up two in this way, along with four from the centre bounce when well-drilled teams fiercely guard against breakaways from the front of the stoppage.

“We knew what we were going to get, and to concede six goals from things we planned for and trained for was disappointing,” Scott said. “That was a big part to the margin, I thought.”

Caldwell was “outstanding” on Day, with 36 disposals to 16, and a player Scott wished he had two of. Zach Merrett is in for another big year, and Isaac Kako gave glimpses of the excitement machine he will become, but skill errors were crippling.

Entries inside 50, a deficiency last year, remains a work in progress. Targeting leads to the boundary is not in their playbook.

“The pressure they put on the ball carrier is very good,” Scott said. “[It] certainly hurried our decision-making. The options were there, we just didn’t find them.”

The inefficient Bombers managed fewer shots at goal from 10 more inside-50s, and the scoring challenge won’t get easier with Langford facing several weeks out and Peter Wright up to six weeks away from returning.

“I like the fact [that] we never conceded,” Scott said. “But there’s a gap between the two sides at the moment.”