Sam Mitchell and his Hollywood Hawks were exactly where they wanted: main event, Gather Round.
And they failed to fire a shot.
Hawthorn, 71 points down to Port Adelaide late in the second quarter on Sunday night, crashed to their first defeat of the season.
"We want to put ourselves in a position where we play in these big games - and we've got that far," Mitchell said after the 18.13 (121) to 14.7 (91) loss.
"But we haven't quite been able to work out exactly how to perform at our best in every one of them."
Mitchell wants to understand why, believing there's a crucial lesson in the as-yet unknown.
"As you play, and tirelessly try to work your way up the AFL ladder, there's lessons that need to be learnt," he said.
"We have been learning them and we've been on a pretty steep learning curve over the last few years.
"We know we're going to need to handle big moments, big games, pressured games - Thursday night games, Friday night games, finals, big moments, big games.
"And this was one of them.
"We've passed some of those tests and we failed others and obviously tonight we failed that test."
The Gather Round finale was much hyped given the heated history of last year's semi-final between the Power and Hawks.
Then, Hawthorn lost by three points and Port coach Ken Hinkley was fined $20,000 by the AFL for taunting Hawk players.
Now, Hinkley was circumspect in celebration as Mitchell pledged the uncover the reasons for Hawthorn's tardiness.
But he ruled out the Hawks believing the widespread hype growing about them after a 4-0 start to the season.
"You guys have said it's a hot start to the year," Mitchell told reporters.
"I think we, internally, have known that the ladder looks great before this round, it's four and zero and on top of the ladder.
"We look at the game a little bit more forensically, that's our job, we're not trying to sell newspapers and media stories, we're actually trying to win a premiership.
"So what we're doing is looking under the hood of our game.
"And we know that our game, even though we've been winning, has not been all humming along.
"And some of those areas that we've suspected were going to cause us some trouble if we didn't get right, some of them reared their heads."
The Hawks (4-1) slid to fifth on the ladder ahead of Easter Monday's battle against Geelong.
